Whispers in the Dark

Yet another Retribution warcaster has been revealed on the Privateer Press website, Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper. She would appear to be a warcaster version of Eiryss. I'm sure many of you are overjoyed to hear this. The Retribution appear to have cornered the market on armoured parachute pants.

I played a quick 750 game against Tom (Circle/Khador/Ginger) today at GUGS and it was a bit of a white wash as I stopped across his Morvahna list. I used my standard 750 eMagnus list which includes eEiryss, who hoses Morvahna's upkeeps pretty badly. I also had the Dice Gods on my side, reaching the sublime heights where rolling a 10 on 2 dice were acceptable odds of success. With such dice odds I quickly mopped up most of Tom's army while only losing a couple of Halberdiers until the later stages of the game when Tom managed to wreck a Renegade and blow up a fair chunk of the Halberdiers, but by then it was all over; the best he could have hoped for was a swift merciful death for Morvahna as almost my entire army would have been able to charge her next turn.

Discussing what went so horribly, horribly wrong for Tom we came across some interesting conclusions: Morvahna stinks against any side with upkeep removal (not that I did much of that, I just nuked the Wolves with a Rain of Steel after they'd charged), I'd be hesitant to bring her to a game over 500 points; Tom was attempting to play much more aggressively - not as suicidally aggressive as I play but getting up there quickly at least. This led him to lose both the Pureblood and Warpwolf very early on when I knocked them over and then beat the snot out of them with the Steelhead Cavalry; being able to take some very high dice odds for granted certainly helped me out. Mostly I feel it was my ludicrous luck that did the most. Maybe all that praying to the Dice Gods has finally paid off.

General Badass-ery

Badass finally has a name: Dawnlord Vyros. Privateer is releasing an awful lot of information very quickly so I think I'm going to wait for a couple of updates to happen before I make a new post here. I have to say he's got one big sword, he also looks distinctly un-black, this makes me a sad panda. Perhaps I'll pick him up when he's released and paint him as a brother of another colour.

Even More Revealing

I just chillaxed at G3 today, Iain's Pyre Troll is about 40% done now but it's looking really, really good. So good that I've decided to strip Boomhowler and use the same skin tone. I got some good paint stripping tips on using Mr Muscle oven cleaner to strip down my miniatures so I'll give that a go - I'll dunk my Deneghra in there too...


We are treated to a glimpse of the concept art of one of the Retribution units: the Dawnguard Invictor. Clearly the Iosans have developed past the need for giant shoulder pads, Vlad must feel cheated.

Very Revealing

Behold, the wholly revealed cover for the Retribution book. The warcaster in the centre of the cover has been nicknamed Badass (I kid you not) until we get an actual name for him. Nothing says Badass like a black guy with an eye patch. Maybe if I get an eye patch...

The latest No Quarter magazine has some very handy painting tutorials about painting female skin. This is very helpful to me since I'm still painting my NQ Eiryss and most of my attempts at painting female skin have failed miserably. I know some of you may wonder what confluence of mystical events could bring about my downfall in such a way, but a woman's skin is very different from a guy's. A shocking truth to some, I know. Female skin tends to be lighter and smoother so I can't rely on the tried and tested method of washing then using one or two layers of highlights. Using some tips from the NQ article I'm pretty happy with the way Eiryss' face and stomach turned out. An aside, but eEiryss has some really big boobs. Apparently going epic means girls increase their cup size.

Bolts of Disruption

While this month has seen a distinct lack of battle reports or other articles of interesting I have been rather busy lately painting. Nothing's finished but Boomhowler is near completion with my grey Trollkin colour scheme: yellow quills and grey skin. All that remains on Boomhowler is the wood grain on his blunderbuss and the pouches along his lower back. The three surviving Trollkin Mercenaries I have left from the box are also accumulating a base coat, but at a much slower pace.

What's really grasped my interest however is Eiryss. My No Quarter version of Eiryss arrived in the mail and as I type I've almost finished her base coat along with her epic version. I plan on doing both my NQ Eiryss and eEiryss at the same time since they both use the same colour scheme and palette.

Iain's Pyre Troll is also coming along, but I've only just finished the base coat. I made the mistake of undercoating the Pyre Troll with black; white would have been a much better idea since the base colour Iain wants is bone white. It's taken 4 layers of paint just to get the base coat on without any black showing through. Luckily the actual paint scheme is fairly simple and Iain should have his Pyre Troll by next week.

There's a whole raft of new players appearing on the Warmachine scene at G3 at the moment. A group of former WH40K players decided they'd had enough and are trying out Warmachine. Instead of my usual gubbing against Jim this week I played one of these newcomers, Gary - a Cygnar player. At the moment he's only been playing Stryker and he often plays against another Mercenary player who plays Magnus so I pulled out Ashlynn for a good old 500 point beat down. It was a longer game than expected, but then he did deploy very heavily on one side of the table, I had to use Anastasia's Espionage effect just to maneuver Ashlynn into a position where I could attack Stryker. With a few more games under his belt Gary should be a really good opponent. Once the game was done I decided I'd give him my converted eStryker, I've got enough Mercenaries to work on for a goodly while before I start making my delusions of army variation a reality.

Expect the Unexpected

The second part of Rising Conflict has now been completed and had a much smaller turn out than expected. The online sign ups predicted we'd have about 10 people, instead we only ended up with 7, but we all had a good time. Strangely enough Jim didn't win this tournament *gasp*. The results of the 500 point segment of Rising Conflict can be found here. The scenarios choices were really good, I didn't feel my army list was shafted by any of the scenarios - indeed there was a scenario that would have been ideal, unfortunately I had a by (bye?) for that round. Once again I got 4th place, my destined rank it seems. My overall ranking in Rising Conflict does put me in the running for the top spot, but I'll have to have a look at what lists to take for the next two events in the tournament series and what I'll have to paint (*cough* eEiryss *cough*).

I've fallen into some bad habits through playing MKii however, I forgot things like Stannis having the Furious Charge order (cost me a charge with the Halberdiers) and that my warjacks get mashed after three systems instead of needing them totalled. Oh well, I've only got until next year to wait.

I didn't get my cavalry painted up to standards for the day but there's no excuse not to finish them now, it'll only take me a day to finish the two that are half done. I can now paint a Steelhead Halberdier in about 30 mins, which is nice, I'll get the remaining one done at the same time as my cavalry. To shake things up I think I'll pick up Cylena Raefyll and the Nyss Hunters, see how they perform. Or try out another army... choices choices.

iBodger Update

Version 1.2 has appeared in the App Store. Here are the update notes:

- Mangler no longer restricted to Magnus
- Fixed point cost of Trencher Chaingun Crew
- Fixed bug where Trencher Cannon Crew was not usable
- Fixed Sea Dogs max unit size
- Updating Battle College links for MkII (still in progress)
- Added Convert button on army page (MkI <-> MkII)
- Internal: more support for the upcoming Retribution faction
- Devil Dogs now work for the Protectorate
- Fixed point cost on max sized unit of Uhlans
- Fixed Scrap Thrall bug loading army with multiple Necrotechs
- Improved email format for MkII armies (no VP)
- Enforce unit size limits on converting to MkII
- Bump point limits as needed for multiple casters on converting to MkII
- Don't change context when adding Avatar (it's still its own group)
- Fixed max unit size for Flameguard Cleansers
- Better info on point overages when bonus 'jack points remain
- Fixed more edge cases for Convert button

You can now compare what your army would cost between both rule sets now. My 35 point eMagnus list turns out to be about 588 points in MKi. It's pretty neat.

Now, back to painting, I need to finish these cavalry figures before Rising Conflicts on Sunday.

Pointy Ears and All

The official press announcement has appeared on the Privateer Press website. Rejoice oh ye elf lovers. I'm guessing that we're going to see a whole new load of denial abilities and hard to hit models. There will also be weapon masters if previous elf models are the measuring sticks.

The Retribution rules for MKi will be released in No Quarter and the Forces of Warmachine book that will be available at GenCon will be using the MKii rules.

Had a close game against Jim on Monday too, unfortunately Morvahna survived my assassination run - and what an assassination run it was. I hit her with two Obliterator Rockets, three whacks of a Wrecker and a Punching Spike (totalling over 50 damage). All but one of her beasts died through transfers. I almost killed the bloody woman through transfer-overflow too. I would have killed her horribly too if I'd remembered to use my feat for an extra turn of face-mashing. Since it was a win/lose situation (if Jim let me go back to use my feat, I'd win. If I didn't use my feat, Magnus was dead) I opted to go without the feat since I'd already moved onto other models. The gap is narrowing... soon Jim, soon...

Tonight I should have a go at playing Cygnar. There will be much lightning, though I have no idea what Jim's going to bring along, probably more Cryx.