Yellow Peril

Sorry about the late post once again, this is my first time back home since lunch time yesterday.

Zaal was clobbered by a tree after pDoomshaper survived 4 Last Stand'ed, feat-assisted Immortals charging him.  It was the stuff of legends.  I have to say that playing against Zaal is strange as most of what you plan to kill dies at the end of the Zaal player's turn anyway.  Loads of models just die and you're left there standing bewildered as to what happened since you made no attacks yourself.  He's certainly not a warlock to bring expensive infantry against.  However, I remain the Yellow Peril; cries of "Next time, Palmer, next time!" were heard.  I need to remember that Immortals have Vengeance, that left Mulg open to get slammed and then there was no Protective Fit. =(

Once again my Runeshapers worked really well, though it helped that they made a whole slew of Tough checks (totally unnecessary to both our game plans) and blew up the Bog Trogs/Void Spirit.  I can't wait to test out three units of them along with the utterly broken character solo - does Warmachine have character solos as broken as Aptimus Marketh and Janissa Stonetide?  Maybe they've been around so long they've just merged into the background... *cough* Gorman *cough*

The Glasgow Summer League has now concluded, and the winner is... Michael Murray!  He fought a very entertaining game against Jim on Tuesday night to take the league crown.  Prizes will be handed out this week.  The final standings for places are:

1.) Michael Murray (Cryx)
2.) Jim Lawrence (Circle)
3.) George Halbert (Cryx)
Everyone else.

Beams of Up

Eek, it's Monday already!  Tomorrow is the final day of the Summer League, huzzah!  I'll be able to get games against people who aren't Jim again.  I should really get a game against Murray, as we've never played each other yet, even after all this time.

Another event of note is that GUGS is now back on Saturdays (or so I'm led to believe) so a Battle of the Yellow Peril (well I'm the Yellow Peril, Sean just has a yellow Skorne army) is in the works against the Murchie.  I believe I have now tweaked pDoomshaper's battlegroup to a point where I'm happy with how it performs, how much fury it generates and how it can deal with enemy stuff (death by tree is heavily involved).  I'll have to pick up a Slag Troll though...

Bending Time...

Many, many new things things have appeared on the Privateer Press website: Janissa Stonetide, Bull Snapper, Reeve Hunter, the cover of the Forces of Hordes: Minions book!  All that's appeared just today too, never mind all the other goodness we got during the week.

Next week we bid farewell to the Glasgow Summer League and all its glory.  I hope everyone participating had fun, though next time I run this thing I'm including myself in the league.  Speaking of which I managed to squeeze in a game against Jim on Tuesday, it was rather close too - though taking Boomhowler & Co (aka the Wall of Tough) vs eMorghoul isn't all its made out to be.  Despite losing Boomhowler almost immediately they did rather well at holding one of the O3 circles (Outfight, Outflank, Outlast (or something like that)).  In the end though Jim had an assassination run on pDoomy and we had a minute or two before we got kicked out of the hall (really we should have ended on my turn however, Jim went first) so we quickly did the assassination run and lo, pDoomshaper died.

Protective Fit: utterly broken or appropriate for Mulg's cost?  This is the Great Debate that current consumes us.  Have your say, tell us what you think!  How do you prevent the Unholy Lurking Terror from blatting your assassination run with a tree?

Shocking News

Some days I think I can feel Fate.  It's hard to describe, I'll get the random urge to buy a lottery ticket or something similar.  Saturday was one of those days.  I could sense the win hours before I arrived at Jim's house, though I did totally duff up not one, but two of my assassination runs on eGoreshade with my Dire Troll Zerg (DTM, EBDT, Mulg - one was a totally screwed activation order (no rush on Mulg) and the other was Mulg failing to blat Goreshade into paste).  I had to resort to spamming Primal Shock.  Still, I am now ahead of my normal quarterly victories over Jim.  From now on Jim's promised to bring lists made of raw brokenness, mined from Broken Mountain.

I found that Fennblades aren't such a terrible unit, as long as they don't flee or all die before contacting the enemy.  Much like every other unit in the game then.  Having three heavy warbeasts romping around the board certainly works wonders, I can even afford to lose one (or two as long as the last one standing is Mulg).  Having an Earthborn near an obstacle or obstruction and within the Krielstone's Protective Aura is fantastic.  It's like having a Devastator that can attack without opening itself up for heinous brutalising.  I'll have to run more experiments in a list filled with dire trolls.

Big Splash

I'm staring at the latest No Quarter magazine here in utter bewilderment at Bloody Barnabus.  How does something like this make it through the playtest phase?  Honestly, he's the bane of anyone who wants to take non-amphibious warjacks.  This isn't as much of an issue if you can prevent knock downs (hi there Covenant of Menoth) but otherwise your warjacks are going to spend a lot of time (if not all of it) being inactive.  Start swatting up on the rules for reactivating warjacks.

Everything else in the No Quarter is pretty awesome.  Being a Trollblood player I'm more than happy with the Trollkin Scouts (and their pig-stealing ways) - giving them Gang means they're pretty accurate melee infantry, and they already have Pathfinder so there's no pressure to take a Fell Caller with them.  The Fell Caller helps, but he's not the concrete necessity that he is in other lists.  I'm going to test them out in combination with the Swamp Gobbers.  I'm sure the other factions (besides Circle, it's not like anyone has the Reeves anyway...) are just as pleased with their shiny new toys.

Pyramid Scheme

Let this day be Marked as a Momentous Occasion.  It is time yet again for my quarterly win against Jim, though if I'm honest it was a totally soft win, eMagnus hoses Strakhov.  We did find out that eMagnus' feat is an aura now, NOT a pulse as it was in MKi (and the field test).  You pick two table edges when you declare using the feat, but it effects enemy models beginning an advance within his control area.  After all this time you'd think that I'd actually read his feat text...

I demand a rematch Murchie, that Kovaas wouldn't have been able to get to me!  I think...

Spoilers from the Trollbloods book dominate the faction forums at the moment, as people have been able to get hold of the book at PAX.  I'm rather pleased with both the tiers for Doomshaper, especially pDoomshaper - what I was planning to get when I saw Janissa Stonetide's information follows the themed list very closely.  In fact, it's so close that I end up with enough spare points for a 3rd unit of Runeshapers (not that I'll be able to physically buy them for ages) but no Lanyssa Ryssyl.  It's worth testing out with proxy models at the very least.  Expect some feedback on this later in the month.

DOOOOOOOM

The next of the Trollblood tiers has appeared on Bell of Lost Souls.  It's for eDoomshaper, and it isn't actually that bad.  At 50 points I can cram in 4 dire trolls (including Mulg), buttloads of Whelps and lots of Champions.  It does leave eDoomshaper a bit vulnerable unless he has some terrain to camp near for the Earthborn's animus, but the benefits are pretty awesome (SPD 7 Dire Trolls during turn one?  Yes please!).  Missing out some some support pieces - the Krielstone in particular - hurts a bit, but it may yet pull something out of the bag.

Someone's managed to get their mitts on an early copy of NQ 32 and there's spoilers all over the various Hordes faction forums.  We get to see Grissel's tiers (cheap Fell Callers,  but lacking in heavy infantry) and what the Trollkin Scouts do.  The Scouts interest me, they're not exactly wonderful statwise, but they seem to function in a similar way to Daughters or Kayazy - they do have a very high MAT and decent P+S with Gang, so I think I'll try them out and see how they perform.

Spoilers from the Trollbloods book are slowly leaking in from PAX.  Most of what's being revealed is incredible.  Janissa Stonetide here we come!