Monday Update

No witty rugby-isms this week. We already won.

Now that the world cup is over we pause and consider what the hell we did with our time before the six week black hole.

I'll tell you what. Warmahordes!

With Rallypoint just two weeks away the fever pitch is climbing and everyone is getting psyched about taking home a trophy of their own.

With some strong contenders on the warpath up from Wellington and the barbarians on the way down from the highlands of Auckland this weekend looks to be a real tester for the locals down in Hamiltron.

Will they stand their ground or will the invading horde of bro's carry off yet another trophy. You decide!

Get those Regos in to dcfisher@orcon.net.nz and represent your team. If you're looking for a ride or need more info thrallblacks@gmail.com as always.


On the submissions front Mike Snook yet again proves to be a real contender on the table with dice or brush cranking out a machine wraith,

I however spent my time in the dojo of another weekend warrior schooling up with Mark D,

Until next time,

Keep it classy.

Domination Wellington

That's right, Domination models are already available, the book hits the shelves next month so it must be time to organise the event!

This release event will be at the Hutt Wargames club on SUNDAY 27th November - that's right, the Hutt club is meeting on the 4th Sunday of November as the school hall will be a polling station on the Saturday - boo! for those who don't know where the club meets check out the link on the club contacts bar of the blog or google St Brendans school, Silverstream.

As with the Wrath release event, the day will play out as a 50 point free play day. All games must be 50 points and use the special scenario on the PP website here.

All players must bring the usual models, tapemeasure, counters, templates etc as well as 3 large based "boulder" models (you score points for actually bringing some boulder models on bases!)

the cost will be $5 per player to cover the shiny coin prizes:

No player will be able to win more than one coin, the first placed player at teh end of the day will be given the option of the champion coin or their respective faction coin (if they played a Hordes army), this will carry on down until someone picks the champion coin over their faction coin. Any coins left over will be put aside for a future event. Each faction coin will be awarded to the highest placed gamer using that faction.

as with the Wrath event, be prepared and bring along a few pre-generated lists to speed up the time between games - the more games you play, the more points you win. There will be no time limits on the games but the day will run from 10am till 4pm. A halt will be called at 4pm and the score sheets collected, prizes will be awarded once all of the tables have been tidied away! :)

but I don't have a Hordes army!What about me??


no problem, you can still join in with a Warmachine army, there just won't be a faction coin for you but you will still be eligible for the Champion coin.

If you have any questions, drop a comment below or email me.

Cheers

Chris

Monday Update - French Toast

I hope you all had a good Saint McCaw day... We're not still calling it Labour day are we?

Now that the business of winning the Rugby is over we can all return to normal life and remember what it is we did before the cup. Destroy little army mans for fun and sick brags

Well some people did have a productive weekend deserved of said brags. Chris O from wellington delivered these necromechanical beauties to my inbox,

And fellow wellingtonian Mike S rejigged eDenny in top fasion.

Obviously the wind had already blown most of the Rugby mania out of them.

I did however promise pics and so I took some time out to paint up a couple of Circle 'Flags'. I present one Tharn Shrine and Wolf of Orbouros Totem Marker. They were good fun to play around with water effects and basing materials to get a foresty feel.

Now Boys! Back to the gamings! Don't forget to Rego for Rallypoint.

Until next time,

Keep it Classy

Unbound - take 1

Ever since the release of the Unbound rules in No Quarter 36, I've had a very hot and cold feeling about playing such large games. On one hand, putting 150 points of models on each side of a table just sounds awesome! It really feels like it would be capturing the scope of the huge battles we read about in the PP fluff - particularly in the recent Wrath book. On the other hand, PLAYING 150 points sounds like it will be a real chore with soo much on the table there will be so much to remember that things will get missed (like assigning focus eh Tom? ;o) ). Well, after a few months procrastinating, the stars aligned as i took a week off work to "spend with the kids" and Tom was also on leave from his teaching job. well a 'play date' for our respective daughters was duly arranged and Tom and i slunk down to my garage as the girls bounced the life out of the trampoline!

The Armies


Unbound presents itself as a way of playing a 150point, 3 Caster/Lock in a manageable way. notice I said manageable, not faster! By alternating battlegroup activation with your opponent, you're only ever waiting for 50 points worth of activation on the other side of the table before you get to roll some dice. this forces a slightly different turn structure than the normal game and some of the model abilities need to be slightly modified - this is all handily detailed in NQ36 so pop along to your LGS and see if they have a copy on their shelves still.

Anyway, Tom opted for a monster Khador list:

 Vladimir, The Dark Prince
Berserker
Drago
Spriggan

Kommander Strakhov
Kodiak
Torch
Wardog

Forward Kommander Sorcha
Beast 09
Devastator

Alexia Ciannor and the Risen & Koldun Kapitan Valachev
Doomreavers (6)
Doomreavers (6) & Greylord Escort
Widowmakers (4)
Ogrun Bokur
Orin Midwinter
Widowmaker Marksman
Ironfang pikemen (6) & UA
Ironfang Uhlans (3)
Kayazy assassins (6) & Underboss
Kovnik Markov
Manhunter
Yuri the Axe
Great Bears of Gallowswood
Man-o-War Shocktroopers (3)
Winterguard infantry (10) & UA & Rocketeers (2)
Winterguard infantry (10) & Rocketeers (2)
Gorman Di Wulf
Kovnik Joe Grigorovich
Mon-o-War Drakhun (with dismount)

Whereas I went for a shambling horde of Cryxian nastiness:

Iron Lich Asphyxious
Cankerworm
Deathripper
Deathripper
Reaper
Slayer

Lich Lord Terminus
Nightwretch
Deathjack
Slayer

Witch Coven of Garlghast
Nightwretch
Stalker
Stalker
Leviathan
Seether

Bane knights (10)
Bile Thralls (6)
Blackbane's ghost raiders (10)
Bloodgorgers (10)
Mechanithralls (10)
Mechanithralls (10)
Necrosurgeon and stitch thralls
Necrosurgeon and stitch thralls
Soulhunters (5)
Withershadow combine
Bane Lord Tartarus
Darragh Wrathe
General Gerlack Slaughterborn
Machine Wraith x 3
Necrotech and scrapthrall x 3
Pistol Wraith x 2
Warwitch siren x 2

and this is how it all looked on the table:

And yes, it was a beautifully sunny day in Wellington and we spent it in the garage.. the things we do for our hobby!

The final photo above gives a good shot of our objectives for this game. In NQ 37 (yes, another shameless plug, there are a set of scenarios specifically for unbound so we rolled on the scenario table and ended up with Scorched Earth. The 5 buildings you can see represent a Khadoran settlement, my Cryxian Horde had to destroy 3 of the 5 within 5 turns - each had ARM 18 DAM 100!!

The Game


by the time the kids had settled in, table set up and troops deployed it was around 11:15am. Turn one went swimmingly well, with both forces advancing on a broad front and my Mechthralls and Deathjack started dealing damage to the two nearest buildings to my deployment zone.
the following horde of pics details the first two rounds - yes, two rounds! we had a brief break for lunch and battled on until 4.30 but once combat was joined the turns really bogged down!

At the end of the pics are a few thoughts on unbound..

 Sorcha sends a unit of Doomreavers ahead as a skirmish screen whilst the shock troopers advance up the flank

 The second unit of Doomreavers sprints up the centre

 Beast 09 lumbers behind the Shock troopers

 Terminus responds by send Blackbane to meet the Doomreavers

 Mechthralls in the centre start the assault on the first building

 Baneknights run up the left flank

In the end

well, 4.5 to 5 hours gaming for 2 rounds was a bit much but we came away with a few thoughts:

• Go Jack heavy! - seems obvious but the number of units we had really bogged things down, it also would have eased cramping on the 6ft board edge for deployment
• Unbound is an ideal format for multiplayer games - getting 6 players together for a game would be awesome for a beer and pretzels day or an excellent Club demo game.
• start early - it goes without saying, three 50point turns a round takes a lot of time - even longer than a usual 50 point game as there are a lot more options for movement given that units and solos are not fixed to a particular battlegroup's activation, this leads to quite a lot of um-ing and ah-ing at the start of each battlegroup activation.

Will we do it again? Hell yes, two players? probably not, the next game will most likely be a 6 player at the Hutt Club sometime in the new year.. unbound can be a great game but you really need to know your army very well to get the most out of it. The use of Battle Engines would have sped things up as well, swapping a unit for a single model that doesn't require focus to run.

Cheers for now

Chris

Carnage - the aftermath

The rubble's been cleared from the streets, the corpses stacked for burning, time to get down to who did the Carnage this Saturday and who ended up as a smear on the sole of a Warjack's foot!

we haven't had a simple little Steamroller tourney for a while what with release events, leagues and 2 day events for the last few months so Carnage was a welcome wind of simplicity; 2 x 35 point lists, usual restrictions with the exception that both lists must be used. With 10 entrants we were looking at a 3 - 4 round tourney which fits nicely in a day's gaming at the Hutt Club ( a friendly bunch of chaps that meet in Silverstream on the second and fourth Saturday of each month, check out the link in the Club contacts section of the blog).

(In the right hand corner you can just see Chris Parkin holding his head in his hands as Iain puts P-Denny on the table at the top of round 2, no tears are sweeter than those of a Legion player facing Cryx ;oD)

With an even number of entrants for a change, I even managed to get a couple of Demo games in - yet more converts to the Cult of Warmahordes! :)

To give some players a bit of a practice for Rallypoint next month, we only played flag based scenarios: Revelation, Incursion and Capture the Flag. Command and Control was in reserve in case we went to a fourth round.

The day itself went smoothly with no hassles and quite a few spectators popping over from other games being played at the club on the day.

here are a few pics of the action:

 Mohsar lines up for the off (Al)

 Not quite the ABs but they're pretty dark and they hit like a freight train :) (Mike)

 Precursor knights get ready to contest the flag (James)

 "MORE SALT DAMN YOU!" (Al)

 Exemplar errants form up for the big push (Nic)

 Final round Cryx on Cryx, Scaverous tries to face down Goreshade

 Battle of the Chris', retribution and Legion battle it out

Two Skorne and Khador players have at it, Tom bringing Khador and Craig his Skorne this time..

and, at the end of round 3 we stood with a single undefeated champion!

Hmm double Cryx and Legion in the top 3.. there's some fuel for the fires for faction envy methinks! ;oD

till next time!

Chris