Strollin' through the local shop

I decided to visit Game Kastle to check out the new White Dwarf and to look at a restock of bases for Infinity.

GK Tournament Meta

I've been to two WarmaHordes tournaments at Game Kastle. Both were of the 35 point Steamroller variety and included different people at both events. Between those two matches was a tourney that I visited and Bob played in. There should be enough experiences to consider possible army builds for the next GK Steamroller.

Steamroller, Tiered style

The Steamroller tourney has come and gone. Seven players came and threw down. Almost all were Hordes players, only 3 were Warmachine. Of the three, two were Cygnar, Blaize and Darius for me, eHaley and Nemo for Bob. The last player was a Khador player that I didn't play.

Practice game 1

Here's Khador Tier 1 with eIrusk versus Cygnar Blaize Tier 4.

This was a 5 turn slugfest. By Turn 3, Khador should have won by either getting one of the Control Points or assassinate Blaize. The dice turned on Khador when he tried to finish off Blaize. He also missed a chance to get one of the CPs when he concentrated on killing Blaize.

The reprieve for Cygnar let them survive for another 2 turns and control one of the Monoliths while keeping Khador from controlling the other one. This forced tiebreaker scoring and Cygnar pulled off the time-limit win. Blaize was left with 2 health boxes and Irusk had 8 left after a double-barrelled blast from a Charger in turn 5.

Lessons learned:
1. Stick with your plan, don't change it if you can capture a CP.
2. Protect your Warcasters.
3. Know your special rules, to save time
4. Plan your Focus allocation in advance.
5. Use spells as needed. You don't need to force their use.

Kublacon 2011

2011 Kublacon was this past weekend in Burlingame, and compared to last year, it seemed a little smaller. It could have been he days I attended (Fri, Sat, and Mon), but 2010 seemed busier.

This year I tried my hand at the Mini Speed Painting competition. I went to two different sessions, once on Fri and the 2nd one on Sat. The winners are invited back for the Masterclass version and for the grand prize. On Friday, I placed 2nd (out of 3 competitors). The second shot at it resulted in a 4th place (1st Place went to a former Reaper mini painter who currently freelances as a mini sculpter. Not bad and I had fun. I did find out more about the judging process and worked on time management in one of those contests. 45min is not a lot of time to paint to high standards. 2 sessions of Paint 'n Take resulted in a mounted swordsman for my 2 year old (I'll post pictures of her work later) and a pair of AoBR marines for myself (1 is painted, the other for me to work on later).

Besides painting, I sat in on a mini sculpting seminar. A freelance artist who sculpts minis for Reaper gave a demonstration on how to use green stuff for fixing gaps, making fur, scales, and other tidbits. He fell into the job after working for Reaper as a painter. Compared to last year's seminar, his answered questions and showed/demonstrated techniques versus the hands on teaching in the 2010 class. There were fewer people clamoring for this class since the Warhammer people were at the GT tourney and the Warmachine/Hordes group also had a tourney. Most of the remaining students were GW players who didn't play the tourneys, Malifaux, or Mordhei
players. It was about 20 people who were interested.

For the 40k tourney, that was going at the same time as the FB tourney, unlike 2010 where they were on separate days. 40k dominated a number of tables, but not as many as the 2010 tourney. There was still room for about 12 FB players, including a nicely painted Calvary Bretonnians, a Tomb King army, and a Dark Elf army. 40k was mostly SM builds, with only a couple of Spore Nids lists to balance the occasional Dark Eldar lists and the IG lists. A lot of flyers this year; plenty of Storm Ravens and Valkires.

I also checked out the WM tourney and the Steamroller on Mon. The Mon Steamroller felt like the players were on the lower side of the experience scale. As for the tourney, a lot of jacks were on the table.

More details to come later.

'Ard Boyz Tourney

I was able to wander by Game Kastle this past Saturday to check out the 'Ard Boyz Tourney they were hosting and the various armies that people brought. I wasn't up to trying it out, especially since it's been 3 months since I've played any 40k. However, I did want to check out the players and the armies that people had brought to get an idea how others build their armies, paint jobs, and conversions. Sure, 'Ard Boyz is really about 25oopts of killing, and not really about painting and converting, but sometimes you can get some inspiration.

Here's a set of pictures from some of the armies that played that I took with my camera phone. Sorry for the resolution and size, best I can do without bringing the Rebel. Even with all the mech, the winning army was Tyranids, followed by Orks and Chaos (Marines, I'm assuming; I didn't see any daemons).


Check out the Storm Raven conversion behind the cottage in this Blood Angels army. Yes, there is 3 Land Raiders in this army. Land Raiders are dedicated transports in a Blood Angels army, and the 750+ points in LR are supported by a 200+ point Storm Raven.


Ork Horde to take on the Blood Angels. They were into their 1st round of movement in the 1st game when this picture was taken.

Tyranid army, but not the 1st place finisher.

Mech Imperial Guard. Not quite leafblower, but definitely Chimera heavy. This army was probably going to have a hard time in the 3rd game when anything that travels non-modified over 6 inches (bikers, jump troops, tanks, etc) becomes 3 Kill Points. If I count this right, there's 11 vehicles for 33 Kill Points before you start counting troops, special characters, HQs, etc.

World Eaters army. Cool conversion and paint job.

Tau list. Player admitted that he hadn't picked this army in over a year.

Game Kastle Doubles and GT Ragnarok

Visited both tournies this weekend, and it didn't look like it was well attended as compared to the 1850 GK 40k last Dec.

GT Ragnarok wasn't too full on Sunday afternoon with about 8 40k tables and 2 FB ones.
I only saw 3 WHFB armies (1 Vampire Counts, didn't notice the other 2) that were active in the GT on Sun.

For WH40K, there were 2 Orks, 2 Dark Eldar, 1 Eldar, 3 Inquisitor (1 Sisters of Battle, 1 Grey Knight, 1 Allied SM), and the rest were SM. Interestingly, no IG. SM included 2 CSM, 1 SW, 1 really yellow army (non Imperial Fists), and a Black Templar army allied to an Inquisitor.

Game Kastle doubles tourney started up around 11:45am on Sat. I was able to drift in as they were just starting. Mostly SM armies being played, but no one had set up yet, and only about 4 tables were being used (out of 10). I guess playing in teams reduced the number of total tables . I did notice that the people who played at the previous GK tourney wasn't at the GT in Santa Clara, so I guess people were interesting in other things this weekend.

2010 Events

Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and got cool gifts. I didn't do too badly with getting Imperial Armour Volumes 5-7, the Seige of Vraks, compilation with maps/posters. I'll post pictures when I have the posters up. Now, onto the topic at hand; Here are the proposed games for the new year so you will have time to build/paint/customize:

January: By popular demand, Planetstrike! Tyranids incoming (new Codex lands around the planned game date)!

February: Fantasy Battle, because we haven't played in a while

March: 40K, just a couple of games to break up the Apoc games we've been having

April: Fantasy Teams - Adepticon 2009 scenarios for teams. 2 Player teams, only need 1000pts per player.

May: Turkey Hunter Tourney - Fantasy Tournament (Who's the best WHFB General?); Adepticon 2010 scenarios

June: 40k Apoc

July: Race Day - Bring both a 40K and FB single model. This is a deathmatch race to the finish line. Details to come later.

Aug: 40K Teams, 2 Player teams, 1000pts per player.

Sept: Adeptus Turkiecus - 40K Tournament, Adepticon 2010 Scenarios

Oct: Zombie Hunt - Fantasy, single model/survivor

November: Turkey Hunt - 40K, single squad or model (TBD)

December: Revenge of the Snowmen, Santa's Return (Apoc or Fantasy Legendary battles)

Comments?

White Scars Pictures

Again, by popular demand, here are a couple of pictures of my White Scars. There are some battle damage from playing at the Tourney and I haven't repaired them yet.

This is my Storm Seer Librarian. He was originally a White Scars Commander, but I shaved his topknot and blade from the staff off. I placed a shoulderpad over his head after I filed down the sides and drilled 2 openings on top to represent a psychic hood. For the force staff, I placed a Space Wolf head on top with 2 SW tails along the sides. A little green stuff to help secure the three items. I added some more green stuff down the staff too. Got a couple of complements for this conversion.

This is my standard bearer. I used a Bretonnian standard from the Knights of the Realm box and mounted it to the base of the bike antenna. Got a lot of attention from other modelers, with at one of the GK veterans confirming that he's stealing this conversion idea.

Here's the army lead by the Kor'Sarro Khan on the left and his Storm Seer on the right. Behind them is the command squad, and behind that is Tactical Squad 3 (Combat) with their Twin-linked Heavy Bolter Razorback. On the left is Bike Squad 1, with the Powerfist Sergeant leading a full squad with 2 plasmaguns and a heavy bolter attack bike. On the right is Bike Squad 2, with a multimelta attack bike, 2 meltaguns, and a powerfist sergeant. Behind the Razorback is 3 autocannon equiped Predators. Flanking the army is the 2 Land Speeder Typhoons with heavy bolter and missile launchers.

Game Kastle Tourney Armies

By popular request, here are a couple of pictures of the armies that played at Game Kastle. These are only the ones that competed in the painting contest.

Those wolves are huge.

This Orks army won best painted.

And here's a picture of my White Scars trying to beat back 4 Dreadnoughts and 3 Razorbacks with twin-linked plasma and lascannon from the center.

Game Kastle Tournament Results

So I was able to make it to the tourney, with only 5 hours of sleep total from Thursday night to Saturday's tourney. I was able to complete the army, built with only one landspeeder not undercoated. However, I'm going to have to make a lot of repairs after this event, the bikes weren't nearly as secure on their bases as I would have liked and some of riders arms need repairs. The rest of the repairs will be needed to the army list and my ego.

We played the Adepticon 09 scenarios in sequence. The armies I saw was Tau, Ultramarines, and Space Wolves. The majority of the players has Space Marines or MEq types. The terrain was closer to 1/2 to 3/5 of the 6x4 table was covered with LOS blockers. The number of buildings was also a surprise.

The first game was against a Sniper Tau army. Three 2-suit squads of Broadsides was the core, with another 3 squads of 2 crisis suits (plasma rifle and missile pods) supporting an 8-man pathfinder squad with Devilfish, 2 12-man Fire Warrior squads, 1 Devilfish, and 2 12-man Kroot. Round 1 saw one of my bike squads flee off the table after failing their morale. In the end, too many small units and too little time (only played 4 rounds) didn't allow the bikes to get into position to roll up through the backfield. Total score: 0 pts.

Game 2, pick up match since someone left after the 1st round. The player is known to be a "cheese" specialist. Ultramarines with a Master of the Forge and a Thunder Cannon with 3 Razorbacks mounted with Las/TL Plasma, 2 Land Speeder Storms with Scout Squads with Missile Launchers and Powerfists, 2 Plasma Dreadnoughts, 1 Ironclad, and 1 Venerable Dread. I was able to pop a Dread, Land Speeder, and the Thunder Cannon. Otherwise, I lost a Speeder, 1 full bike squad, a Razorback, the Librarian, a Pred, and the Command Sqd. Turn 4 determined that the goal was highest number of scoring units in the middle. We finished by Turn 5 with most of his army within 12 inches of the middle and my army looking in at 2 Techmarines holding the center with tactical marines inside their Razorbacks. Total score: 0 points.

Game 3 was against a Ragnar Blackmane led armored spearhead. A LR Crusader with a 3 Lascannon Pred, 2 Las Razorbacks, a Dread with Drop pod, and Vindicator. Not really sure what infantry was being carried. They only came out to hold an objective, or to deal biker death to me. In the end, he strung 1 Grey Hunters unit across 2 objectives, and parked his combat squads on the remaining 2 objectives. I was blown off the field of play by piecemeal due to my terrible reserves rolling. Total score: 0 points.

I went perfect for the day and I've learned quite a bit about tournement 40k army builds. Not sure if I want to do it again, I'd have to really think about it. No swag either, the random draws for $25 gift cards didn't land in my pocket. The players were nice, the 3rd player felt terrible about blowing my army away in 1.5 hours (2 hour sessions). Only about 1/3 of the players were regulars at GK, according to my opponents. I did take some pictures, so I'll post them up later. Top 3 were Orks in 1st, and 2 armies tied for 2nd (1 was CSM: Nurgle?, didn't hear the other one). Best painted was an Ork army.

Next up, Santa's Workshop apoc game.

Xeno Turkey Tourney - Prizes!

The Xeno Turkey Hunter Tourney is only a couple of days away. That means we need to get the prizes in place. That would be gift cards to Game Kastle for the top 3 winners. We have a $20 card for the best general, $15 for second place, and $10 for the third best army. That doesn't mean that the others who play aren't going to get something.

From my wife's recommendation, we're going to host a BBQ, post tourney. Yep, free food for the other gamers before the winners get to eat. If we get ambitious, my crafty wife is willing to make T-shirts. The question is what image should be created? Do people want an alien colored (read green or red) turkey in crosshairs, or a robo-turkey (ala Adeptus Turkeicus)?