Project 365: Day 119 - CTA 2011 vs Mangsky

Final opponent of the day: Mangsky, our friendly neighborhood Warmachine/Hordes Crack-dealer. :D. He was playing with The Harbinger of Menoth. Keeping in mind that fluff-wise, the Harbinger is  a floating female teenager, that sentence sounded so much dirtier in my mind.

Scenario: Overrun

Sorry for the blurry pic. This was literally the last game for the day as the rest of the gang left for home, leaving me and Mang to duke it out.

I went with a beast-heavy Epic Kaya list that I was a lot more comfortable with.

There was a moment where I thought I could have actually won this game early on. Mangsky placed Harbinger far forward with no models screening and by my estimates I had a good chance of landing a Pureblood spray, a charging Warpwolf stalker and a Kaya-Laris Assassination run on the warcaster. The thing that made me hesitate was that Mang activated Harbinger's feat and the Harbinger herself was camping on focus, giving her a total of 20 armor. A small nagging voice urged me to pull the trigger...

I decided that if the Pureblood's spray landed,I'd bite the bullet. Predictably enough I missed and decided to play conservatively afterwards.

What followed next was a few turns of Mangksy methodically taking my army apart piece by piece and ending Kaya with an attack from the Avatar or Menoth.

With 3 straight losses I am now officially "The Bonus Round" for this league. The league isn't done yet but I can safely kiss my chances at the top 4 goodbye :)

Being utterly outclassed in every which way does leave you with a lot of lessons though. And what sweetens the bitter medicine of humility and learning is that the lessons were taught by friends and peers while playing a game. :) I had fun and I hope my opponents had fun taking me down as well.

Thank you sirs!

As for the other folks I have not gone against, I WILL be taking my pound of flesh.

See you soon.

Project 365: Day 118 - CTA 2011 vs SJ

My next opponent was SJ and his Calandra list.

Scenario: Capture the flag

If you look at the picture above you can already tell what the heck I've been doing wrong. I keep clogging up my own lanes and keep tripping over myself. Circle mobility was pretty much nullified here, again my a huge number of models on the table and the general lack of smart placement on my part.

There were some close moments for SJ as for a turn or two I was able to threaten Calandra. Baldur's feat also proved to stifle the Bomber. I was also able to nullify the Trollkin Longriders with well placed forests.

As the game progressed though I noticed some key things wrong with my list. While I was able to present some credible threats on my side, I found that I was not effectively removing the threats posed against me. Calandra's "reverse signs and portents" pretty much halved my chances in landing hits in and on her feat turn she was able to land some solid hits and cause me some key units. As soon as the hits landed I saw my units fall and my chances of winning drop as well.

Again, Baldur ended up surrounded and fell to a Trollkin Champ Hero.

Another loss...

Project 365: Day 117 - CTA 2011: vs Wolf

First game was against Wolf's Venethrax list.

Scenario: Incursion

Baldur and Venethrax playing peek-a-boo behind the boxcar

I should've known better than to bring a list I wasn't comfortable with against Wolf. His Venethrax list just had too many bodies. The Mechanitralls kept coming back on the board and the Bloodgorgers just wouldn't die. Tough rolls plus  a "no knockdown" rule made them really annoying to get rid of. And they hit relatively hard to boot.

I was going to rely on my Warpwolf Stalker to clear some of his infantry but bad rolls and placement cost me the furry. I charged and missed some Mechanithralls and since Baldur was so far away I couldn't force to buy more attacks. I lost the heavy warbeast early on and things went downhill from there.

The Mechanithralls and Bloodgorgers were mucking up my charge lanes and even after a glimmer of hope by turn 3, my own placement mistakes prevented me from going for an assassination run. I conceded the game with a surrounded Baldur.

While I didn't do too well, the Skinwalkers seemed to be doing their job well enough to convince me to try the same list against my next opponent...

Project 365: Day 116 - CTA 2011 Kickoff!

Call to Arms 2011 Philippines kicked off today. Despite the generally dreary weather, the WMH players were able to gather under the Pithsop roof to play. In attendance were Mangsky, Kim, Wolf, SJ, Patskorne and Zionson. I apologize for the dark pics as I was shooting against the light.

I will be writing some batreps of the games I played.

Spoiler warning: It wasn't pretty

In-joke of the day: "I am bonus round!"

The gang well into their games by the time I arrived...

Games in progress...

Mangsky observing SJ's expert maneuvers.

Project 365: Day 107 - Battle Report - Baldur vs. Captain Allister Caine

This battle report can also be read at WMHPH: Stone outlasts Storm

Don't let the title fool you. This was an uphill battle for me.

For last Friday's game I decided to use a list that I came up with on the spot. I really wanted to get more games with Baldur as my warlock. I felt that Kaya and Kromac were becoming crutches for me and I needed to learn how to use units more effectively. I love running beast-heavy and my 50 point list would reflect that. Since I'm playing on a higher pointage however, I had the opportunity to put in more troops.

The lists:

Jeff Yu's Cygnar force
Points Cost: 50

Captain Allister Caine (*5pts)
* Hunter (6pts)
* Stormclad (10pts)
* Thunderhead (12pts)
* Squire (2pts)
Long Gunner Infantry (Leader and 9 Grunts) (10pts)
* Long Gunner Infantry Officer & Standard (2pts)
Stormblade Infantry (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
* Stormblade Infantry Officer & Standard (3pts)
* 3 Stormblade Infantry Storm Gunner (3pts)
Harlan Versh (2pts)

My Circle Orboros force
Points Cost: 50

Baldur (+6pts)
Druid Wilder (2pts)
Megalith (11pts)
Woldwarden (9pts)
Warpwolf Stalker (10pts)
Tharn BloodTrackers & Nuala (10pts)
Warpborn Skinwalkers (8pts)
Shifting Stones & UA (3pts)
Sentry Stone & Mannikins (3pts)

Lately I've been favoring Tharn Bloodtrackers for their speed and annoyance factor and I've also been fielding the Skinwalkers as I really love the models. Personally speaking though I have never been happy with how the Skinwalkers  would perform or not perform on the table but I feel like i just need to get used to them. My unfamiliarity with my unit choices would show pretty badly as the game progresses.

The basic idea I had with this list was to allow myself some strong assassination threats with a forest-walking Baldur being the biggest one I have. I could pretty much create forests on demand and failing that I could teleport one of my heavies into the fray. I also thought I had a decent set of speedbumps in the Bloodtrackers and Skinwalkers as I positioned myself for the assassination run.

I stuck with that gameplan throughout the game. While Baldur and the heavy constructs were well protected by forests and the feat, I found my troops rendered ineffective or outright killed. The annoying part was the fact that the list is slower and with a shorter threat range than what I normally have when playing Circle. I found myself clogging up my own movement lanes with he slower Skinwalkers and Constructs.

Jeff positioned himself well here, with the Longgunners combining attacks and doubletapping made quick work of some of the threats I posed and with the help of sucky luck with dicerolls I found my bloodtrackers failing to kill a Hunter and my Stalker wiffing several times on his berserk attacks, failing to wipe out the  stormblade infantry

I found myself with several casualties by the 3rd turn with two units down. Since Jeff had Harlan Versh, my upkeep spells were suddenly a detriment and my Skinwalkers were eating boosted damage from the solo. I also lost my Stalker to double-tapping longgunners.

By rights I should've lost since all Jeff had to do was get Baldur in range of eCaine's revolvers and Baldur wouldve died byCaine's feat turn. What happened next was lady luck smiling at me.

I overextended my constructs with fury and found myself unable to transfer damage on Jeff's turn. I kept two fury on Baldur and prayed that Jeff doesn't  see my mistake. Smelling blood, Jeff used his feat to try to take down Megalith in melee range but due to the construct's armor and wounds Jeff failed. Caine was  standing base to base with Megalith.

with eCaine's high defense, hitting him in melee would normally be risky but I was able to bring  his defense down to more mundane levels by using the shifting stones to 'port Megalith behind the gunman. I then activated Megalith to get the backstrike bonus, spent focus  to activate the animus to bring down Caine's defense further. I then made a melee attack, boosting the attack roll and  after severely hurting the warcaster, Caine found himself at defense 10 versus Megalith's MAT 7. Another boosted attack roll from the construct sealed the warcaster's fate.

Again, I was just extremely lucky to win this game.If Jeff noticed I had no means to transfer damage to my beasts I'm sure he would've won.

Thanks to Jeff for the nail-biter of a game and thanks to Kim for the pics :D

Project 365: Day 47 - How I lose as blogged by other people...

So yeah... Two folks have posted battle reports of my matches with them. Both games happened on the same day, with me using the same list and me pretty much getting my ass pasted both times. Theres a third game I played that night and that didnt end well either.

By my count, that's  a 5 loss streak for eKaya. Oi.

On the upside these losses do give me some badly needed blog fodder.Click on the links below for detailed reports.

Wolf's Redoubt

My thoughts on the game with Wolf: He pretty much laid it as it happened. Actually he's being kind and left out the stupid mistake I made early in the game. We were playing Killbox that night (or as we like to call it: Assassination) and at the bottom of my turn i positioned Kaya so that I wasnt completely within the killbox costing me the game. As it was a casual game, Wolf and I just continued with it.

I went second and  knowing Strakhov's feat I was really worried about eating a feat fueled charge either from the Kayazy (Gang) and Doomreavers (weaponmasters with reach on a charge! holy kamote). My list relied on getting a good alphastrike and repositioning for a follow up next turn. I popped the feat too early and earned little. I tried to go for the assassination run as I knew the feat was coming the next turn and i wouldnt survive that. I was able to wound Strakhov but couldn't finish the job.

Barangay Samurai

My thoughts on the match with Kim: To be honest I was pretty confident going in. I knew Sorscha's feat and I knew how the rest of Kim's army was going to work. I went second again and that helped me position myself to take advantage of my feat. I couldn't kill a lot of his stuff but I did manage to lessen the threat of his heavy hitters during my feat turn. I even planned around surviving Sorscha's feat by surrounding my warlock with large bases and made sure that I'd have a good counter attack in the event that Kim does pull the trigger.

I just didnt know that putting Sorscha on an inch of elevation would allow her to bypass my screen attempt and still render me frozen.

Well that teaches me to go read the rules better in the future.

My thoughts on eKaya: 5 loss streak. 5 consecutive losses. And I know its not her problem but mine. I realize I've been playing her much like I've been playing her when it was still MKI. I kept trying to pull off assassination runs when I shouldve have been positioning myself for better alpha strikes. This is the exact opposite of my experiences with Kromac lately as I found that how I imagined playing Kromac is how he's designed in MKII. Whereas during MKI I had a real crappy time putting him on the table. I should start working on capitalizing on her strengths and forget how I used to play her

after both games I had another game with SJ which also ended in defeat. It did however help me come up with the conclusions I mentioned above. I also realized that going for an eKaya assassination without having a flanking beast is just plain dumb.

To sum up, the day was again filled with good folks playing good games. It's always a pleasure chucking dice with these folks.

PS: even with the loss streak, I wont be abandoning eKaya. I will, however, take the time to strip her down and repaint her.

Maybe with a brakefluid bath i'll be able to wash away the suck.

stay tuned.

Project 365: Day 28 - Friday Night at the Bunker - WM/H Tournament

Surprisingly I was able to wake up and make it to the Friday Tournament at the Bunker.

This is the second Warmachine/Hordes event held at Oberon's Bunker at E.Rodriguez and there was a good turnout of players :) some folks were late and had to take a bye but we had enough warm bodies to start.

We shared the space with the Warhammer crowd and the place was really lively. The games went underway and while unfortunately I wasnt able to get a lot of pics as I was playing, I'm proud to say I made a good showing in the tournament itself.

Before the start of the tourney, we were kidding around and Wolf predicted SJ would win using his Magic 8 ball app in his iPhone.

I first went up against resident Pressganger Dan. Glad to see him participating in games again :)

Circle Orboros vs Legion of Everwhite...err Everblight.

The power failed for a few minutes during our match and we went on regardless. Dan would declare that he "rolled sixes" in the darkness.

Second match was with Jeff  and his eHaley army.

He was playing fully painted with a very pretty Cygnar army

Jockeying for position. The swampgobbers earned their keep here as they kept the Defender from being effective.

The game ended with a knockdowned eHaley within Kromac's threat range.

I went up against SJ in the finals. Trolls vs Circle. I regret not being able to take pics for this last part but im sure Kim has some. It was a laugh-a-minute game as SJ knew I had to leave for work after the tourney so he was "stalling". The game with SJ was odd as we both knew that it would come down to killpoints at the very end. I was able to kill his Axer for 6 points but Refuge on Mulg denied me a big meaty target to kill. Dice-down was declared and SJ's last roll killed a Feral for 9 points.

SJ won the tourney just like Wolf's iPhone Magic 8 ball predicted.

Who wouldve thought?

Anyway the day was fun with good folks and good games and not a lot of stress, just as a night of gaming should be. I'd like to thank Kim for being the Tournament Officer and Oberon for letting us use the venue and setting up the tourney date. Oberon even sprung for food and drinks for everyone, WM/H and Warhammer player alike.

To cap it off here are some of the other pics i managed to take:

Arvin Tan. I was anticipating that he would join and I actually meta'd to account for his armor heavy Butcher list. He didnt make it on time. lol

Dan and Pat Palma

Wolf and Scrivener facing off

Wolf's LOE facing a wave of angry Menites. Dice down was called and Wolf was down to his caster Absylonia, with all beasts biting the dust.

New guy with a Skorne army. Haven't played against him before.

New guy's Skorne vs SJ's trolls.

Project 365: Day 27 - If...

If I wake up on time today I will be here:

Room 305, Elco Building. 202 E. Rodriguez Avenue (De Los Santos Annex Building), Quezon City

Playing against these guys:

And there will be much dice chucking.

Operative word : IF

Project 365: Day 25 - Battle Report: First games of the year

5This past Sunday i was able to finally lay down some metal and chuck some dice with the guys at Fortress. It has been weeks since my last game and I wanted to see how rusty I've gotten. And there was rust, and much squeaking.

First game was against Wolf. We planned this rematch in advance, using the exact same list we had from our last Unstoppable Match.

Bakerofish (Circle Orboros - Kromac) vs Wolf (Legion of Everblight - Epic Thagrosh) @ 35 points.
Scenario: Incursion SR11

Now this battle was tense. We both had beast heavy armies with some support units. We also both had movement tricks (EThag's feat and Warpath for Kromac) and we both relied on hard hitting beasts for our offense.

Wolf's advantage was EThag's nasty feat (beasts get to make a full movement and make one free attack) and he had more warm bodies to throw at me. He had lesser and light warbeasts that move fast and hit hard. He also had Typhon and he was fixing to rectify his past mistake of not taking advantage of sprays. What I had going for me was a pretty good threat radius, a model that counterslams (Gnarlhorn) and the Warpwolf Triumverate.

The first turn was jockeying for position. By turn 2 and the scenario finally triggering we both made our moves. I took the gamble of putting my Feral down the middle and the other two wolves flanking. Gnarlhorn was on bodyguard duty making sure to always put a counterslam threat around my caster. I had to give him several threats now as I was wary of his feat. My initial plan was to make him commit to the middle of the table where Kromac can get an assassination run on the surprisinly squishy Thaggy. Wolf plays aggressive and I was counting on him not having any fury on Thaggy by the time he was done. I kept some fury on myself as I was gonna get hit by his feat next turn.

I took a beating on Wolf's turn, most of my beasts were wounded pretty bad and Wolf was able to get a Scythean, a shredder and a Theraph(Raek actually...-Wolf) to Kromac on his feat turn. EJ (one of the locals who was providing color commentary during the game) declared me dead. I had to agree. But then one of the things that me love this game happened.

Lady luck has the sweetest smile.

By rights I should've lost by that point but Kromac's defense 15(!), camped fury and incredible luck pulled me through. The Scythean WHIFFED!!! I couldnt believe it.

(edit: Wolf says the Scythean missed the gnarlhorn in front of Kromac. The Shredder that followed was the one that failed to hit. And he also shouldve made attacks with Raek)

I almost botched my kill turn as I totally didnt see one of his support models blocking my Gnarlhorn's lane to Thaggy. I also couldnt get an assassin run on Thaggy as he was too far away. Switching gears I then healed up my Pureblood and warped for Ghostly, charging towards Thagrosh to end him.

Close game. Good game. I was damn lucky.

Bakerofish (Circle Orboros - Kromac) vs aerolb(Cygnar - Prime Caine) @ 35 points.
Scenario: Incursion SR11

This is the game where Karma catches up to me.

Aerol had a shooty list with some longgunners, a hunter, a lancer and a centurion. He also had the Black 13th in the flank which I hate with a passion.

Since this was the scond game of the day it kinda was a blur to me. I remember being in a good position for most of the game ( I remember being cocky and actually saying "If you dont kill me now, youll die next turn...remember what I said about karma?) and Aerol's plan to slam my gnarlhorn  to knock me down failed pretty badly.

What happened over the next few turns was Aerol taking advantage of that complacency and me mismanaging my damage. Defense 15 didnt save me this time. The only beast I left open for transfers was killed by the centurion (damn piston spear) and I ended up eating a lot of shots. Embarassingly enough I actually lost to a Caine potshot :p.

This game, it wasnt luck (or lack thereof ) that did me in. I mismanaged and Aerol took advantage of that. He took out the advantages I had, he struggled but he was able to pull it off in the end. Another aspect of this game I love, even if I didnt win.

I dont think I've ever won against this guy.

Can't wait to get some more games in :)

To end this post, some pics of the denizens of Fortress:

Pantyman Fred! Store Overseer

Kim! I need to make a feature about this guy soon

I wasnt able to take a pic of EJ so I'll take care of that next time :)