Warmachine - August Cygnar Warjacks Complete

My august painting oath and new Journeyman League recruits are finished. Basing the older metal warjacks on their tiles has helped a bit. The Lancer on the left has gained a bit of height parity with the newer Firefly in the centre (although is still of slighter build). Happily the new 'jacks paint tones match the previous ones from over a year ago.

More Cygnar will be on the table for September...

Cryx vs Cygnar

For a quick out-of-campaign casual game my regular SoBH buddy, MacSver, volunteered to dust off his Cryx and have a 25pt Warmachine game. So unplanned was this game that some of his troops were away on exercise elsewhere in the Iron Kingdoms, so compromising his army list.

We lined up as above.

Cryx:

• Warwitch Deneghra
• Nightmare Heavy 'jack
• Defiler bonejack
• 6 x Bile Thralls
• Cylena Raefyll and Nyss Hunters
• Pistol Wraith

Cygnar:

• Commander Coleman Stryker
• Ironclad Heavy Warjack
• Lancer Light 'jack
• Firefly Light 'jack
• Squire
• Journeyman Warcaster
• Charger Light 'jack (bound to Jr)
• Black 13th Gun Mages

The Cryx deployed and went first, hammering forward, with the Nyss Hunter team flanking round the large rock formation.

Cygnar moved forward more cautiously, reorganising slightly due to poor deployment. The Lancer armour was boosted up with Arcane shield and placed in cover further up to ambush with arc node and power shield (or at least that was the plan!)

Deneghra pushed her forces forward, turning the nightmare ghostly for extra flexibility. The lurking Cygnar Lancer was hit with Crippling Grasp from Deneghra and also Death Chill courtesy of the a Pistol Wraith volley, rendering it's attacks null and void next turn. THe Pistol Wraith was now, however, corporeal and was taken out by the Black 13th on the Cygnar right flank. The head was also disabled on the defiler in the same group attack.

A boosted up Firefly (with Snipe for range) took out almost all the Bile Thralls with help of the cannon's Electroleap ability.

Jr's Charger similarly managed to deal with the Nyss Hunter group over a couple of rounds.

The Lancer moved into contact with the defiler to prevent any Cryx spell casting through the bonejack and it's Arcane Shield managed to keep it going (but only just) following a savage onslaught from behind from the Nightmare and Deneghra herself as troop options started to get thin.

The Black 13th took advantage to nip round behind the Cryx Warcaster and blast her from behind in a most unsportsmanlike manner, killing her to win.

Having never played with a Journeyman Warcaster or Firefly it was an interesting game for me. The Firefly proved it's stuff against the admittedly squishy Bile Thralls. For the same points the Cryx could have had 6 Mech-thralls and a Necrosurgeon (who were away this particular night) who would have provided a much more effective rushing screen up the table. I know that would have been MacSver's prefered choice. Good to continue the rules dusting off though.

Painting Table WIP

Just a quick WIP picture to show that at least something has been going on in the Hobbyshed.

The Cygnar Squire and 3 Warjacks with most paint on are to be finished for next weekend to achieve my August painting pledge. The Grenadier has just been constructed and is early in the paint process, but the others are the main focus. Most of the way through, so a couple of good sessions will them done (without basing). The problem with doing them all at the same time is that there are no finished figure posts throughout the month - just one biggy at the end!

Circle vs Cygnar

Holidays,work and illness has kept the poor hobby blog in the shadows for the last couple of weeks. There is progress on my Cygnar warjacks from last post (plus a couple of others) but they are pushing the end of month deadline, so hopefully you'll see them in their glory by then!

My assembled 15pt Cygnar force.

I did however manage to get in a game of Warmachine at the local club last Saturday for the Journeyman League. It's take a while, so the army size had grown from just the battle group to 15pts. I already have that painted up  so was OK to go (although their's no requisite that models be painted to play)

Foes meet to battle over objectives.

My Opponent was having his second ever game with his new Hordes Circle force (his first having been immediately preceding our game) so both players were on an even keel on how best to use their forces. To add to the new experience I'd never played against a Hordes force , so the different power mechanics were interesting\suprising, and he'd never played against Cygnar before, so was unprepared for some of the shooting.

Forces close in, with the Cygnar Heavy Ironclad
to provide protection.

Inexperience with the rules (and even reading some of the card effects) led to a few mistakes. To be honest we both made them but I definitely benefited most as we discovered after the game.

The Warp Wolf charges in and completely destroys
the Heavy 'jack in one flurry of tooth and claw!

Being unfamiliar with the opponents forces and special rules also came into play. But it was all in the learning experience.

End game as Styrker unleashes a roll of 6 sixes to
take out his opponent.

The game was played in a friendly manner though and we both took more interest than dread in being ripped open by the "enemy". I the end I technically one, but as one of our errors had led to the untimely death of one of his solos I can only claim it as a technical win. Good fun though, and not as brain crushing as I seem to have remembered. Probably because of the low point cost.

The league will be up to 25pts by the time I get my next game in and then 35 pts after that. I don't know if my brain can handle that much...

Skyclad Warjacks

After a day in the Dettol the paint was flaking off itself so was easily removed. Slight scrub with a firm brush removed the rest (with the odd crevice needing picked up with a knife). There is a tendency for black gunge to start to form and spread on the brush and model, but a quick wash with white spirit cleans both.

I've based the 'jacks on some cork tiling to try and boost their height. The metal models are smaller than the new plastics, especially the light warjacks.

The one on the right is NOT far away.

As you can see the old metals are about a third smaller. Not ideal, but hopefully will look better one painted. The fact I have a plastic Lancer already painted may still look a bit strange on the table. It's a bit of a shame, because the larger sized plastics mean that the Heavy Jacks look less hulking.

Claymore 2013

Saturday just past saw the 2013 meeting of the Claymore Show, run in Edinburgh. This year felt a bit strange. The last few years the tables and traders have very much been of a historical bent with very little Fantasy\Sci-fi in the building (as long as you ignore the huge 40k table the lad spend most of last years show at!). This year there was a definite shift though (I wasn't the only one to notice it either), and much the better for it.

Over there! Rebel Scum!

 The increase in interesting wares meant I hardly looked at a lot of the demo games I have to admit (so no demo photos). The tables the lad and I were focusing on were the participation games.

The Millenium Falcon flies past.
A 360 firing arc means the TIE fighters are never safe.

In the end we had a very enjoyable game of X-Wing. Arabiansquire was the Millenium Falcon being harrassed by 4 tie fighters (2 controlled by me and the others controlled by another player). The way the battle ran the 'Falcon had destroyed the first 2 Ties before my 2 even arrived, and so a Father\son twisting an turning dog fight ensued. It was a close run thing and in the end it was one Tie with 1 damage point left against the Millenium Falcon with one point left as well. The last round had a the Falcon miss and the Empire make the final crucial hit, destroying the Rebel vessel. I could have just as easily gone the other way.

Some of Sinbad's crew take on a Temple Guard.

The other game way played was a dungeon set Sinbad 7th Voyage game run by Edinburgh League of Gamers (who's participation game we play every year - great work). 7th Voyage is a standalone (and slightly simplified apparently) version of Crooked Dices 7TV system. Having recently bought 7TV I was keen to play, and we combined to take on the wicked sorcerer. The lad was in a bit of a huff as he was rolling the wrong results and the wrong time for most of the game, but a tactical mistake by our evil opponent let surround our objective foe and when it came to the crunch all the right numbers rolled up for a win. Smile re-instated on young lads face.

The Sorcerer's downfall.

And as for the results of all the trader browsing? It's all gone a bit VSF with collected pre-order from Ironclad Miniatures and a North Star Figures "Servants of Ra" boxset. All will be suitable for In Her Majesty's Name or Empire of the Dead.

Stripping for the League

My local shop FLGS, Worlds At War, is starting a Warmachine Journeyman League this week. This is a basic casual league format to bring in new players and for folk to start new factions. Everyone starts off playing a starter battlebox and then builds on it (with certain restrictions) as the weeks go by. I hardly played Warmachine over the last couple of years, so I'm tentatively entering with a Cygnar force to get my remaining figures painted and play a few games over the next few weeks.

I already have a battlebox painted for Cygnar, but I've a couple of Warjacks from the set picked up from ebay to paint as well. As you can see they need a bit of a repaint.

I've got them bathing in Dettol to remove the paint while I'm at Claymore tomorrow.