Sunday, November 15, 2015

Painting Update: Circle Orboros and Samurai

Finally finished some personal figures, and a commission for a friend - the first of many samurai for Ronin.

Perry Miniatures samurai in civilian clothes

Circle Orboros figures for hordes - that's two units of Shifting Stones, a Gorax, Warpwolf Stalker, Druid Wilder, and Stone Keeper.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Cog Collective Open & Field of Battle: Italy, 1859

Yesterday saw the Cog Collective Invitational and the accompanying Cog Collective Open at Guardian Games, a pair of Warmachine tournaments. The Invitational was the culmination of a year's worth of tournaments, with the best players in the Portland and Salem metas competing for bragging rights and a Cephalyx army. Congrats to Adam for taking first.

I, on the other hand, played in the Open and came in dead last. But I did have fun. I brought Circle Orboros, pairing Krueger 2 and Kaya 2.

Round 1: Krueger 2 vs. Siege Brisbane. Lost on assassination after a failed assassination run.
Round 2: Krueger 2 vs. Haley 2. Lost on assassination after a failed assassination run.
Round 3: Kaya 2 vs. Kromac 2. Lost on assassination after a failed assassination run.

You may notice a trend... Ah, well. To be fair, my dice did kind of fail me on round 2, but I didn't play terribly well, either. At this point, I think I'll just finish painting my Circle force in time for the Ticket Takedown in December, and then flip back to Skorne for 2016. I'm looking forward to messing around with the new Skorne Active Duty Roster - Hexeris 2, Morghoul 1, Makeda 3, and Zaal 2. (I'm also probably going to swap out Kaya 2 for Morvahna 2 so I can have some sweet, sweet dice-fixing in Circle.)

After the Open, I sat in on Victor's Piquet Field of Battle game, taking on the left flank of the Imperial Army in the 1859 Italian War of Independence.

Austrian center, as seen from the left, at deployment


Italian cavalry threatening the Austrian center


Austrian and Italian centers move into rifle range

It's a fun system, and Victor's 10mm Pendraken figures are almost enough to sell me on the scale. Unfortunately, I didn't get to do much due to the vagaries of Piquet and and the need for an early departure. I think Piquet - Field of Battle specifically - is better suited for one-on-one games instead of team games, just due to speed of play and the likelihood that one flank (i.e., mine) may end up rolling rather badly for activation and thus not do anything for two hours. C'est la guerre.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Wargaming Update - October 2015

Crusaders and Vikings in battle

As it's been over a month since my last post, I'm blowing off the cobwebs of October with a quick All Saint's Day recap. In fact, I haven't been doing an awful lot of gaming lately. Life keeps getting in the way, especially family stuff.

In terms of play, I've been getting back into my groove on Warmachine/Hordes, after very nearly dropping the game a couple months ago due to a terrible win/loss record and some personality conflicts. After some careful introspection and a change in attitude, I'm enjoying it again. Two reasons for this: I switched from Skorne to Circle Orboros as a palate cleanser for the remainder of the year, and I've pretty much given up on competitive play. I simply don't have the time or energy to compete with the dedicated competitive players in my meta. I did play in a tiny 8-player tournament a couple weeks ago, where I went 0-3 with my Kaya 2/Krueger 2 pairing, losing to assassination all three games - but I did have quite a bit of fun, so that's what matters. I'm planning on bringing the same lists to a tournament this upcoming Saturday, and I hope I'll do a wee bit better.

Outside of Warmachine, the only play I've gotten has been in Saga, with the tournament near the beginning of October. I'm quite happy with my play there, as I won each of my three games using my Crusader warband. Even so, I didn't win the tournament due to the unusual format (well, unusual to me anyway). Instead of the Swiss format I'm used to in Warmachine, the TO had something of a partial round-robin, with the ultimate ranking determined by scoring. The scoring system heavily favored killing as many enemy models as possible, rather than winning games - though, of course, killing a bunch of enemy models usually results in a victory, so... Not the way I'd run it, but that's the TO's prerogative. The event was quite a bit of fun, and I'm looking forward to more Saga stuff.

Outside of actually tossing dice and moving figures, I've been getting in a decent amount of painting. I finished up a Hungarian company for Flames of War on behalf of CGR Painters, been making progress on some (quite nice) Perry samurai in street clothes for a friend, and plugging away at Circle Orboros models.

The newest thing to grab my attention is Kings of War. I collected a Vampire Counts army back when Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition was released, and then promptly found I disliked the system and so it never went anywhere. With the Age of Sigmar release this year and the subsequent exodus of Warhammer players, Kings of War is slowly growing in popularity, so I've dusted off the zombies and ghouls. I should be getting my first game with them today, in fact, and I'm looking forward to playing games that feel bigger than Warmachine or Saga.