A little history for Iron Agenda readers.

*Reposted for Iron Agenda

So far I have been playing Hordes/Warmachine for about a year. In that time I have played 4 different factions. I started with Skorne. I liked the slow tough hard hitting warbeasts and Supreme Aptimus Zaal. But really I wasn't satisfied so i moved on.

Next I picked up Trolls. There ability to move fairly fast and give buffs is awesome. I will stick with the trolls for a long time. I love Madrak he is one tough beat-stick and with his Surefoot spell and scroll of perseverance he has a staying power that i like.

Next just for kick to have a second faction to play I picked up Circle. I played a few games with them they are fun but ultimately not what I need. The things that I like about circle I get from Trolls who perform far better at that function.

So what was I looking for? Well I found that I missed the slow tough models with high armor. Well that takes me back to Skorne. But I didn't want Skorne again. I had had enough of them. Then what happened. Well I played against Khador a few times. It was perfect. Khador is slow. Really tough and really assaulty. If you let a Khadoran warjack get the charge you will probably die.

Last night I saw another side of Khador that I really, really like. I played against Jeff at 350 pts. I took the battle box. Sorscha, Destroyer, and Juggernaut, then to bump it up a few points I put in a Man-O-War Kovnik. The kovnik was awesome. Basically he is a 34 pt medium based warjack. But what really impressed me was Sorscha. She is FAST. By casting wind rush every turn she has a def. 20 and speed of 12. Say goodbye to free strikes. There are very few models who can hit a def. 20. Besides wind rush she has a few spells that really help get the slow jacks up into combat and a few really nice offensive spells. It is hard to match Madrak in my eyes but she is darn close. I can't wait to get some more games in with her.

Well thats all for now. Until next time, remember victory favors the aggressor.

A little history.

So far I have been playing Hordes/Warmachine for about a year. In that time I have played 4 different factions. I started with Skorne. I liked there slow tough hard hitting warbeasts and Supreme Aptimus Zaal. But really I wasn't satisfied so i moved on.

Next I picked up Trolls. There ability to move fairly fast and give buffs is awesome. With Trolls I will stick with them. I love Madrak he is one tough beat-stick and with his Surefoot spell and scroll of perseverance he has a staying power that i like.

Next just for kick to have a second faction to play I picked up Circle. I played a few games with them they are fun but ultimately not what I need. The things that I like about circle I get from Trolls who perform far better at that function.

So what was I looking for? Well I found that I missed the slow tough models with high armor. Well that takes me back to Skorne. But I didn't want Skorne again. I had had enough of them. Then what happened. Well I played against Khador a few times. It was perfect. Khador is slow. Really tough and really assaulty. If you let a Khadoran warjack get the charge you will probably die.

Last night I saw another side of Khador that I really, really like. I played against Jeff at 350 pts. I took the battle box. Sorscha, Destroyer, and Juggernaut, then to bump it up a few points I put in a Man-O-War Kovnik. The kovnik was awesome. Basically he is a 34 pt medium based warjack. But what really impressed me was Sorscha. She is FAST. By casting wind rush every turn she has a def. 20 and speed of 12. Say goodbye to free strikes. There are very few models who can hit a def. 20. Besides wind rush she has a few spells that really help get the slow jacks up into combat and a few really nice offensive spells. It is hard to match Madrak in my eyes but she is darn close. I can't wait to get some more games in with her.

Well thats all for now. Until next time, remember victory favors the aggressor.

Back to warmachine.

Not that anybody who reads this will care but i am full bore back into warmachine. I am in the process of trading my Tyranids for Khador or Trollbloods. I have even considered trying out a cygnar battle box but I think I need to cool it for a while and really just learn one of the factions that I have. I have had a lot of fun with trolls but at the moment I am not to excited about what models are available. Besides Mulg the Ancient I have everything that I want, not necessarily what i need to make my army better.

I decided to start Khador after Adam annihilated me twice with his little force. I miss that really tough slow feel I got from Skorne. and I like almost all the models available. For my birthday I got about a thousand points. I am excited to play a good sized game.

Now that I the Summer rampage is over I am going to start in strong with my khador battle box. The new models will probably be another week and a half before i get them. that should be enough time to learn how to use Sorscha pretty well and her battle group.

So until next time. See you all later.

Be Fair

First on the block today is a Tyranid Warrior I finished the other day. The basic colors are blue skin, leathery brown armor. This is about the extent of my painting abilities, no amazing shades and highlights from me but I think it turned out pretty good. For all the gaunt I am going to get the army painter system to speed up the painting.

Now for the rest of the story ... I have something that has been bothering me since game night last week. Since I have started playing wargames I have expected to have a lot of losses maybe a win or two every once in a while if I am lucky. But last week I got hit hard. Two games at 1500 pts a piece, two losses, thats okay. The thing that bothers me are how I lost. It was a total annihilation, I lost everything first game by turn three and second game by turn five. They (the people I had been playing) lost 2-3 figs from their basic troops.

It was a very disheartening night. My plea for all you uber gamers. Take it easy on the little guy. Make the game seem closer, more exciting. Maybe do some teaching along the way. I know I made mistakes some major ones, if you see those point them out. I promise if you do this I will come back excited to play again. I do know how hard it is sometimes to hold back. During one of the game night I came a little late and everybody had started to play except for a new guy. Even newer than me. He had his figs but had never played yet. I knew he had never play, so I laid into him with everything my little army had! It was another turn 3 annihilations. I was ecstatic! My first win. I have since then apologized for the overzealousness, it just wasn't right that I played him like that.

I plead with you fellow Wargamers, don't do this to the new guys. Don't do this to anyone. It is not fun! There are tons of great people who want to play the game let's teach them how to play. Let's teach them it's not a brutal experience to learn the game with a rule book the size of a college textbook. Let's just be nice.

Until next time

Tyranid Warrior

First on the block today is a Tyranid Warrior I finished the other day. The basic colors are blue skin, leathery brown armor. This is about the extent of my painting abilities, no amazing shades and highlights from me but I think it turned out pretty good. For all the gaunt I am going to get the army painter system to speed up the painting.

Now for the rest of the story ... I have something that has been bothering me since game night last week. Since I have started playing wargames I have expected to have a lot of losses maybe a win or two every once in a while if I am lucky. But last week I got hit hard. Two games at 1500 pts a piece, two losses, thats okay. The thing that bothers me are how I lost. It was a total annihilation, I lost everything first game by turn three and second game by turn five. They (the people I had been playing) lost 2-3 figs from their basic troops.

It was a very disheartening night. My plea for all you uber gamers. Take it easy on the little guy. Make the game seem closer, more exciting. Maybe do some teaching along the way. I know I made mistakes some major ones, if you see those point them out. I promise if you do this I will come back excited to play again. I do know how hard it is sometimes to hold back. During one of the game night I came a little late and everybody had started to play except for a new guy. Even newer than me. He had his figs but had never played yet. I knew he had never play, so I laid into him with everything my little army had! It was another turn 3 annihilations. I was ecstatic! My first win. I have since then apologized for the overzealousness, it just wasn't right that I played him like that.

I plead with you fellow Wargamers, don't do this to the new guys. Don't do this to anyone. It is not fun! There are tons of great people who want to play the game let's teach them how to play. Let's teach them it's not a brutal experience to learn the game with a rule book the size of a college textbook. Let's just be nice.

Until next time

New army and First Game

Since I have been in North Carolina I have participated in a local campaign league I have discovered that I really really don't like vanilla space marines. They are just soooo plain. I guess that's why they are called "vanilla." I proposed a trade to some of the local guys army for army, I was looking for either Tau or Tyranid. The Tau I have always been interested in, They just look really cool and I have started building an army of them. The Tyranids because again they look really cool and I wanted something that could basically be considered they exact opposite. In the end I will have an all Shooty army and an all Assaulty army. Luckily for my I had a taker. One of the local players had about 1850 of Tyranid. Woo Hoo! I took him up on the trade. So now no more space marines

Wow. The first game with the Nid's was awesome. This week of the tournament was the 1250 pt army list. I had no idea really what kind of army list to build so I started with the HQ and Hive Tyrant and then went through the troops and thats as far as i got. It was soo fun there were probably close to a hundred little monsters. My next game probably wont be so bad, with the amount of models I mean.

As far as the game went My opponent and I combined with two other players and had a great big game. It was 2500 pts per side. I play nids, obviously. My team mate played space marines. There side was Tau and Chaos Space Marines. We played the one where you capture d3+2 objectives. We had 3 objectives. with the table quarters setup but we decided for space reasons just to play table edges. Now I am going to go into great detail of the game. I captured an objective. Tau captured an objective and the SM's and the Chaos SM's contested the other. We ended with a tie.

That is all I have for now. I am tired of writing.

Until next time.

Painted Firewarrior

1 Firewarrior down 23 more to go. Comments are welcome. Click picture to see it bigger.

Firewarriors

I know that this is my blog and i can write anything that i want but tonight i am have a particularly difficult time deciding what to put down. I still want it to be worth reading for the few that may see it.

Tonight I played two games one 250pt game with my new Fire Warriors. All I can say is AWESOME! The game was 20 warriors and 2 Gun Drones against 30 Ork Boyz I think. I ultimately lost but I didn't really move. His main goal was to get into assault, very smart move as Tau suck at melee. I should have moved more but by time he got to me I had killed about 25 of his thirty, and he had killed 7 of my warriors. The game ended with when he killed all of mine and he had only 3 left.

The Second game was a practice game for the upcoming campain game this next tuesday. It wasn't really a challenge I died horribly. My whirlwind died beginning of round 2 which was my main weapon against the orks. But I did get some good ideas for the next game. We'll see how it goes.

Until next time.

Finished Drones

Here are some pics of the finished drone squad. Enjoy.

Phoenix Gamers Forum, and new Tau Pics

Tonight I have a couple of announcements. First, I have found a site for a free forum. I have created one for the Phoenix Gamers. I know that you all are very avid bloggers and I do not want to take anything away from that. I just thought we could use this for setting up games, tournament reminders, rules and tactical discussions, and general discussions. The URL is http://s1.zetaboards.com/phoenixgamers/index/

Second, as I mentioned in my previous blog, I have just received my Tau Fire Warriors for 40k. I really want these guys to look good. While looking on youtube for ideas on how to paint them I saw a video from Blue Table Painting in Spanish Fork. They had an awesome Tau force painted red and white and black. I am now attempting to emulate that paint job and have spent the last 4 hours working on one gun drone doing my best to keep the lines very clean. I am almost finished. I just need to paint one more gun. I am very tired and can paint any more tonight but I wanted to post some pictures before I went to bed.

Please take a look. Let me know what you think. Enjoy

The Tau have arrived!

Hey everyone I have just gotten my Tau Fire Warriors. I am way excited to model these guys. I think they look amazing. One thing I have noticed with the Tau and with Warhammer 40k in general is, there are a lot of options for different upgrades and configurations. This gets really expensive. I have also seen a fix to this. Magnets. I, with this new Tau army, decided to try to fully magnetize the models. So my first challenge is going to be magnetizing the Fire Warriors. It looks to be a difficult challenge, I haven't seen it done yet. So as soon as my rare earth magnets arrive I will document the experience.

Until next time.

P.S. Thanks for the shout out John. I feel like I am in some sort of hall of fame.

What do losers tell themselves to make them feel better about losing. It's not about who wins or loses, it's how you play the game. With a win loss record of 1-5 I feel like this in particular applies to me. I know this sounds disappointing but believe me. I am sitting here beaming at my self. I feel like a million bucks.

Yes John won but you should have seen the look on his face when my impaler sneaks around a wall and is suddenly an inch from his back and madrak tying up his two jacks. It was a desperate move that almost paid off if Irusk hadn't been such a beat-stick.

Over all a great night. Good luck with the tourney everyone, wish I could be there.

Until next time.

Hordes in NC

It has been exciting to be out here so far. Last monday and tuesday I met up with CerealJohn at the Durham LGS called SciFi Genre. During the two days we played four games, three of which he won. I won the last game worth all the marbles ...

The two games we played on monday were not that great for me. I was totally annihilated twice. John played great and I played decent but rolled crap.

Tuesday went a lot better. We played practice games for the tournament coming up. John tried out some new lists. Game three was probably the longest 350 game in recorded history. We seesawed back and forth for 2 1/4 hours. He eventually won by killing all my models except for the caster. Game 4 we setup and cleaned up in 45 minutes. He brought out a jack that I was really scared of. Beast 09. He is one tough mother. I spent a full three turn focussing all my firepower on just that model. During which he whittled away at me with the other jack. Turn 4 or 5 he had weakened me pretty bad and i had left a hole open to Madrak. He with the open lane charged. I survived the rush with three health and my scroll left. He had Madrak to his front and Axer the the right and Impaler to the left. Caster kill booya.

As you can tell it was my favorite game and the freshest in my mind. Mostly just the freshest in my mind :) The game really could have gone either way.

I will update you all later as I play against some new people.

Later.

My last game stunk!

I saw a video the other day where a group played a 40k scenario you roll to see what objectives you have and roll to see what layout you get. Well that sounded like a lot of fun. Different from total annihilation. We rolled to capture 3 objectives and to play the "Dawn of War" scenario.

The idea was good. My limited game knowledge and force was not good. In Dawn of war you start with an HQ and 2 Troops. Thinking that i had only one troops with my Tactical Squad (I thought my termies just counted as elite's apparently not) I split my 10 man tactical squad into 2 5 man combat squats and left my termies and dreadnought to come in on reserve.

Basically what ended up happening is I didn't roll for the reserves until the end of the game so i had to hold of two full units of Ork hordes with 'eavy armor for 4 rounds which completely took out all my combat squad. He got lucky and took out 3 of my termies the turn they came out from reserved. I deep striked them behind his forces but deviated right behind him.

I was a little disappointed how the game went and I was starving so when I realized I could only capture one objective and he could get two very easily I called the game.

It sucks having such a limited force.

Thanks to Bartertown I will have 2000 more points on monday. Then we take revenge on those stinkin orks.

Until then.

P.S. I found an official Blood Angels codex in White Dwarf from 2007 for free. If anyone wants a copy let me know. I believe it is the latest edition.

SM's so far.

Update on the Space Marine paint job. I withdrew from the Blood Angels theme. I am going with my own version of Ultramarines. The elite figs will get red and black blood angels theme, Standard troops will get Ultramarine theme and vehicles will get what ever i feel like. Really it just came down to the fact that i liked both the red and the blue.

The blue is really a lot darker. I believe flash made it look so light. As you can tell i still have a long way to go but so far I think they are turning out very nicely.

Also update on Barter town. Someone from California is trading me 2000 pts of SM's including 3 Rhino's 1 Razorback 2 Whirlwinds and a Land Raider plus about 35 troops. for my 650 pts of Skorne. I owe you all a big thanks for that tip off.

Space Marines

What is black and white and red all over? ....

The paint scheme for my Space Marines. After much debate and a few paint trials i have decided to go with the blood angels paint scheme

I have started painting my dreadnought, unfortunately this is not the one. I will upload some pictures when i get the first coat of red on.

So for a report on my latest game.

Space marines won. Well more like annihilated. I made nearly all my save throws. Basically the game consisted of me advancing, shooting and assaulting. Then game over. It is nice to win for a change.

Until next time.

Second Space Marines Game

Okay, I just finished my second ever Warhammer 40k and Space Marines game. Really Really cool. This game was a lot better than the last. I played against Imperial Guard. I lost the roll to deploy first. Thumbs down for that. When Mike put his Guards out I felt like i was going to get annihilated, especially when i put my few space marines out. So first round he some how kills 6 of my tactical squad. Pooh. I think it had something to do with getting bombarded with his artillery cannon. After that things when a little better. I was able to hold my own with the saves and all. Eventually I lost but i was really surprised with how much of his i was actually able to take out. The Terminators I must say are the MVP of the game. With the 2+ armor save I only lost one every other round. and by them selves they took out half of his troops. My tactical squad did diddly squat, and my dreadnought managed to take out his artillery tank in one round of close combat. thanks to strength 10.

Over all I am coming to like 40k more and more. I think even more than Hordes. Only time will tell. I have yet to really use anything special or even play a full 1000 points of my own. I would like to get my hands on some tanks though maybe a whirlwind and a land raider.

Until next time.

Deciding which game to play.

I, within the last 6 months, have started playing tabletop miniature games. I have always been I interested in the idea but never knew they existed. First I thought to try out Hordes (a game by privateer press). The local group meets together often is very accepting and accomodating to new players. It has become rather exciting to go on Wednesday nights put out some models and have an epic battle. It is even exciting to occasionally win a few games. But there is something missing. An epicness. I originally went to the.game shop to look for a game called warhammer. It had been around far longer than hordes/warmachine and is known for having large amounts of models to fight with. So I looked into it and picked up the starter box for warhammer 40k. It happens to have a larger following here in cache valley. I played my first game last thursday. It was great but mostly just a whirlwind of rules. So now I am faced with a dilema. Do I keep playing Hordes? Do I abandon hordes and play warhammer (armies for both games are expensive and time consuming) Or do I play both? Time will have to tell. Wednesday I am going to play hordes and thursday I am going to play warmachine. Until then.