Saturday, December 31, 2011

Year 2011 in painting

So, I made a new year's resolution to beat my last years painting. Today is the last day to take a look on that.

My new years resolution for 2011 had an extra clause: I was to go to a tournament using Circle of Orboros. I went to Ropecon warmachine/hordes tournament, so I succeeded there.

Now, a summary of my paintings:

Cryx:
Lord Exhumator Scaverous
Ripjaw
Reaper/Slayer/Malice/Erebus magnetised kit
3x Scrap Thralls
"Baselift", meaning repainting bases to look a bit nicer.

Mercenaries:
Ragman

Skorne:
Dominar Rasheth
Rhinodon
Cyclops Shaman
6x Cataphract Cetrati
4x Praetorian Swordmen
Aptimus Marketh
Extoller Soulward
Flayer Cannon

Circle of Orboros:
Wold Guardian
Woldwatcher
Reeve Hunter
Tharn Ravager Chieftain
Stone Keeper

Minions:
Thrullg
Totem Hunter
Lanyssa Ryssyll

Scenery:
Couple of barrel obstacles
Overturned pillar
Three pieces of craters
Pond

Other:
6x When Darkness Comes miniatures
6x Talisman miniatures

Now, last year I painted only two heavy warjacks/warbeasts and Wurmwood, that were on large base. This year I painted five.

Last year I painted only two medium based models too, but they were both warcasters: Lich Lords Venethrax & Asphyxious. This year I painted thirteen of them. Nice gain there.

2010 seemed to be the year of small based models, as I painted 25 of them. Now there will be some tough competition, let's see... Only fourteen of them this year. But as I had a nice surplus from medium based models, it seems that I painted quite a bit more Warmachine/Hordes models this year.

Other models, then.

Board-game sized playing pieces weren't written up in too much detail in 2010, so I guess that I painted around 20 Talisman & Touch of Evil miniatures.

This year I did only 12 of such pieces, but I'm quite sure that terrain pieces I did this year make up for at least 8 tiny miniatures.

I think I can say that I succeeded in my new years resolution.

I'll refrain myself from making a resolution for 2012, because looks like it will be quite a busy year. But I'd like to get to play Talisman & Touch of Evil a little more.

Forming a tradition: Part II

Now to the second game of Warmachine I played yesterday.

I wanted to try a weird list with Scaverous. It went like this:

Scaverous
- 2x Slayer
- 2x Nightwretch

And opponent had almost the same list as earlier, except with a caster change:

High Exemplar Kreoss
- Reckoner
- Dervish
- Revenger
Paladin of the Order of the Wall

I lost the starting roll.

Kreoss had cast Lamentation and Defenders Ward was on Revenger.

First picture is probably taken from end of my third turn, where Reckoner had been taking pot shots at my heavy warjacks.

Revenger had charged Slayer that didn't have Death Ward on. Reckoner had also shot the same warjack earlier, but opponent rolled plenty of double 1's and triple 1's during the whole game to balance my last game's 6's somewhat.

Dervish had been thrown away with Telekinesis to prevent a charge. Both slayers did a combo-strike on Revenger, and I was lucky there, as first combo strike (hitting with seven on two dice) destroyed Revenger's shield. Second Slayer rolled a lucky hit with two dice too. Revenger lost movement and shield arm during the process.

Then things got absurd.

Kreoss forgot to use his feat, yet everything charged into melee.

It's a shame we had to proxy so much, because really. It was absurd:

Every single model there is still standing, even with just a couple of damage points.

Even Kreoss himself is banging at Slayer.

But as Kreoss had Lamentation on, Scaverous was left with only bad choices. He couldn't really use his feat and because Kreoss had charged in, Scaverous couldn't walk out of Lamentation range and start flinging spells through one arc node that wasn't engaged.

What I did was moving Scaverous away to a nearby hill and allocating focus to warjacks and hoping for the best. Revenger was destroyed, but Slayer loaded up with focus merely tickled Reckoner.

Nearly broken Slayer landed a solid hit on Paladin, who took three points of damage in. The bugger wasn't even in any stance at that moment.

Next round Kreoss didn't forget to use his feat, and all of my warjacks except one nightwretch (with arc node intact) were blasted by Reckoner & pals.

Scaverous was left with little choice. He started camping all focus and hoping to survive.

He did survive pretty long, killing Paladin in the process and doing little damage to warjacks.

And once he got a possible charge lane to Kreoss (full health) when he was engaged by Reckoner and Dervish and being surrounded by wrecks, Scaverous decided that this was where it all ends.

He cast Ghost Walk on himself and charged Kreoss on the oil barrels with 3 focus left.

First hit scored 5 points in. Second hit scored five points in. There was no third attack.

Kreoss then beat Scaverous personally in melee. Scaverous had only 6 hit points left, though, but Kreoss took them all away with just one glorious attack. Again, the one picture where every model is what it should, hasn't focused right. I guess it focused on the red die back there.

Oh well. Here is the last epic shot:

Friday, December 30, 2011

Forming a tradition: Last games of WM/H in the great pine woods of Kuhmo

Last night I played a couple of Warmachine games at Kuhmo, where I am staying for the new year's eve.

About the same time last years we played two 15 point games against the same opponent. Hence tradition.

This time around, though, opponent had forgotten to take his miniatures with him and had only a couple of nearly finished models with him. This lead to... slight proxying, so, to avoid confusion I'm keeping pictures to the minimum.

We decided to play Kill Box scenario to restrict running away somewhat.

First game was Iron Lich Asphyxious vs Reznik, with following lists:

Asphyxious
- Reaper
- Cankerworm
- 2x Nightwretch
Necrotech & Scrap Thrall

Reznik
- Reckoner
- Revenger
- Dervish
Dartan Vilmon

I was amazed to win the starting roll. However, then I realised that actually a pattern continues. Lose 5 starting rolls, win one. Lose 5 starting rolls, win one.

Ah well, after running with every model except Asphyxious and casting Scything Touch on Cankerworm, opponent did a bold move.

Reckoner assaulted Nightwretch on top of a hill and scored a hit and dealt some damage. Now, I had Reaper so it wasn't actually that good move. But really, game would have probably looked a lot different if either of us had remembered Witch Hound special skill on Reznik.

The Nightwretch shot the Reckoner in question, and after that Parasite was cast upon it. Reaper advanced and shot its harpoon at Reckoner and dragged it to its death. Now, if Witch Hound would've been remembered, Reckoner would have taken only Parasite and then walked out of range of Reaper's harpoon.

Damage rolls weren't exactly awesome, but fully loaded Reaper and armor piercing Cankerworm with the earlier shot from Nightwretch were enough to eventually destroy it.

Well, next Revenger that had Ignite cast upon it charged Reaper and almost wrecked it, except no systems were broken.

Reznik used his feat, so Asphyxious wasn't able to allocate focus to warjacks. Which pretty much saved Protectorate's warjacks - Cankerworm and Reaper merely scratched Revenger.

But Asphyxious was out of Reznik's feat range, so he used one Nightwretch to fry Vilmon away. And I've written down what proxies what on the picture.

Reznik, to gain benefits from better cover than open ground, charged into melee with a nightwretch. I saw a little bit of opening there, so moved Nightwretch away that was wrecked by a free strike.

Asphyxious had allocated three focus to Reaper, but Reaper was engaged by what was left of Revenger. Asphyxious moved to engage Revenger, but then I was left with a funny little dilemma. Revenger still had its shield intact, though otherwise it was almost broken. To prevent the push-back effect of Revenger's shield, Asphyxious had to cast Hellfire to bring the shield down. Two Hellfires did the job, but in the process Asphyxious had to use his feat. Finally Revenger went down and Reaper was free to drag Reznik to his almost certain death.

Well. It didn't work out that well.

Reaper managed to damage Reznik with harpoon, but when Reznik was being dragged, he stumbled upon Dervish. Assassination failed.

Last Nightwretch walked to shooting range and managed to score a hit on Reznik. Damage roll was 6, 6.

Hero of the match: Nightwretch, there and then.

Well, Reznik isn't known for being a wuzzy.

He cast Engine of Destruction on himself and beat up Reaper and camped up four focus. Battle came into caster versus caster, with both casters having used up their feat.

Asphyxious charged into melee with Reznik after castin Scything Touch on himself.

Iron lich scored a hit and damage roll came out as 6, 6, 6.

End of Reznik.

Second write-up needs to wait it seems, as a friend came over.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Adventures of Sympathy Sam and Jennifer

Yesterday we played a couple of games of When Darkness Comes with two players.

We played the zombie shoot-up scenario and Last of the Tzimovars scenarios, and I guess playing other scenario than the first opened up some thoughts about the game's workings.

However, brief summary of the games.

Both Sympathy Sam and Jennifer were characters who sucked at combat and were slow, but good at persuasion, particularly at flirting.

Sam was better at medical skills and was a huge tank with defense/health of 5 and Jennifer was more dextrous.

This lead to a funny start - without weapons or victory points, neither character could beat any monster, no matter how good rolls might be. Whoops.

Also, Sam quickly found out that there was a Mega-Adversary in the town hall/jail with a perception roll. So characters quickly escaped.

But once Sam found a shotgun and a pistol and a wrench for Jennifer (Jennifer had hand-to-hand combat skill and Jennifer was horrible at searching things), things started rolling.

This scenario was played a bit wrong, which must be forgiven, since this was third game of WDC ever, and first for my friend. Somehow I had been thinking that you could buy 3 dice and 3 re-rolls per fight round, when in fact you could buy such things per your whole turn.

Well, it burned out victory points with our characters' measly attack skills, but at least made some victories possible.

In the end it happened so that Sympathy Sam killed the last of the five zombies. He scored only a couple victory points more than Jennifer, but still, he gained the attribute rise. Which went into dexterity, Sam was frustrated enough at banging at the doors and yelling someone to open them.

Anyway - after two good plays of the first scenario, I feel that it needs some sort of time restriction or something. Even with horribly slow characters once you hit around 10-15 victory points, you don't have to walk on the tip of your toes so much. I don't know how much this changes when there are more players, but at least when both players are low on speed, there's no real penalty to it.

Then, the Last of the Tzimovars scenario.

This scenario was pretty simple and straightforward, but it did involve some good rolls of 3 straight with only 3 dice with no re-rolls. Sympathy Sam raided the church and packed himself full of holy water and crucifixes and then rushed to the mansion of Tzimovars.

He had cleared whole outside of the building when Jennifer was just leaving the doctor's office... He had used a couple of vials of precious holy water though, which was a bit risky thing, since killing Mega-Adversary was required for victory.

Anyway, Sam came to Gun Shop and helped Jennifer find a crossbow for her and took one for himself, too. Then the duo found their way into the mansion itself. Jennifer started acting unsportingly. She started flirting with Sam's allies, and as she had persuasion 4 + 1 dice from flirt versus Sam's persuasion of 2 + 2 dice from flirt, she managed to steal them more often than not.

Only comfort for Sam was the fact that he had nailed five zombies, where Jen had killed none. But that was about to change, when Sam stumbled upon Mega-Adversary.

He tried to fight the queen of the Tzimovars, but didn't manage to kill it with 10 dice + 3 re-rolls. Jennifer came around to help, but her next round she attacked the Mega-Adversary. She decided to stake the Mega-Adversary, because that way she would benefit from 2 sets of 2 re-rolls without using victory points.

She used all her holy water and bought three dice with victory points and started rolling. After 4 re-rolls she had 6,6,6,6 on board, and Mega-Adversary needed 5 of kind to kill it. Last roll came out as 6. Now, thinking of that, had Jennifer failed there, both of our wimpy characters would have needed astonishing luck to bring the main antagonist down.

After that fight it was a race for victory points. Offensive power had dropped pretty much as we had no longer holy water around and crossbows were starting to run out of ammo.

Last real excitement came with the last vampire, who needed 4 of kind to be defeated.

Jennifer, being the drama queen, did the same she did with Mega-Adversary. Last possible re-roll came out as 5, when there were already three 5's on the board. End of Tzimovars and a victory for Jennifer.

Anyway, after four games it feels like there isn't enough "pressure" in the game. It might change with more players, and especially with different character builds, when you need to take more into account who seems the probable winner. But at least now I feel like there should be some element of urgency, when there are two slow characters playing it feels like they got all the time in the world to, well, kill supernatural monstrosities that are terrorizing civilians?

Still a good game though, and having played only two different scenarios I won't judge everything just yet.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

New year starts with a bite

Just today I got to play Fury of Dracula again after quite a while.

Different from last time was that we had three players now.

I played the Dracula, and against two hunter players playing a hunter looked like a lot more fun than in just two player game!

Playing Count Dracula was also exciting, as it has always been. This time it was overly thrilling, when I was really lucky when it came to exposing Dracula's trail. It seemed that wherever the hunters went, they picked just the wrong space or when press revealed locations the hunters chose just the wrong cities that weren't part of Draculas trail.

However, the two party-pooper cards came along, both for Dracula and both for Hunters. Evasion and Hypnotism.

But luckily they both came during the same game, so there was enough excitement for both parties.

But hypnotism is quite harsh card when hunters have two resolve and one relentless pursuit or whatever the event was that acted like using resolve... At dawn hypnotism was used. At noon three hunters came at Dracula with stakes, sacred bullets and all such things blazing.

With five blood drops remaining, Dracula escaped to Marseilles.

Hunters had two guesses where Dracula went from four possible choices.

Van Helsing picked Marseilles.

Dracula met his fate embarrassingly with a knife in his back.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

The Smell of Skewered Fat

Yesterday I played a game of Warmachine, or should I say a Hordes game.

A friend who was traveling in India had a better hotel there with a decent internet connection, so we had arranged a game to be played on Vassal. We had agreed on a 35 pointer. My list was:

Dominar Rasheth
- Cyclops Shaman
- Basilisk Drake
- Basilisk Krea
- Bronzeback Titan

Minimum unit of Beast Handlers
Maximum unit of Praetorian Swordsmen + Unit Attachment
Flayer Cannon
Extoller Soulward
Bloodrunner Master Tormentor
Feralgeist

And opponent had:

Epic Vayl
- 2x Angelius
- Typhon

Minimum unit of Raptors
Annyssa Ryvaal
Shepherd

Opponent won the starting roll. Again.

First picture is taken from the end of my first turn, and you can see a little bit of the nasty map layout there. It was somewhat difficult to navigate Skorne troops with a river in the middle, and it didn't help too much that I accidentally mixed up Krea and Drake when I was deploying.

But anyway.

You can see a horrible line-up in that picture too. But, let me ask people a question: How much it takes to kill a Bronzeback in one turn from full health? Here's what:

- Epic Vayl's feat (a damage boosted pow 15 Obliteration)
- Two P+S 14 Armor Piercing attacks with boosted damage rolls.
- 3x Typhon's pow 14 sprays.

But. Yeah. Though it looks impressive that one beast of yours took the combined efforts of a warlock and three heavy warbeasts, it still sucks to lose your Bronzeback at the start of round 2. To be honest, some of opponents damage rolls, in particular the armor piercing ones, rolled numbers that even a single dice could beat or at least tie.

So after opponent had removed too many points from my army list, it was my time to give some payback.

You can see the positioning of opponents beasts.

My plan was that if boosted, aimed hit from Krea's paralysis would hit the Angelius near her, Rasheth would use his feat.

Obviously Krea missed. So I decided to just try to destroy Typhon instead.

So, what it takes to kill Typhon in one round from full health with Admonition on? It takes:

- Blood Mark from Rasheth (bringing Typhon down to arm 15)
- d3 flayer cannon shots (rolled 1)
- Pow 14 spray from Drake with damage boost
- Pow 12 Evil Eye from Cyclops Shaman with damage boost
- Pow 17 shot from Extoller with damage boost

... + something else.

The beast was left alive with one hit point. After Admonition triggered, Typhon moved closer to my lines. I saw a distant possibility in getting one Beast Handler into melee with Typhon and killing it in style with anatomical precision.

But it was not to be, the beast was way over walking distance.

One beast handler went and put a fury point on Angelius. Rasheth had cast Carnivore on beast handlers just for this purpose.

Well, because of the invincible Typhon, next turn was a slaughterfest.

Typhon killed Basilisk Drake, I guess they had a spitting contest. Shepherd had healed Typhon for 3, meaning it had 4 hit points left.

Now, Vayl throws oraculi on it, dealing 3 points of damage. Typhon was back to one health. Started to look like a game, where every model was hanging at one hit point at one point or another. Bronzeback was sitting at one wound left too before last spray from Typhon nailed it.

Angeliuses did some Refuge -shenanigans again (after just one game I find that spell really disturbing in the hands of Legion of Everblight). Extoller Soulward was a hero, because it survived three punches from Angelius (two were unboosted though and resulted in misses). Extoller was left alive with one hit point. Praetorians were all but destroyed by Obliteration from Vayl and the bows of blighted nyss.

Now, my turn was about the only turn I could try and win.

Praetorians ran into position to be used as arc nodes. Bloodrunner Master Tormentor happened to survive a free strike and tried to run far enough to get a back strike bonus against Vayl. However, she was left way out of Rasheth control area.

Rasheth used his feat and tried to murder Vayl with Breath of Corruption. Damage roll was 1, 1, 4. Nothing I shouldn't have expected already. But I can't blame everything on dice - opponent didn't roll much better than I did, but the armor piercing hits from angeliuses do quite a lot of damage even with poor rolls.

But, at least the beast handlers got his trophy and some title of being awesome. Typhon had one wound left and he hit the beast. Down with the Typhon! With anatomical precision!

Extoller continued to butcher the beasts, her stone is actually pretty potent weapon. Shame that the damage rolls were never too high.

Anyway, time for the last picture.

Extoller tried her best throughout the game, challenged the most fearsome of beasts, dealt damage to every one of them (heh, pun... look, pun!) and didn't die.

Finally Rasheth died to armor piercing hit from angelius. The hit dealt 16 points in, when Rasheth had only 14 left. Damage had come from a pathetic shoot from Annyssa and through cutting his own wrists... or logs... How did he ever even find an artery remains a mystery.

Hero of the match title goes to Extoller Soulward, though the one beast handler would be a good candidate too.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Influence Gone All Wrong or: What's Wrong with My Scaverous?

I happened to get a little extra free time today, and obviously it went into gaming.

However, everything came about so extempore that I really couldn't arrange a game with anyone in such a short time.

But Vassal helped me through these hard times.

I met a random, nice person there and we played a 25 point game there.

What is so wonderful about Vassal is that you get to play against army combinations you really aren't used to. Like this time. I have never played against Zaal, not in Mk1 or now in Mk2.

So, let's begin this story.

My list was:

Lord Exchumator Scaverous
- Ripjaw
- Cankerworm
- Reaper

Maximum unit of Mechanithralls
Necrosurgeon & Stitch Thralls
Skarlock

And opponent was playing:

Zaal & Kovaas
- Cyclops Raider
- Cyclops Raider
- Cyclops Shaman

Maximum unit of Nihilators
Venator Flayer Cannon
Ancestral Guardian
Extoller Soulward

Opponent won the starting roll. Mortenebra is acting as Scaverous, and Cyclops Savages are actually Raiders. Picture is taken from the end of first round.

Death Ward on Reaper was put to good use on opponents next turn, as Far Striked flayer cannon took shots at the warjack. Which was really something that impressed me. The utility of Far Strike and flayer cannon. I can't wait to try to use the same combo with Hexeris to start the feat chain...

As I was quickly taking look at Zaal now and then, I realised how good counter he is against Scaverous - Awakened Spirit helps to fight Scaverous' own feat, and obviously his mastery over friendly souls denies that one thing Scaverous thirsts the most.

Anyway, all I did mostly on my next turn was Scaverous casting Feast of Worms on the gathering of Nihilators. However... being a bit difficult to see how big that 4" template really is in playing board that's just pixels, I woefully underestimated the range.

Luckily I still got two nihilators down and a couple of damage points to the cyclops shaman.

Next opponent charges with nihilators. They decimate swathes of mechanithralls.

Cankerworm is mauled up rather heavily, too, and I think I've never seen it take damage in such an economic a way. It was left with only three damage boxes left after cyclops shaman and aiming cyclops raider had shot at it. One in cortex, movement and head.

Most of the mechanithralls just grew back.

Three came from Necrosurgeon and two from feating Scaverous with excarnates.

Cankerworm, loaded with focus, charges to Cyclops Shaman, attempting to armor-pierce it. However, it misses. Even with a boost.

Skarlock casts Icy Grip on nihilators, and then renewed mechanithralls charge them.

It's curious how difficult it is to hit def 11 models and, once knocked down, damage arm 15 with p+s 11 +3d6 and a second time at 11 +2d6.

And no, I haven't done complaining. As you remember, I had used Black Gate with Scaverous. That meant that my Cephalyx Overlords would pretty much be useless if I didn't get the boosted attack roll to bear!

So I used two Influences.

One on a nihilator that wasn't even in range for anything, and once on Ancestral Guardian that had a nihilator in front of it.

Well, the problem is, the Ancestral Guardian had Last Stand on it. So it made an attack and then it... died.

And Kovaas appeared. With 3 souls.

As it turned out, about 3-4 pixels more and Scaverous would have been out of its charge range.

But, he wasn't.

Zaal used his feat and cast Last Stand on Kovaas.

A broadside of shooting from every possible model + a charge from Kovaas with 3 souls and 5 ancestral rage tokens for use...

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Two player Rummikub

This evening went playing Rummikub with a friend.

Writing detailed texts about the happenings within game would be somewhat... retarded.

But maybe I could write down some thoughts about the game with only two players.

We played five rounds, and to be honest, the scoring system pretty much sucks with only two players. Also, the nature of the game changes somewhat too, as the board doesn't change all that rapidly.

This leads to plenty of situation, where if the other player has to draw an extra chip, you probably have to do that too.

It's still not bad style of playing, but scoreboard is quite useless.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Story of a Saeryn that cast no Blight Bringer

Now, today I had a chance to play against Legion of Everblight, which is somewhat rare around here.

We had a 25 point game, and my list was:

Scaverous
- Reaper
- 2x Helldiver
- Nightwretch
- Deathripper

Maximum unit of Mechanithralls
Necrosurgeos & Stitch Thralls
Warwitch Siren

And opponent had:

Saeryn
- Typhon
- Scythean
- Harrier
- Shredder

Forsaken
Shepherd
2x Spell Martyrs

First of all, all the pictures are somehow quite dark, so excuse me for that. Maybe it doesn't actually matter, as the shaded area is the one with unpainted miniatures *cough*

I lost the starting roll again.

First picture is taken from the end of my first turn, where Death Ward was cast on Reaper and Mechanithralls had been ghost walking through the forest.

Things looked just fine at that point.

Saeryn wanted to use her feat, so two big beasts came towards my front lines. I was thinking that nice, at least they weren't engaging things too much. Typhon had Banishing Ward and Scythean had the... uh, name escapes me, the resurrection spell.

Typhon tried to spray at Reaper but didn't really do anything.

Well, then was my turn to try dodging two heavy warbeasts that I couldn't target with melee attacks.

I had grand plans and all, but none of them really came to fruition.

I ran mechanithralls to engage the shredder in attempt to draw the inevitable blight bringer out. I might have actually lost only one mechanithrall, who was maybe out of range of the surgeon.

Then Scaverous decided to use his feat. I wasn't the best placed Black Gate, maybe, at least when the damage rolls were so poor and I didn't get Saeryn under it.

Anyway, telekinesis was cast on Scythean so Nightwretch could take an aiming bonus against it. One telekinesis was cast on the Nightwretch too, Feast of Worms with a damage boost on Scythean (with only couple of damage points in). With the lone remaining focus he cast Death Ward on himself.

This time I was clever enough to measure that Scythean couldn't just walk into melee with Scaverous and beat him up. However, this resulted in Saeryn not getting under Black Gate either, so it was a win some, lose some situation.

Nightwretch did very little to Scythean. Damage rolls, as I said, were horrible.

Reaper dragged Typhon into melee with it in attempt to tie up those sprays of doom. It just hit and did one point of damage. Problem "solved" at the cost of 7 points.

That was all I could do.

What opponent did next was something I would've expected a turn ago.

First, Scythean runs into melee with Scaverous. I thought I was cool with that.

Harrier ran and engaged Nightwretch, and Typhon expectedly wrecks the Reaper, at the same time engaging Deathripper.

Shredder frenzied, by the way, and failed to hit a mechanithrall with a boosted attack roll.

Saeryn moved into melee with a mechanithrall. She didn't attack.

Pfft.

Saeryn hides herself best from my retaliation by hiding within my troops...

Oh, Scaverous and Scythean are placed a little funnilly, because three scythes just couldn't fit into two front arcs that supposed to be in base-to-base contact.

Well, I was confident I could deal with the Scythean, though it would take most of my remaining army to do that.

Warwitch Siren managed to Shadow Bind the harrier and rolled absurd damage to it, and helldivers ate shepherd and did four points of damage to Forsaken. Now, when I'm writing this, I see this as a sign of things to come.

Deathripper did some real damage to Typhon, and then it was my attempt to get rid of the hulking beast in front of my warcaster.

Scaverous himself cast ghost walk on mechanithralls and unleashed remainig focus as attacks at Scythean. Damage rolls were good, but the beast didn't go down. It was left around five hit boxes.

But no worries! Three mechanithralls got into contact with it, two of them in the back arc.

Things looked nice when first mechanithrall hit and scored damage enough to left it with two damage boxes.

Then, first mechanithrall on the back arc. Rolls 1, 2. That's a miss.

Second mechanithrall. Rolls 1, 3. That's a miss, too.

So... crap. Crap crap crap. The word pretty much echoed in Scaverous' ancient skull.

Now, then it was opponents turn.

Everything else looked good, but then it was time to resolve whole sorry Scythean affair.

First boosted attack, hit and gave 4 points in. So it was kinda exciting.

Second boosted attack, hit and damage was boosted too. Roll was 2,2,3 and Scythean was left with only one fury left to force. But this triggered blood bath.

Last fury was used for attack roll boost. So, Scaverous had 7 damage boxes left. On averages he would die.

You can see the card and the roll in the picture included:

Friday, December 9, 2011

PVA glue pond, or an excuse for an update

Been playing less, and been painting less, but somehow I had a short spree at easy terrain... err... painting and even a little bit constructing?

I got the craters as freebies from a small trade some time ago. I think they were from manufacturer called "pegasus" or something like that. Anyway, I messed them up with a little bit of sand and a few ruined statue pieces. I think they look nice enough on table, though matt varnish still shines a bit too much.

Anyway, the terrain piece I can tell more about is the PVA glue ponds.

I cut a little pond from some sort of plasticard and slowly build up the banks with milliputty that had been left in excess in other projects.

Then I glued some sand to the banks and painted the bottom of the water dark blue.

There are two layers of PVA glue there, both of which were colored a little. I tried to make some swirlywhirly out of the paint mixed with PVA to create even some illusion of water.

It doesn't look too fancy, but that is a fine example what you can do pretty easily with not too much materials involved. Surely beats a blue scrap paper?