Salt City Gladiator Games Recap - Part 1

The view from the front, looking at the TO
table -- you can see one of the Henchmen
taking pictures of the table.

Almost all the pictures in this post came from the Intermountain Malifaux Facebook Group -- my phone died on the first day, and I simply forgot to take pictures on the second.  If you're a Malifaux player, or someone simply interested in the game, and in the Intermountian area, please come join us.

Other pictures came from the A Wyrd Place Facebook Group -- if you're into Malifaux, Puppet Wars, Evil Baby Orphanage, or anything else Wyrd, join that group.

The picture of the Henchman Hardcore game came from the TO's Twitter account.  Follow him!


This last weekend was the first annual Salt City Gladiator Games -- a 2 day tournament / convention, featuring Warhammer 40k and WarmaHordes, but with an open play area that had Malifaux, Infinity, Dark Ages, and HeroClix demos and tournaments throughout, as well as speed painting and a painting competition -- and I had the opportunity to attend.  My initial plan was to play both Malifaux tournaments -- which I did -- and get in as many game demos as possible.

The view from the TO's table --
that's Jason Tuttle, the TO, walking away.

Day 1 - Friday, and the Malifaux Henchman Hardcore Tournament

I was lucky enough to get Friday off work so I could get the full Gladiator Games experience, so Evan and I showed up about an hour after the doors opened.  There were WH40k and WarmaHordes qualifier tournaments happening throughout the day, but we weren't there for those games so we had time to kill.  First things first, we checked out the eight Malifaux tables (visible on the right) -- there was a lot of variety, and enough terrain that the Ortegas and LaCroixs weren't going to have an unfair advantage throughout the tournament (there was at least one table without cover through the middle area, which I felt the full force of on Day 2, but one out of eight isn't bad).  After that, and a quick lap of the entire event to see what other games were playing on (WH40k were pretty standard, and I had no idea WarmaHordes played on basically empty tables), Evan and I set up for a practice / friendly / demo game.


As an aside, on our second day, playing a second non-tournament game a full two hours before the tournament started, we were essentially asked by another player why we would bother playing games for fun, instead of standing around waiting for the tournament to start. This player would go on to be the most complained about player in the tournament -- he seemed to intentionally waste his opponents' time during the Henchman Hardcore game through surfing on his phone and calling over the TO for clarification on everything that wasn't going his way, and finished the two-day event by arguing with the TO about how he should have placed higher because of... something...  This is all I'm going to say about him, but it's a sad reality of the competitive scene that there will always be "That Fucking Guy. (TFG)"

During our first friendly game, Evan was trying out his newly purchased-and-assembled Lilith crew so he could get a feel for her before the actual event started.  I don't remember a whole lot about the Strat/Scheme Pool, or our crew make ups, but a few stand-out things happened:

•  I had Kang and Miss Step (the official counts-as-Howard Langston) fairly close together, and Evan didn't like the look of them, so he attacked Kang with a Mature Nephilim.  The Nephilim landed in some trees (his base wouldn't fit between them), got a decent attack off on Kang, and was then decapitated by a Flurry from Miss Step.
• Evan and I both took Frame for Murder, then proceeded to pit our two patsies against each other.  Barbaros and a Gunsmith spent two or three rounds attempting to have the other kill them before a Fire Gamin-caused splash of Barbaros' Black Blood took the Gunsmith out.  Barbaros was then killed by Mei, herself, so we both got full points.

After that we grabbed lunch and picked up Evan's Battlefoam bag and Beckoner model that had been delivered to his house. 

Upon returning, I got a demo of HeroClix in, which was interesting -- you could tell the person who gave me my demo loved the game, but he wasn't great at running a demo, so he spent probably an hour explaining rules and random neat things to me before we ever pitted models against each other.  I wasn't getting it -- I am a person who learns by doing, not being told -- so we ran a 275 point 1 vs 1 game of Ronin the Accuser vs. Cosmic X-23 (by the way, when did she get a last name?).  During that part of the demo, I figured the game out, and it's a lot of fun despite being rules-heavy.  I'll probably pick up a starter box to play with Ninja within the next few weeks.

 

Henchman Hardcore

Finally, it was time for the Henchman Hardcore (again, pictures on the right).  In case you aren't familiar with the format, it's a 20 Soulstone Henchman-lead game with exactly four models per side.  No totems, no summoners, Turf War is the only Strategy, and Assassinate and Make Them Suffer were the only Schemes.

Through some peer pressure, we were able to cobble together a 10-player tournament.  A few of these players had never played Malifaux before, so their first game was going to be their demo.  My first opponent was one of these players -- he had plenty of experience with tabletop games, so he picked things up pretty quickly, and I feel like I did a decent job explaining the game (decent enough that the two Henchmen that were available left our table alone to concentrate on teaching the other new players, anyway).

Evan and I both played against TFG during this, which soured our taste for him (during Evan's game he did the aforementioned phone-surfing, and he called over the TO and decided to make dinner plans during mine), but otherwise it seemed to go well.  We ended up in the middle of the pack, and I got a lucky draw in the raffle and ended up with a M1E Leveticus box set.

We learned that Henchman Hardcore, due to the rapid-fire nature, is NOT a good format for people who are prone to panic attacks.

We finished the night by grabbing food with the Henchmen, and a few other players, and played a couple rounds of Hex Hex at dinner.  All in all, it was a great first day.

#6MMRPC Week 2 Wrap-up

Matney here.

This was an interesting week as far as the Six Month Mountain Reduction and Painting Challenge goes -- on Monday, I did as I said I was going to and purchased some Malifaux stuff from my liquidating LGS; then, on Tuesday, my GenCon order from Wyrd showed up, adding ANOTHER crew box (The Dreamer) and another Teddy to my pile.  In spite of that, I got quite a bit done.

On the left, you can see the current state of my oil-painted void-wretch.  I'm sad I'm losing those deep blacks I had, but I like the brighter white -- when I'm done, a water color wash will bring the blacks back, which will be fine.  My biggest gripe on this, now, is that it looks like I'm drybrushing, even though I'm not.

At work, I've been picking away at a super long-term commissioned Dark Eldar -- just the Warriors, right now -- and I don't have a picture to follow up for that (I'm not at work -- I'll update this blog, tomorrow, with pictures of those minis.
Finally,at home I've been grinding away at assembling things.  On the right, you can see this week's haul: Teddy, 2 Convict Gunslingers, 3 Drowned, 3 Crooligans, 3 Fire Gamin, Molly, Rogue Necromancy, and the Necrotic Machine.

I spent part of this week considering my plan of attack for the #6MMRPC, and I've come up with this:

• Phase 1: Assembly.  Get everything I currently have from Malifaux assembled.  I should have most of Phase 1 done by the end of this week.
• The Dark Eldar project will be included in this challenge.  Luckily, everything for that is assembled.
• My personal WH40k stuff won't be included in this challenge, as I'm currently sawing all my Tac Marine legs off to reposition them all, and plan on repeating that process with my Terminators.
• I'm not planning on tackling my Reaper Bones in this #6MMRPC, because that's just outrageous.
• Phase 2: Gap filling.  Yes, this is normally part of Assembly, but I've put it off so long on so many models that it's a legit Phase, this time.  I'm going to experiment with various methods -- I'll have to order some Color Shapers to try Liquid Green Stuff in a way I've seen be successful, but I'm also going to try simple Green Stuff, Milliput, and a mix of baby powder and Future (honestly, I hope that's the most successful -- I hear it's sandable, but it's also damn cheap).  This should be done by the end of October.
• Some models will be used at the Salt City Gladiator Games, so they will jump ahead to basing with or without gap filling.  I won't paint them without gap filling, though.
• Phase 3: Basing.  After all my gaps are filled, I'm moving to basing.  I really prefer scenic bases, so this is going to be slower than the previous two phases -- I plan on only getting one base done per night.
• At this stage, I will be deciding and documenting color choices to make the next step more effective.
• Phase 4: Base coating.  After everything is based, I plan on base coating everything.  No shading, and only the most basic detailing.  I plan on doing this with an airbrush to speed things up, so part of making that successful will depend on how well I document and determine all my color choices.  For airbrushing, I plan on only using colors straight from a bottle to make reproduction easier, but also to prevent wasting paint.  After that, I'll clean up my airbrushed stuff with a brush and do the detailing and smaller areas I couldn't hit with a brush.
• Priming will fall into this stage, too.  Up to this point, I've primed gray with a white overspray, but I think I'm going to move to straight white as it's always proven to be easier to make things darker than to make them lighter.  At least, that's how it has been for me.
• Phase 5: Clear coating. Once I hit this point, I recognize that my process will slow SIGNIFICANTLY, and I'll return to playing with my base coated models.  The clear coat will be to make the base coats more resilient while they're played with.
• This may be as far as I get for the #6MMRPC
• Phase 6: Detail painting.  I want to start painting everything I can in oils, which will slow everything down.  I want to do only a handful of models at a time, one model a night (giving a week per layer to cure), and I don't expect to finish everything I've base coated within the year.
  
  Throughout this process, I'll continue to paint the Dark Eldar at work.  HQs and such will be painted with oil paints, but troops and vehicles will remain in acrylics.  They will be the first models through every step of the process (after a few test models from my own test-model pile. (Note to painters: If you don't have a handful of metal models to test out techniques on, GET SOME -- metal models can be easily stripped with Acetone, unlike plastics, which make them ideal to messing up on.)
  
  This is an ambitious project, but I hope to knock it out.
   

Battle Report: 200 Pt. Kill Team and 1520 pt 2 on 2

Matney here.  Last week, I showed you my DA/SoB roster for our 200 point Kill Team game that we played on Saturday.

None of us had played Kill Team before, and it's kind of a toss up whether we will again.

In addition to my DA/SoB army, Erock played Chaos (I didn't get a roster from him), Ammon played 10 Necron Deathmarks that were 100% identical (and I believe 100% stock), and Aaron played Grey Knights.

In our first games, Erock and I faced off while Aaron and Ammon faced off on the other side of the table.  Erock and I started out pretty evenly -- he killed my Seraphim in Turn 1 with a lucky shot, then our Terminators even destroyed each other on Turn 2 (a pair of sixes To Wound and a pair of ones for the Armor Saves.   He destroyed my Repentia on his half of Turn 2, then in Turn 3 I cut his Berserkers in half with my Retributor's Heavy Flamer (one burst from my half, then a Wall of Death when he charged her).  Unfortunately, that didn't save her life.

At the end, it came down to three of his Berserkers and his Sergeant against my Space Marines, where he whittled me down.

On the other side of the table, Aaron tried to sneak his Knights around buildings while Ammon took the opportunity to get the high ground with his snipers.  It was a slow game, and one that I didn't get a lot of information off of, but Ammon won.

In the second set, Ammon and Erock faced off (I honestly don't know who won, there), and I faced Aaron.  I dropped my Repentia for another Space Marine (I know I had a backup plan, but I nixed that).

We both started by sneaking around buildings -- I got my Space Marines into the same high ground Ammon used the round before, and covered the middle ground with my Sisters and Terminator.

My Terminator took out his all but one of his Terminators, my sisters took out most of his Grey Knights, his Terminator took out my Seraphim while his remaining Knight wiped out all but one of my Space Marines, so my Terminator bashed in his Terminator with a Thunderhammer, and it all came down to one of my Marines, my Retributor, and my Termie bashing on his remaining Knight in assault.  It was probably Turn 9 when the dice gods gave me that 1 on his save I was waiting for.

After that, Erock stated that he didn't really enjoy Kill Team, and Ammon suggested that we play a 2 vs. 2 1500 point game.

Erock and Ammon teamed up with Chaos / Necrons where Aaron and I teamed up across the table with Grey Knights and Dark Angels -- I took the Dark Vengeance set, minus the Librarian plus Belial to fit the FoC.

Turn 1 was where it started going downhill for our side -- Erock and Ammon killed off all but one of my bikes, I don't believe we killed a single thing of theirs.

Turn 2 I Deep Striked my Termies right in front of the Chaos Space Marines holding an objective (also, right in the middle of the battlefield), and Aaron wanted to keep his in reserves longer, but the dice predicted he'd drop his Terminators right behind mine.

So, for the next two turns, our 11 Terminators took EVERYTHING they had.  Monolith, Deathmarks, the Land Raider...

After they killed all 6 of mine and 2 of Aarons, we called it a night (we'd been playing for 8 hours, and it was 11:30 PM).

The two things I learned from this game are: Sisters with flamers are AWESOME, and I need to be more efficient with my Fast Attack.

Weekend Update: November 2-4, 2012

Taken from TSR Info

Matney here.  Most of our geek-stuff happens on Friday and Saturday nights, which is also where we have the least amount of time to keep the blog updated, so I'm starting a new series for Weekend Updates where I'll briefly recap everything and link to the more in-depth blogs.  Welcome to Weekend Update #1!

WH40K Kill Team: Matney's Roster

The Sacred Rose by CELENG (DeviantArt)

Dave here.  This weekend, Eric and I -- as well as a few friends -- are going to spend some time playing some Warhammer 40k.  Specifically, 200 point Kill Teams.

You can find rules on Kill Teams all over the place online, but the common theme is that they're 200 points and that you can pay the per-model price for less-than-standard sized units (Want only a pair of Space Marines?  Sixteen points each!).