New Year, New Army

Yes, I know it's almost the end of February, but I stand by this title.

I recently acquired a Dark Legion army for the game Warzone at a discount from a distributor we order from, and thought I'd give it a shot.

The whole shebang.

Now, I haven't been the most pleased with Prodos' sculpts. I Kickstarted Warzone years ago and got some Brotherhood figures that I built, painted, and played with. I found the material tough to work with, the casting sub-par, and the detail too much and too small, making painting a chore. I wrote this off as working through some kinks in the Kickstarter process, and happily bought a Capitol starter set, which remains unpainted to this day.

I noticed one thing as soon as these Dark Legion boxes arrived at the shop, and that was new box design. In fact, a lot of them had the Warzone Resurrection 2nd edition logo on them. When I opened the boxes I noticed that the material is markedly different than anything I've seen Prodos offer in the past. Instead of clipping the pieces off of these huge trapezoidal pieces of resin, they were separated and in baggies. The material was tougher, more defined, and grey as opposed to this powder blue.

Necromutant Squad

Overall I'm much more impressed with these figures even though there are some odd casting mistakes such as this:

look at that flash under the arm. That's the
opposite half of the arm showing through.

I want to raise another point as well. That of bases. Warzone Resurrection uses round-lipped bases, the same ones Warmachine/Hordes, Dark Age, and many other miniatures games made after 2003 use. I'm not a huge fan of these. My issue with them is one of aesthetics: a base is a way to present a model. It is often done up to bring cohesion to an army, and it's a platform that keeps the model from falling over. A lipped base encroaches on that space. What do I do with the lip, paint it the same color as the material and thus have this strange-looking blobby hill that the model is surrounded by? Do I paint it black like many studio painters do and have this donut-shaped edge encroach on the model? It's constricting, and I've actually gotten tired looking at these bases.

My solution was to go with beveled bases. You'll recognize these as the ones used by Games Workshop, Corvus Belli, and Target Games back in Warzone's 1st and 2nd editions. GW actually has a huge assortment of round and oval bases in their web store, so replacing 40mm, 50mm, and even 80mm bases is a breeze. The one sticking point is 30mm bases. The round-lipped bases are a unique size. Most model manufacturers make a 25mm base 'cause it's an inch. Boom! Easy. Most models' footprints take up an inch of space. Lately GW has even been producing 32mm bases, but there's the problem: it's too big.

If I ever wanted to play in tournaments or against people outside of my Warzone gaming circle (currently there's three of us) it may cock some eyebrows that I'm putting some models on bigger bases. Some might think I'm trying to gain an advantage by doing so. While I don't see myself doing either of these things anytime soon, it'd be nice to give my army some flexibility. The worst that could happen is that my search yields nothing, I go for 32mm bases and the world doesn't end.

Then I stumbled upon Armskeeper. No link is provided because their website is non-existant. A Google search revealed that they make 30mm beveled bases, and that while they're not available through our distributor (they may not even make them anymore), they're readily available through Game Kastle in California. I try and avoid online shopping, but when I do I try and order from brick-and-mortar stores. They sent them to me lickity-split, and for cheap considering I'd be paying for shipping from the US into Canada. I got them in under a week, and they're perfect.

So here's my first squad all assembled. I'm not going to work on too much more right now. I just moved into a new place, and I'm actually waiting to see if I get accepted into an even newer place, so I may be moving again in a month. I'd hate to have any models of my great new army damaged or lost in the move.

Lookit those beautiful, simple, bases!

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Mayhem and Miscellany

What a whirlwind two months!

There's been a ton of gaming packed in, and even more miniatures painting, and if I may say so, I think I've outdone myself with speed and quality.

This month started out with some Hobbit Strategy Battle Game hobbying. My gaming group heard rumblings that 40k was getting a re-boot, and so we were in that strange gaming limbo gamers often find themselves in during a changeover in rules. Oddly enough, every time this happens it results in us dusting off the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit Strategy Battle Games.

For this short dalliance, I painted up the last four figures my men of Númenor needed.

Isildur and his bros.

 We played some games, had some fun, but it was time for me to get back to my Slaanesh army for Age of Sigmar. There was the Wet Coast Grant Tournament coming up in July and I couldn't waste any time painting the last 1000pts needed in the army. I had struggled to get the first 1000pts painted in time for the Wargaming Without Borders (WGWB) tournament at the end of April and didn't want to be stuck doing the exact same last-minute stress-job on some figures (spoiler alert: I was).

Then the Warhammer 40,000 boxed set (Dark Imperium) got delivered to the shop. I painted up the Primaris Marines and Darren painted up the Death Guard, but they had to be done by release day on June 17th. I pulled some all-nighters and got them finished, mostly. I still need to do two highlights on the armor, but they're definitely table-ready.

Clockwise from top: Primaris Ancient, Lieutenant 1, Captain in Gravis Armor, Lieutenant 2

Inceptors

The whole shebang. 980pts (51 power)

Intercessors 1

Intercessors 2

Hellblasters

The next step will be finding out what size of game the Foodhammer tournament will be later this year, and work up towards it. The starter set has 969pts of Primaris Marines, and I have a grand total of three sets worth. 

Then after that is was right back into my Age of Sigmar force. I struggled to get 2000pts painted, and did so just at the last minute. I had a great time at the Wet Coast GT, and if anyone reading this can get a chance to make next year's (rumor has it it will be in February/March 2018), it's well worth it. I went 1-4, but won Best Painted, and (most-importantly) had fun. 

Game 1 vs. Ironjawz

My knights were no match for his Gore-Gruntaz

Oh look! More Gore-Gruntaz...

Guess who won?

The hell are you doing in the middle of nowhere?

Game 2 vs. Blades of Khorne

Don't crowd, lads!

20-year difference in models.

Daemonettes are not known for their attrition.

Game 3 vs. Flesh-Eater Courts

Game 5 vs. Disciples of Tzeentch

I'm so glad Tzaangors are back.

I actually did alright on this flank.

Now, I've gotten myself embroiled in an Age of Sigmar Skirmish campaign, which has me painting up these guys:

Which got me thinking: "Why not do a Stormcast army for Foodhammer this year (provided it's only 1000pts like WGWB was)?" So I picked up a box of Judicators (the old box that just had five), and crammed it into the army you get in the AoS starter set (the big one), and voilà, 980pts!

So that's what I've been up to these last two months: painting furiously with no sign of stopping. Now things can calm down a bit. I still need to have three Stormcast figures (a Lord-Relictor and two Liberators) painted for the start of the Skirmish campaign on the 22nd, but Foodhammer isn't until late Fall, and with plenty of notice I can avoid the follies of this Spring's scheduling.

On the Mutant Chronicles front, I haven't done much. I printed out the Venusian Apocalypse pdf I bought and am prepping for the long-haul of the campaign (which should begin in just over a month). I'm really excited! I love the RPG, and I'm glad my gaming group (who have no prior Mutant Chronicles experience) are excited about it too. 

I bought a "Blast Zone" F.A.T. Mat to simulate the bombed-out no-man's land of the Martian front, and Mitch Hunter to add to my Capitol force, but painting the starter box I already have has got pushed further back with all the Games Workshop excitement that's been happening these last couple months. I'll keep plugging away at them, but with my gaming group infatuated with 8th edition 40k, it's looking like the majority of my Mutant Chronicling this year will be the RPG and maybe the Siege of the Citadel, if that gets released.

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Just Another Mutant Monday

Another month where I've done nothing Mutant Chronicles related! But, I did promise that I'd check-in even if that was the case. On one note, I did propose (and was granted the permission) to run Mutant Chronicles as my RPG group's campaign in the late spring/early summer. I'll be running the updated Venusian Apocalypse campaign that Modiphius put out.

Meanwhile I've finished my 1,000pt Slaanesh army for Age of Sigmar, and the tournament was a success! I came in 6th place out of 21 gamers, and I won Best Painted! I'll post a picture as soon as my cellphone camera works again (long story). So now I have a bit of painting time before I expand the army to 2,000pts for the Wet Coast AoS tourney this summer. I plan to fit in some of my Capitol troopers in that time.

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Procrastinating and Doom Troopinating?

So March was a bit of a weird month for my hobbying, in that my social life reigned supreme over all. Not to brag, or nothin' but I was super busy being popular, you guys.

Anyway, instead of painting daemonettes for the Age of Sigmar tournament that's happening in two weeks (eep!), I decided that my precious hobby time should be concerned with sorting 20-year-old cards.

Voilà

So, it's a maddening process, mostly because I have thousands of Doom Trooper cards, and I'm organizing them in an insane method:

First I'm organizing them by set, chronologically. Then I'm organizing them by card type (color), then I'm organizing them by faction (icon in the top right corner), then they'll get organized alphabetically. But of course I'm leaving space open for any missing cards ('cause I don't got 'em all), so that's where that list on the clipboard comes into play.

That's a list of every card made for Doom Trooper. The problem is that it's not organized by set or type, it's just alphabetically with the set in brackets. So what I'm going to do is use different-colored highlighters to highlight the various sets, and then go from there. 

Now of course, this project is put on hold mostly because it's fucking insane and I need to work on these goddamn daemonettes before this Christ-cursed tournament!

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SLAAAAAAMMMMMBOOOOO!

Well lookey what GW released last weekend. Turns out I own the original Slambo (well, the pewter one that was available when they still had a Bitz Order service (mid-2000s)).

I'm gonna paint these two maniacs, and I'm gonna paint 'em Slaaneshi!

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Martian Madness

So, things go slowly on the Year of Mutant Chronicles. Hey! Don't blame me, Cardinal damn you! Blame all the great stuff that Games Workshop's putting out (and blame the fact that I'm king procrastinator, and am dragging my feet painting my Slaaneshi AoS army).

So what has been done so far? Well, I've begun reading a book (haven't finished it. Got distracted by Designers & Dragons), and I did some bases!

These were all done using the new Citadel Texture Paints, specifically Martian Ironcrust. I agonized forever over what to paint the bases of my Capitol troops to get that particularly Martian look. I settled on some weird concoction that used a lot of inks and washes, and to be honest I was so bummed about how crappy it looked that I completely forgot what I did. So I cracked these guys off their bases (not easy to do with resin figures), and put 'em on new ones and just painted the Martian Ironcrust on using the M Texture spreader (which looks gimmicky, but trust me, it works). Then I drybrushed it gingerly with Kindleflame and voilà! As you can see, as the Martian Ironcrust dries it cracks, giving it that desert mesa look.

Anyway, I get that in the Mutant Chronicles universe Mars is terraformed, but I imagine there's still some rusty deserts out there.

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I DID IT!

You guys, I did it!

It only took me 2.5 hours, one glass of wine with dinner, and three beers, but I finished Morg 'n' Thorg! This bully's ready to hit the pitch.

Alright, I'm off to bed.

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An Ogre Enters Play

This Saturday one of the cards participants in Blitzmania receive allows them to hire an ogre for their team. Well, seeing as Games Workshop hasn't released an ogre figure for Blood Bowl yet, I'm painting one!

1990s Morg 'n' Thorg

Also, seeing as I won't have time to paint him tomorrow, I'm going to paint the whole figure tonight! Ladies and gentlemen, start your timers!

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A Very Mutant January

Actually not. Sadly, January contained no Mutant Chronicles madness aside from reading a book.

The month of January has been all about painting my Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl team in anticipation for Blitzmania, the worldwide Blood Bowl league happening at independent games shops all 'round the world (more on that Tuesday or Wednesday).

However, my one foray into the Mutant Chronicles universe so far this year came when I picked up the third and final book in the Apostle of Insanity Trilogy: Dementia by Michael A. Stackpole.

The first book in the series was In Lunacy by William F. Wu: a cyberpunk romp that was very compelling, but laced with some eye-rolling catch-phrases ("Zowee!"). Overall I liked the first book a lot, and if you own the first edition of Warzone you'll notice that most of the pictures in the book follow the story of the novel. The second book was Frenzy by John-Allen Price: a military adventure with some cringe-worthy derogatory terms for employees of the Mishima corporation, and plenty of Capitol Hoo-Rah! Less enjoyable than Mr. Wu's venture.

Anyway, I'm actually just halfway through Dementia (what a statement!), and I'm enjoying it. Stackpole is so far the most talented out of the three, and it's a neat little spy novel, and will hopefully wrap-up the trilogy nicely. I will admit, despite the pulp nature of the trilogy, I'm really drawn in to what happens to Lorraine Kovan, the MacGuffin in the whole trilogy.

So yeah, not much this month on the Mutant Chronicles front, and not much for the next couple months either, as I scramble to finish a Slaanesh daemon army for an Age of Sigmar tournament in April, but after that I'll hopefully be pulling double-duty of painting my Capitol force, and running an MC campaign (should my gaming group vote for that as our next game). Hey! I told you I'd update you even if nothing's going on.

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Crappy New Year!

Alright, it's been over a year since I posted this article where I set a goal for myself as if that year's gaming endeavors were a game. So how did I score? 13.75: Minor Victory. Callooh callay!

Let's break it down:

1. Blog More

Well this one just barely made a dent in the score. To be honest, I could've done better. Some months had only one post and the biggest gap was four months of not posting in June, July, August, and September! I'd like to keep this resolution for this year, but try to do so at least once a week. I think there's a lot of things I could post on, and a bit more self-discipline could maybe be the beginning of something more productive.

2. Paint 1000pts of Capitol for Warzone

Yup, didn't do this. More on keeping this resolution into 2017 later.

3. Run a three-session Mutant Chronicles campaign

I actually did more than this! It was fun, and I'd love to do it again (especially since Modiphius ported over the Venusian Apocalypse campaign to 3rd edition). More on keeping this resolution into 2017 later.

4. Play through the Age of Sigmar Path to Glory campaign

Nope... Didn't do this one either. Campaigns require a lot of commitment from everyone involved and my group didn't have that last year. Maybe I'll give it a shot again...

5. Speaking of campaigns: Run a Kings of War campaign

See above...

6. Attend at least one KoW and Star Wars: Armada tournament

I did two of one, and none of the other, though I did run the Star Wars: Armada regional tournament this year (note: I didn't count that in the score). I'll keep the Armada resolution, but maybe scrap the KoW one. I imagine if I get the impetus to play KoW again this year a tournament shouldn't be too hard to come by considering the traction the game has with my friends.

7. Paint an elf Kings of War army

Did not do this...

8. Play four new mid-level Eurogames this year

This year I played Kemet, and Isle of Skye (and correctly predicted that one's victory in the Kennerspiel). I'll keep this resolution for 2017

9. Play a serious game of Battlelore 2nd Edition

Sadly I didn't do this. I still love Battlelore and will keep this resolution, but it looks like Fantasy Flight Games might be stalling out on support for the game in favor of the Runewars miniatures game they're releasing this year (which I will probably give a miss to).

10. Just to make it an even ten: Run The Enemy Within Campaign for WFRP 1st or 2nd Edition

Nope. But I am playing in a 2nd edition WFRP campaign right now (The Thousand Thrones). I'd like to try this in 2017.

So what's in store for this year beyond the repeat resolutions above? Well it occurred to me while I was perusing the new 2nd edition of Warzone: Resurrection (which I love pedantically mentioning would actually mean it's Warzone's 6th edition) that there are a lot of Mutant Chronicles-based games available in 2017. There's Warzone and Mutant Chronicles RPG already available, with Siege of the Citadel and Doom Trooper on their way. This presented me with an interesting objective for this calendar year: I'm going to make 2017 the year of Mutant Chronicles!

I'll be checking in a least once a month to see what experiences I've had in that universe. Whether it's something as mundane as painting a Warzone miniature, to going to a tournament or running (or playing in) a Mutant Chronicles campaign. Even if I've done nothing I'll write about why that was, or how I plan to rectify that fact. Personally, I can't wait. I'll use the label "MC2017" to mark all the posts. See you all on Venus!

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Secret Santa Painting Challenge 2016

Every year (for the past... I wanna say four years) the shop I work at hosts, what we call, a "Secret Santa Painting Competition," though there's really nothing competative about it.

Really what it is is an event where people enter a model for another randomly-determined participant to paint for them. They can give some instruction, or none at all. It's pretty fun and it can be a great excuse to get a model painted that you weren't excited to do, and ti's also a chance for you to paint something you never would've painted, or haven't painted in a long time.

In my case, I got to paint a Space Ork (that's right... I'm bringing back the "Space" in "Space Ork"). I haven't painted one since the early 2000s, and I even got to try out painting a checker pattern on his suspenders (the jury's still out on whether I did a good job or not).

Here are all the finished models.

Here's the one I painted for my friend and co-worker, Gopaul.

CHECK out them checkers...

Here's the one that was painted for me.

Anyway, good fun, and a great way to end off 2016. See you all on the other side.

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Update of the Rings

Just a quick little update on how my games of the Lord of the Rings LCG are going. As you recall, I'm attempting to play through all the Saga Expansions that make up the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. I'm beginning with "The Hobbit: Over Hill and Under Hill" and goddamn is it hard!

I've played the first scenario four times now, twice with each of the suggested decklists at the back of the booklet inside the box, and I've only come close to defeating the troll brothers once. How the first scenario works is thus: It's divided into three parts. The first part only requires seven progress tokens to complete it, and the encounter deck is lacking in any type of enemies, so this is pretty easy to accomplish. In fact, the first time I attempted it, I breezed past the first part on turn one.

The second part is when the trolls come out to play. Tom, Bert, and William come marching out along with their troll cave, and spell doom for my party. The threat amount they dish out is enough to make you almost lose the game (and engage you, if you haven't made it to 50 threat) if you're not careful, so to mitigate this, I engage one on my turn. The problem with the trolls is that each one imparts a special rule to all of them. One makes it so that the trolls can only be fought by one character (and at armor 2, with 10, 11, and 12 wounds respectively, this isn't easy), one makes it so that no damage can be inflicted on them while in the staging area, and the third won't allow you to play attachment cards on them.

Now, it's still preferable to engage them, because if I don't, they engage me, and that means I draw a card from a deck of "sack" cards. These cards are only bad, as they immobilize various characters (each one's different) for indefinite periods of time. This means they can't do anything until the sack is removed (at which time it's put right back into the sack deck), and these opportunities come infrequently as I've found out.

Needless to say, this is a tough scenario. It only ends once the trolls are defeated or the encounter deck runs out of cards, in which case the sun comes up and the trolls are turned to stone. That's the third part of the scenario... It just ends. So really, the meat is in the middle.

So now I've tried each of the pre-made decks twice; it's time for me to deckbuild. I want to stick with heroes and allies that were present during the age of the Hobbit, and not stray into any LotR-era characters. I've never built a deck in LotRLCG before. I'll post it up where when I do and tell y'all how it went.

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Blood Bowl!

This week sees the re-release of the Games Workshop classic Blood Bowl.

I've had a rocky relationship with Blood Bowl in the past. When I first got into it in 1998 with the re-release of the third edition (in a thinner box with a blue border) I liked it. I thought it was a fun, goofy, game that was perfect for a nerdy kid who didn't like sports. It was kind of like a satire in that regard.

Anyway, I played it, I enjoyed it, and when GW removed it from their shelves and their catalog, I was more than happy to go back to Warhammer and 40k (also around that time there would've been Mordheim, Warmaster, Inquisitor and Battlefleet: Gothic to keep my attention). Years later when I worked for Games Workshop, the era of Specialist Games was in full swing, complete with Fanatic magazine adorning the magazine rack alongside White Dwarf.

At this time people were again talking about Blood Bowl. The difference was that I couldn't muster the energy to get excited about it. Again, there was a lot going on miniatures-wise, and I just couldn't get behind the bandwagon this time around (especially with the "living rulebook." As much as I think it's cool that the community was given control over the game, I can't stand ever-changing rulebooks).

So why's this time different? Maybe because my excitement surrounding Games Workshop is at the level that it once was in the '90s. They've really been hitting it out of the park lately with their community engagement, creative supplements, innovative rules designs, and stellar models. I'd feel a bit foolish not jumping on the excitement this time around. So on that note, I'm going to paint up the Orcs in the base set in the colors of the local Canadian Football League team here in Vancouver: the BC Lions.

Again, I'm not a football fan, but I am a Vancouverite through-and-through, and I don't get to paint much orange. I'm going to wait and see what their High Elf models look like if/when they release them, and I'll paint them up like the Seattle Seahawks (the other half of my family is made up of Seattleites. Not to mention the name "Seahawks" just screams High Elves), so I can rep teams from both sides of the 49th parallel. 

Not to mention a good reason to get into the game is the inevitable league that will spring up around this game. Campaigns and leagues are really my favorite parts of the hobby. 

I'll keep you updated on this project as well.

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The Nightmare Kingdom Cometh

(Still workin' on my AoS Slaanesh force, don't you worry...)

When I went to Kippers Melee in Nanaimo, BC a couple weekends ago a friend won a copy of the Warmachine 2-player starter set in a raffle. He's a bit apathetic about Warmachine/Hordes, and so agreed to trade me the Cryx half of the set for a Harlequin figure (score!). Now I've been playing Warmachine since it was first carried in games shops here in Vancouver, and while I focussed mostly on my Cygnar stuff in those days, I always had Cryx in my back pocket.

When I get into a miniatures game I always look for two things: An army closest to an elf archetype (Legion of Everblight and Retribution of Scyrah eventually fit this description), and/or an army closest to the Chaos archetype (that is, demon-worshipping barbarians), and while Cryx aren't exactly "demon-worshipping barbarians" (that would probably be the Orgoth in the Iron Kingdoms (IK) world), they are the most sinister of the IK factions. I'm very excited to potentially be working on a Cryx force.

All the bits that're fit to Cryx!

When MkIII came out for Warmachine and Hordes this year, I wanted to jump into it with my Legion of Everblight force because I played them the least out of my factions in MkII, but my gaming group was knee-deep into Kings of War at the time and one thing or another kept preventing us from really diving into MkIII. Now the impetus has died down, and I don't feel as pressured to just jump in and rev up to 11 with the game.

Warmachine/Hordes is a complex game; there are a lot of moving parts, and for a casual gamer like myself it can feel a bit overwhelming. With this little project I want to slowly work on this Cryx force and play games with my painted stuff (a novel concept in the Warmachine/Hordes gaming scene), before expanding it bit-by-bit. This is the dream of every veteran miniatures gamer. We have a tendency to jump in and buy box after box of stuff, overwhelming ourselves. This way I can treat MkIII like it's my first time experiencing the game. Anyway, more will be covered on this here blog. Stay tuned!

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They're taking Carmin to Isengard!

I'm still working on my Age of Sigmar (AoS) stuff for the Las Vegas Open (LVO) in February '17, but I'm a gamer, and like many gamers I'm often swayed by ideas or thoughts that come into my head. Recently I'm tugged towards Middle-Earth.

I work in a games shop, and as a games shop employee I have to be tuned in to what's happening in the gaming world. It seems that within the last year or more Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) has been shaking up its Living Card Game (LCG) line, starting with the acquisition of the Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) property, and continuing on with their separation with Games Workshop (GW), and the ending of Warhammer 40,000 Conquest and the final death of Warhammer Invasion. This got my attention and gave me an opportunity to take a look at my own LCG collection and take inventory to see what's missing, what needs to be acquired, and what needs to go.

At around the same time I've been taking another look at The Hobbit Strategy Battle Game by GW. This is spurred on by a friend's desire to give it another go after he re-watched The Hobbit movies. Of course, I don't want to take away any time spent on painting my AoS stuff, so what's a Lord of the Rings (LotR) nerd to do?

I'm going to give the LotR LCG another shot. I remember it being hilariously difficult to complete the quests when I first gave this game a go when it came out. However, I'm willing to give it another shot, this time taking my time and putting my paltry deck-building skills to the test. I'm going to use the LotR Quest Log (note: you must be logged-in to FFG's community site to view the link) and keep track of my progress and, most importantly, not get frustrated when things go poorly.

All the boxed expansions I own, to say nothing of the monthly
adventure packs!

Anyway, I have a lot to work through, obviously, and I'll make periodic posts about it here as well in case you care about that kind of thing. I'm going to start with the Hobbit expansions, then go on to the Lord of the Rings expansions (which are still ongoing). Then, depending on how I feel, I'll try all those adventure packs that have you play through the "behind-the-scenes" bits of the War of the Ring.

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From One Army To The Next

Been a while since my last post. What's been happenin'?

Well, not a ton obviously. One thing I managed to accomplish is the painting of 48 models to round out my Kings of War Chaos army (or Varangur, as they're known in the realm of Mantica) for a tournament I went to last weekend. I pretty much spent almost every free moment of time over the course of the last two weeks to finish these figures, and I did it! They're to a tabletop standard rather than something I'd enter into paint contests, but I'm very happy with them. I had to borrow some marauders from a friend as my final regiment of them wasn't ready for the tournament, but the rest of the army's done. I'll return to those final twenty figures when I return to the army and the game.

So how was the tournament then? It went alright. I came in 7th out of 8th, which was a little disappointing but then again my game results spoke for themselves: two losses and a draw. I'm not one to be too discouraged by tournament results, normally, but this time stung a little bit more because I noticed that over the last few years I haven't seen any improvement in myself as a player. In fact, during my third game I was completely confused as to what strategy to take. I started to wonder if I actually got this game at all—that is to say, if I understood it.

My opponents were great, and the organizer was dialed, and the group of friends I traveled with was great and we had a blast. I'll definitely consider going to this event next year. I'm not going to let this discouragement worry me too much, though. I've decided that I'm going to take a step back from the flurry that was these last two weeks and focus instead on the other tournament I have scheduled: The Las Vegas Open.

I've bought my ticket to the Age of Sigmar North American Championship at the Las Vegas Open next year in February. It's a 2000 point tournament using the General's Handbook Matched Play rules and I couldn't be more excited. I plan on bringing my Slaanesh army, which needs a few more painted warscrolls in order to bring it up to a playable 2000 points. I don't have a ton of time to finish it, but neither is it breathing down my neck. This should prove to be a nice palate-cleanser after furiously working on my brass-clad legions.

More on that tournement later, but for now, here are some pictures of the tournament I went to this previous weekend:

Note the borrowed marauders on the left.

Knights get double-charged.

 

Epic "boss fight" between my lord and his.

I even managed to get a 4-player game of Age of Sigmar in using my Kings of War figures:

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