Let's Get Competitive - Warmachine #1 - Irish Masters 2014 Dojo Part One

It's been way to long since I've posted over here, but never fear (poetry right there)! I'm back with a brand new series!

Let's Get Competitive will track my journey to become a better player across a variety of game systems. As you can see, I'm starting this off with Warmachine as it's the game I play the most of at the moment and also because my goal for this game is to become a good competitive player.

When I last left you I had just played in a Steamroller tournament down in Wicklow at NWG and I didn't do to badly! I won two out of my four games which is a result that I'm pleased with. Since than I haven't been up to much in terms of gaming.

And what about now? The Irish Warmachine and Hordes Masters will take place next weekend. I originally intended to go as a spectator, hoping to learn a bit from watching the competitive play and maybe getting a few games in with some newer players who might be doing the same. So this was my plan up until a few days ago where I said screw it, LET'S DO THIS!!!

A Masters tournament requires you to bring three 50 point lists, complete with character constrictions, and you must play each of them at least once. I currently own 40 points worth of miniatures and have a grand total of one warcaster so there is no way I could possibly enter without some lending going on. This means I don't have a definitive list of what I can or can't bring making list building slightly more difficult.

Enter the dojo.

For those not familiar with the term, dojo-ing is basically coming up with ideas and writing army lists. I'm going to have to do a serious amount of it over the next week or so.

The first thing to decide is how will I approach building these three lists? Will I write them so that each list handles a different match up? Should I write a high armour list, a swarm list and one different list? Or should I go for the classic attrition, assassination, control trio? The last one is what I'll go for for now.

Next up is warcasters. I know I definately want to take Kommander Sorscha (from now on referred to as pSorscha) because she is the caster I'm most familiar with and the only one I own. The other two I'm undecided about. The three I'm really considering are pButcher, pVlad and pIrusk. I will most likely not get any practice games in with them and these are the other three casters I know well enough. Now I have to slot the casters into my building approach. My ideas are:

Attrition - pButcher, pIrusk
Assassination - pButcher, pVlad, pSorscha
Control - pSorscha, pIrusk

I think pButcher suits attrition because he is very killy and very hard to kill avoiding any quick game overs with an easy assassination run. His feat boosts damage to friendly models and so they can clear out more of my opponents models bumping me up in the attrition game. His feat is also the reason he makes a good assassination caster. Get him within 10'' of your opponents war-noun and they're as good as dead. His feat can also allow your army to take them out from afar.

pIrusk can be played as both an attrition and control caster because of his feat and spell list. His feat makes your army a lot harder to deal with for a turn and his spell Inhospitable Ground should stop most enemies getting near an objective, flag or zone.

pSorscha shuts down your opponents army her feat can guarantee you up to 4 Control Points meaning you're only one away from winning the game. This ice queen can also assassinate high defence casters if you catch them in her feat range or clip them with her Freezing Grip spell.

pVlad is the odd one out here. I'm never really sure how to play him but if I do end up taking him I'll use him for assassination. A three focus, 'Blood of Kings'd Vlad in your enemy's face should be enough to win me the game.

So that's as far as I've gotten. If you have any input, go ahead and reply to my topic on the:

Privateer Press Forums - http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?192402-Three-List-Masters-Dojo

Or the:

Muse on Minis Forum - http://museonminis.com/forums/index.php?topic=3447.0

Congratulations if you've made it this far! Thanks for reading and sorry about the wall of text, more pretty pictures next time.

All the best,
Conor

Warmachine: My Journey So Far...

Hi all!

So for those of you don't know, Warmachine is a game published by Privateer Press and was created back in 2003. It is sent in a steampunk world called the Iron Kingdoms and in the game you control a soldier-sorcerer, who has the ability to control giant steam-powered robots called warjacks, and your warcasters army.

I first got into this game in October 2012 by buying the Khador Battlegroup:

Fast forward to March 2013 and I haven't done much. Over that time I managed to get the box assembled and slap a basecoat on the two 'jacks. Then I stumbled across the Warmachine and HORDES Irish Facebook Group. A few weeks later I was competing in a 25 point beginners tournament with a generous loan of another player's army. I played four games that day and was hooked. I learnt a lot about the game and my army and even managed to win two of the games! One by a jammy tiebreak and the other by my pure skill......good one.

Since then I've been slowly building up my force which currently sits at 37 points and I've attended three other tournaments with the most recent being at the Irish wargaming convention NWG which I will probably write a report on soon.

Anyway, tons more to come including tournament reports, hobby work and more...

Happy Gaming guys

Welcome!

Hey everyone Conor here!

Well I finally got it together and am writing this first of hopefully many blog posts. So as I hope you have managed to guess from the title, this blog is about miniature war gaming and there might be the occasional post about board games, card games and other geeky things.

So first a bit about myself. I started gaming back in 2006 after seeing, what  I remember being, a fantastically well painted Ultramarine Space Marine army for Warhammer 40,000 on a shelf at a friends house. This army had everything the eight year-old me dreamed of. Heavily armoured super-humans, huge tanks, squads of roaring motorbikes and many heroes to lead them. I was hooked immediately. My friend gave a starter game where most of the rules were made up and I loved it. I started collecting a few metal figures before, that Christmas, Santa brought me the Battle for Skull Pass boxed game. Many a happy hour were spent throwing paint at the goblins and dwarves and facing them off across the kitchen table. Warhammer Fantasy never really took off for me and a few months later I was back playing 40k. A few more of my friends started playing and over the next few years I built up an army of Space Marines from a chapter of my own creation, the Golden Spears. Many battles took place between the Golden Spears and the Ultramarines, Necrons and Orks up until 2010 where after all my other friends giving up playing, and me moving up to secondary school I decided to put my hundreds of models, books and issues of White Dwarf into the attic and let them gather dust...

Fast forward a year and there I was with too much free time on my hands and not much to do. I had become interested in history, specifically World War II stuff through Band Of Brothers and other books of Stephen E. Ambrose. I suddenly remembered hearing about a wargame set in World War II. I

I spent hours researching Flames of War before going into my Local Gaming Store, Gamers World, ready to buy 'Open Fire' the Flames of War starter set. It was then when I realised just how small 15mm was. I decided Flames of War wasn't for me and, necause I didn't want to return home empty handed, I bought a box of Tyranids for 40k, some glue, and got to work.

I spent about a year collecting and painting my 'Nids and over that time got increasingly annoyed with Games Workshop as a company. The final straw was, the day after the release of 6th edition I went into my local Games Workshop and when I said I was looking for a game I was told "Oh, we don't 'support' 5th edition anymore, you can't play that in the shop!" They then tried to sell me the new €60 rulebook. I left the shop angry and walked across to Gamers World were they were extremely sympathetic. There was a tournament underway so I got talking to some of the players and realised the wargaming scene was a good bit bigger than I thought. Around that time I stumbled upon w-ired.com the Irish Wargaming website and forum.

I decided to try something new so I picked up the Khador battlegroup for Warmachine, a game which I had been looking at for a while however it wasn't until March that I started playing at a 25 point beginners tournament.

Since then I've been slowly building up my army and am playing in as many Warmachine and Hordes tournaments as I can with poor enough results, but I'm having a ball while doing it.