A Challenger Appears

I've registered to be a Henchman for Wyrd Games. Being a Henchman includes the responsibilities of running demos for new players and events such as leagues and tournaments. Our FLGS Pandemonium in Garden City has a very strong retail presence for the game (they stock EVERYTHING), and a fledgling gaming group, so they have relaunched Malifaux Mondays.

As a Henchman I will be running open demos on Mondays from 6:00pm to 10:00pm with 4 different starter crews on hand for people to use, as well as my Terraclips board. In honor of getting accepted last night, I speed painted up this full Seamus starter box in 4 hours while watching the Olympics last night!

Here is a link to the event:
Malifaux Mondays on the Wyrd Forums

The Family vs The Gremlins

Today is the first day of Buckeye Battles 2012, and I will be down in the Columbus area playing the Skaven in a 2400 point Fantasy tournament. But while I am away I still have a blog post! Today we have another quick Malifaux game against Gremlins, where I used the Ortegas to take on Ophelia again. For our Strategy we flipped shared Treasure Hunt, which meant there would be a token in the center of the board that we needed to pick up and bring back to our deployment zone. For schemes I chose Hold Out, because I wanted the Gremlins to come towards my fire superiority, as well as Bodyguard on Perdita.

Breaking back into Malifaux

I have been meaning to start playing more Malifaux, and wanting to have games and hobby work for the blog every day is an excellent excuse to get in some small/shorter skirmish games. Our local group at Pandemonium has been wanting to restart their Malifaux Mondays again, so I hit up the store this past week to play with my Guild.

Everything BUT Warhammer

It's the week of Blood in the Sun II and I have been playing all of my hobby games EXCEPT Warhammer. Well that's not entirely true, I did play a close game last Saturday losing to Light Slaan Lizardmen 11-9. So what else have I been doing? Malifaux and Warmahordes, of course.

The Warmachine Steamroller League is in full swing, and I am sitting at an unlikely 2-2 which I am very happy with. I have also picked up a few more models, my favorite of which was a Rök conversion kit, and an oop metal Dire Troll which I used to convert Rök. Much better than the plastic version, imo:

I then spent a LOT of time this week trying to reboot Malifaux at our house. I spent time cleaning the computer / gaming room and making room for another 3x3 Malifaux / Terraclips setup. I wanted to make the board different and more intriguing this time, and added a second street level with supports, and a 3 story house with basement access from the ground level. I thought it was a cool idea, and it turned out very well:

Here is the ground floor, and basic framework. It took a while to line up the streets.

The second tier starts to show all of the balconies which will make the games much more interesting.

Lord Chomppy Bits for scale reference (on a 50mm round base)

The final table turned out very cool.

Combined I used 2 Buildings kits and 1 Streets kit from Terraclips, with 3 boxes of clips (and every single L-clip I had). The roofs and chimneys really finish off the look, which my previous table did not have. We are in the middle of the first game for the Malifaux Summer Campaign on the table and so far the layout has been very cool. We are already fighting in the buildings, n the elevations, and making good use of the cover.

I am currently on the ropes with my Seamus crew (Seamus, Avatar, 3 Belles, Sybell, Dead Rider) vs Andrea's Arcanists (Rasputina, Essence of Power, 2 Silent Ones, Kaeris, 3 Fire Gamin) but Seamus is about to transform and the Dead Rider is about to flank! We'll see how it turns out.

Also, I've been working on finishing up the Kirai crew. Picked up a few more models and pinned them this weekend.

 This weekend is BITSII. Keep an eye on Twitter for updates, and I will be posting a report upon my return!

Rhellion's 2011 Wrap-up

2011 has come to a close, and it was a great hobby year. My first serious year of Grand Tournaments and lots and lots of smaller tournaments has really allowed me to hone my Warhammer skills and set my sights on bigger things for 2012.

I made it to my first Adepticon and traveled to my first 2 day GT with Blood in the Sun. Next year I am hoping to make it to a third large multi-day event, maybe even 4 if I can make both Core Comp (in its new incarnation) and Buckeye Battles. I did decent at Adepticon almost breaking the top 20 in both large events, and had an undefeated 5-0 record at BitS but failed to place.

I didn't do as well this year in 'Ard Boyz, getting knocked out of Finals contention on table 2 of the semi's round 3. I'll be better prepared next time! Though I played in a LOT of smaller 1 day events and won most of them, keeping my tournament skills as sharp as possible between large events.

Hobby-wise I 'finished' my Skaven tournament army and picked up a giant Battlefoam 1520XL case to carry them around in to tournaments. Now I find myself adding more and more, wanting to fill the giant case with Skaven reinforcements... and I am close! I also went through a couple secondary armies without settling on a single one. Currently I have a Wood Elf army on the shelf, waiting for some hobby time.

I also picked up a new game in Malifaux! My wife has joined me in starting up her own crews (she has more painted than I do), and we actually have enough space to play in our small home on our 3x3 Terraclips modular 3d terrain. I am mainly a Guild player, and she is mainly Arcanist.

In the coming year I have bigger plans for entering the Skaven in tournaments and becoming an even BETTER player. Practice is the name of the game this year, and I played a LOT last year. Also, I just ordered my Skaven reinforcements to begin preparing for Adepticon 2012 in Chicago. In addition to all of my Skaven projects I really would like to get started on the Wood Elves, if not some other army.

Happy New Year!

GLWL vs IWFB is coming!

Coming up this month is our club grudge match! We are driving to the Chicago Battle Bunker to take on the Illinois Warhammer Fantasy Battles club in a 10 on 10 no comp slugfest. I have had a very off month for hobby work missing out on two tournaments I would have loved to attend, including the final Core Comp. I can only make so many trips from Detroit to Chicago on my weekends. Hopefully next year I can make some more! Stay tuned for a battle report of the day's events later in October, as well as some new additions I have been trying to work on for my Skaven.

In my other limited hobby time I have been building my Gen Con Malifaux models and playing some games with my wife on our Terraclips terrain. After playing some games on it I would definitely IMPROVE my rating to 9/10, the stuff is almost perfect for my needs at home. I have lots of Guild models primed and I am hoping to have a fully painted faction by the next tournament coming up at Pandemonium. I am planning on doing a full battle report of a Malifaux game soon, just in case you were interested in the game but haven't seen Malifaux in action yet!

Keep looking for updates. I'm not dead yet! Actually, let me correct that. My new D&D character died before reaching level 2. I'm now playing a Gnome Bard. Awesome.

-Rhellion

Terraclips Have Arrived

Today, my sets of Terraclips arrived. Terraclips are a new 3D card terrain made in conjunction with Wyrd for Malifaux and other miniatures games. I picked up the Streets of Malifaux and Buildings of Malifaux sets along with 2 boxes of clips (which are sold separately). After unpacking and punching out all of my pieces, I was unsure where to start!

Then I pieced together the frames of my first buildings, and it started to get easier.

After the buildings were complete(ish) I started to try and get an overall layout setup.

After I had a blueprint of my city setup, I started clipping them together, and added a few more elevated features.

I didn't think I wanted to work on second story buildings at first, but once I started I couldn't stop.

The only thing that stopped me was running out of clips! 

My initial thoughts are to rate Terraclips 8/10, they are a VERY nice product that I look forward to playing Malifaux on. Be sure to order extra clips. Lots of people online are thinking they will need fewer... but my setup was pretty simple and skipped a lot of possible connections and I still ran out early. I need another box! I would almost recommend 3 boxes of clips to anyone looking to build streets and buildings. If I had two sets of streets (or sewers) and only tried making elevations and not complex buildings, I may not need a third set.

The only real negatives are that some of the ladders are pretty flimsy, and I don't see holding out for the long haul. Also, I need to figure out a way to best transport this. Any ideas?

Gen Con Malifaux releases

It's my birthday today, and to celebrate I am spending 4.5 hours pulling my hair out trying to buy all of the Gen Con exclusive and pre-order minis on Wyrd's terrible online store. I finally finished my first order of the new Malifaux expansion and Avatar miniatures, and I am placing a second order of Terraclips Streets and Terraclips Buildings terrain. The reason for 2 orders is a special edition Female Convict Gunslinger model included with every order over $100. Lets just say I could have placed 4 orders, but I would have gone crazy trying to. Here is all of the stuff!

New Twisting Fates book!

Alternate Sculpt Seamus and Avatar Seamus

Alternate Sculpt Lady Justice 

Avatar Lady Justice

Alternate Sculpt Sonnia

Avatar Sonnia

Alternate Sculpt Perdita

 Alternate Sculpt Rasputina

Female Convict Gunslinger limited model

Nightmare Edition Teddy - Gen Con Exclusive

Malifaux Tournament

Saturday I played in my first ever Malifaux event, a 35ss Scrap with shared strategies. It was meant to be the League season end event, though out of the 16 or so players that participated in the League in some form, only 2 showed up. In the end we had 9 players in the tournament for a disappointing turnout, but a good time regardless. I brought my Perdita crew even though I had only ever finished 2 complete games of Malifaux. I went 0-2 in two games that were both close to going wither way, against 2 crews I hadn't played before. I didn't get to play a third opponent because of a third round bye.

I did win best painted though. There were 3 fully painted armies done at about equal levels. I was the only one with a display board and fully painted / flocked bases. The details gave me the edge in the end, I believe.

My Perdita crew, ready for the tournament.

Amazing display tables provided by twilightemporium.net

Amazing display tables provided by twilightemporium.net

Amazing display tables provided by twilightemporium.net

My first game on the Bayou.

My first opponent. Against me he played The Dreamer.

The other painted army at the tournament.

After the tournament I won a Dead Rider, and started a Seamus crew as my next crew.

Starting Malifaux

My Wife decided to fall in love with the models of Malifaux, which quickly led us to start collecting, painting, and playing the game. As a small scale skirmish game that uses cards, rather than dice, it is REALLY fun to play. I have played a few practice turns and half games against her Colette crew and my first real game in my new Malifaux league against the Gremlins, and I am now really into the game. I am playing the Ortega's because I really, really like the Wild West theme. I could watch Tombstone every day, so long as I didn't already have Deadwood on. And of course, I have already bought tons more models than I need to play with to give myself the option of out thinking myself with choices. My main Crew is the Guild with Perdita, Santiago, Nino, Enslaved Nephilim, and Executioner. I have also have Fransisco, Papa Loco, Abuela, and recently picked up Ryle and the Death Marshals. I also found a sweet deal on a used crew with Sonia Criid, Judge, and 3 Witchling Stalkers all for only $15.

I will post updates as I paint more and as the league progresses, but for now here is a look at the main crew I finished painting for the start of the league. Weeks 1+2 are 25ss, 3+4 are 30ss, and 5+6 are 35ss... so after next week I will need to paint up more models.

PS... thanks everyone. I hit 100 followers! I am glad more and more people are finding my ramblings interesting and decided to follow my blog. There are plenty who email me that aren't necessarily followers, and I appreciated you reading as well. Thanks!