Thursday 6 February 2014

A Minion Ways to Lose: ep.2 Let the losing begin!!!

A Journeyman League started at my Friendly Local Gaming Store (aka: Gamers' Vault) and I chose to give it a try as it would motivate me to paint my Gatormen and maybe I could get some games in.

But first, I needed to paint Bloody Barnabas as there is only one list you can play with for Gatormen at the beginning of the league.

Proof that I painted it for this league, here is my unpainted model



Done the following day!

Still need to finish that base...

.., but I got a very cool idea that will require more work than I had time before my games.


Colors used for Bloody Barnabas:

Airbrush:
1st: clothes in ''hull red''
2nd: wannabe shading of skin with ''black green'' (Val)
3rd: wanna be skin tone with ''cam. light green'' (Val)
4th: wanna be highlight of skin with ''pale green'' (Val)
5th: scale on his tail in ''hemp'' (Val), a little bit of it on the top of his head to see how it goes
6th: destroy everything you did before by airbrushing ''US light grey'' on the skin and scales, trying to do the coat extremely thin so it gets a greenish aspect to it :)

Regular Brush:

Scales: a wash of ''Dark Green''
Clothes: mix of black and ''Hull Red'' (Val) to do some shading. highlight are made with a very light mix of white and ''Hull Red''. More shading was done with ''Soft Body Black'' (SWM).

Bones: ''Jack Bone'', highlight of white and then ''Ivory'' or something.
Metals: ''Ironhull Grey'' (PIP), highlighting was done with ''Astronomican Grey" (GW), shading was made with mixes of black and ''Ironhull Grey'' and some ''Soft Body Black'' (SWM)

With Barnabas painted, I was fully ready to play my first game of Warmachine in...almost two years?
And with a fully painted crew!!

Fully painted?

Oh yeah, true: I never wrote about my Ironback Spitter...
Well here it is:
''Roooaaaaaark...(Throat clearing sound)


And now...

Let the loosing begin!



1st Game - vs Lennard P. - faction: Menoth (Classic Starter)

Moments before Barnabas wrecks a heavy jack.


I was a little shy in this game but was confident my Beasts heavy armor would be no match for Menoth's crappy light jacks.
With my opponent rolling poorly, my Ironback survived the heavy warjack's charge, allowing me to trash it with Barnabas (yup, he's that awesome) on feat turn and my Ironback then crippled the other jack while my Blackhide Wrastler demolished the third jack.
My opponent, cornered and with no way to fight my almost undamaged Battlegroup, conceded.

-Victory!!

2nd Game - vs Clement - faction: Khador (Alternate Starter)

''Butcher, here I cooooome!!!''


If there is one thing I've learned from facing the butcher, its that Butcher's players are reckless with it, throwing it into melee and letting it swing that axe to deal crazy amount of damage.
Covering my advance with swamps to impede my opponent's movements, I baited the butcher with my Blackhide, confident that if he advanced I'd get the charge on him with Barnabas.
And that's what happened, although it took the decimator to finish my Wrastler.
On the other side, the poor Ironback died at the Kodiak's hands before it could be thrown on my caster.
Everything then went according to plan with a feat followed by a charge and in two swings of his axe Barnabas had proven who was the better 'lock.

-Victory!!

3rd Game - vs Kyle - faction: Orboros (Classic Starter)

Couldnt quite get to Kaya, dangerous situation there.


On this one I got Barnabas in the hot spot when I allowed a clear charge line to be drawn from him to my opponent's Kaya but managed to survive as 'Iron Flesh' just saved the whole day.
Barnabas then finished a Kaya that already had taken a lot of damage from my Spitter with one swing of his axe.

-Victory!!

4th Game - vs Avi - faction: Mercs (Magnus the traitor)

With the Mangler gone, I got this under control...


My opponent kept running away from my army while I advanced in swamps to be safe from his rocket.
At one point I decided to make him waste his rocket and sacrificed the Spitter so I'd get the charge on his heavy jack.
As per the Butcher game, I got what I wanted and trashed his heavy jack.
After that he ran away some more with his little jacks, I ran the Wrastler into them.
Cornered he did not move away enough, thinking his small jack in-between the Wrastler would stop it from getting to the caster. Magnus even had the audacity to score some 5pts of damage with his gun on my Wrastler, almost removing spirit.
Barnabas jumped into the action, wrecking the light jack by himself, leaving a clear charge lane from my Wrastler to Magnus.

...Or do I?

And that's when disaster struck: moving away from the Talon, that little piece of scrap free striked and rolled high enough to score 7 points of damage (so 16 on three dice), removing in one shot my Wrastler's mind.
Needless to say I missed every single attack even boosted.
Magnus then destroyed my Wrastler on the last turn.
I then tried to move around the Talon to get to magnus but was short 0.5'' despite reach so out of frustration Barnabas destroyed the Talon.
End of turn 6.

Total pts destroyed: Mercs lost 18pts, Gators lost 17pts.

Victory for Gators right? Well I was very frustrated at this game ending in a tie (especially since by the end of it I was fighting my opponent in his 10'' deployment zone as I had spent the first 3 turns runing toward a retreating army)...
Nobody knew if the game was continuing or not (and although Lennard said we should roll a dice to see if there was one more turn, I was pretty sure this garbage rule came from 40K) I tried opening the Journeyman PDF but it wouldn't, finally, I remembered that ''Mangled Metal'' should be in the main rulebook, so I checked the Hordes one and saw this:

''The game ends when one side has the only warlock left alive or when all the warbeasts from one side have been killed.''
What??!! Loosing all your warbeasts translates into an auto-loss? Why did nobody bothered telling me???
Of course: when I began playing my first game, I asked to see the scenario and Lennard and my boss told me ''It's Mangled-Metal: you caster-kill'', as such I've used and sacrificed my warbeast to that goal and then, after 4hours of gaming, I found out that not only do I lose a game I could have won super-easily as my Blackhide Wrastler was engaged with Avi's Talon and didn't needed to go for the caster kill but I also had lost that game against Clement because I had thrown away my two beasts to get a charge on Butcher.
Heck, Clement and Kyle didn't even know this rule because nobody called me on it...

Extremely frustrating end for a gaming evening.
Well, its in the title right? ''A Minion Ways to Lose''

Two victories (Lennard, Kyle) and two defeats (Clement and Avi)
Despite all this, thanks to my opponents for the great games!

Now if that Journeyman PDF could open, maybe I'd know how I'll win this league with Hobby points...
Happy wargaming, make sure not to expose yourself to Bloody Barnabas, that warlock is a heavy beast in itself! :)







2 comments:

  1. There's a printed copy in the red folder at the store with the player sheets you have to fill out for each game...

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  2. Yes but not all the details of the scenarios.
    I tried to find the exact details and couldn't...Only at the end of my fourth game did it occurred to me that I could find ''Mangled Metal'' in the main rulebook. I wish I had known about it before all these games.

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