They all went together pretty easily. There should only be some minor gap filling necessary.

Additionally, I kind of wanted to have my gators on swamp bases but having gone through the process of having my whole Retribution army on purchased resin bases, I decided I didn’t want to go through that for this army.  Part of the plan for the gators is to have another army that I would paint up quickly.

What I ended up doing was laying down an area of green stuff where I wanted the swamp before gluing most of the models in place. Next, I’ll sand the remaining area for the swamp shore before priming.  Then I’ll paint the green stuff as a swamp and coat it with water effects.  I’ll be sure to post pictures as I progress.

This week, I hope to get a game or two in with my new toys.

In case you are unaware, the journeyman league is a league designed by Privateer Press where you start playing games with your faction’s battle box and each week you are allowed progressively more points.

I’ve been very excited for this league not only because I prefer smaller games but also because it seemed to be a great way to get started with my retribution.

I discovered, however, that I am enjoying painting my retribution in their nice white armor which unfortunately has been taking a while to complete to the standard I want them.

Since half of the journeyman league is based on painting goals, it’s not making as much sense to use the Retribution.

I’ve had my eye on The Blindwater Congregation since playing Team Gat’r Dun at

Templecon.  As a bonus, they will be easy to paint.

I ordered the ‘battle box’ and some various additional models that I’m sure I’ll use for the army including a gatorman posse, a bullsnapper and Calaban.

They should arrive today so I can get a start on building them.

I plan on getting them painted up with a pretty simple scheme and I’ll be sure to post a painting guide for them.

More to come.

I love the look of the Rhulic models and I picked up some of the gunners and blasters recently.

There are two things which inspired my paint scheme for the Rhulic models.  First, I really like both khaki and military green schemes on the armor of the jacks.  Secondly, why I looked at the Highshields, they remind me of Men-at-Arms with their shields.  Then, when I look at the Forgeguard and the jacks, their face plates and helmets remind me of knight helms.

Therefore, I decided to use the two schemes I like, and paint the models with different variations with those to colors.  For example, this first jack I painted was split in half vertically.  For other models, I might do it quartered, split diagonally or one color alone.  This should add some variety while maintaining the scheme.

For this model’s base, I followed a base tutorial from Hand Canon Online.  You can find the tutorial here and here.

Here are some shots of the base by itself:

Here’s the Gunner:

Questions and comments are welcome as always.

The tournament format is Highlander which means:

• 1 List
• 1 Solo
• 1 Unit(but it can have UAs and WAs)
• Only 1 of each Beast or Jack

It’s a fun format because it stops spamming things.  It also forces you to run Jack/Beast heavy when it’s 35 points, like ours is.

I planned on running Retribution again but I was really unsure about what to run.  They often have not only many solos but many of the same solo so it felt as though the format was both hindering and not representative of a “normal” game with the Retribution.  But I was just going to have fun at this point so it really didn’t matter.  I was considering not going since there wasn’t really an army I was inspired to play, but since I’m missing next month’s tournament which happens to be on my wedding day, I figured I’d throw some models on the table, get some games in and have some fun.

The list I decided on was:

• Rahn
• Full Invictors + UA + 2 Souless Escorts
• Phoenix
• Manticore
• Chimera
• Eiryss

I know that Rahn’s feat now only applies to him, but I didn’t have many jacks and the mage squad didn’t really take up enough points.  I still figured that boosted Force Hammers on his feat turn with so many jacks around would allow the invictors to shoot some casters and locks.

As a note, I had thought that I had 1 more souless escort build than I did, so I was only actually playing with 1.  They were only in there because I had extra points anyway.

Game 1

My first game was against Geoff of The Dice Tower Gamer Tek and Ludology podcasts fame.  His game The Ares Project is out later this year, so everyone should check that out.

He was playing the Butcher with Beast 09, Torch, Spriggan, Juggernaught, Mechanics and a Wardog.

I felt sort of bad in this game as I kept playing pretty cagey.  I put polarity shield on the invictors and slid to my right as he advanced forward in a wall.  When we got close, I moved my Chimera to the side of his wall of jacks.  Rahn then Force Hammered the spriggan into Torch knocking them both down.  Eiryss disrupted the spriggan so that it could not shake and charge my Chimera.  The invictors moved up to CRA the spriggan doing minimal damage but with polarity shield up, they were safe.

This happened for another turn.  Then the next turn I was able to slam a jack over the Butcher.  He also got disrupted so that him and his knocked down jack couldn’t shake and the invictors got some good damage in.  The next turn Geoff got some of his jacks into melee.

At this point, the only way to get Rahn a good Force Hammer angle was to move him into combat with Beast 09(brave little elf) telekinesis him toward the Butcher and hammer him.  It worked and the Butcher was knocked down.  This is where things turned south.  2 of my 3 man CRAs rolled the dreaded double ones leaving the Butcher with 3 wounds left.  Also, Eiryss was unable to get out of combat with the war dog.  If she moved, she’d just get counter charged and stuck again.  Rahn then quickly took an ice axe to the face.

Geoff was a blast to play against.  Like I said, I was torn between doing what I felt was the best bet strategically(what I ended up doing) vs not delaying the game.  During those first turns, I took most of my time and Geoff took like 3 minutes.  He was a great opponent and I couldn’t have lost to a nicer guy.

Game 2

I played against Davie with Trolls and Gunbjorn.  It was a new caster for me.

Not a lot to report here as I ended up just getting pelted to death by Gunbjorn, Blitzer, Bomber and Impaler.  He was hard to get to with his Fennblades blocking the way and the 2 rock walls he could put up.  Davie was a great opponent though, and the shooty trolls were more fun to play against than other rage heavy armies.

Game 3

In game 3 I played against Natalie who came all the way down from Massachusetts to come to the tournament.  She was playing an expectedly ranged heavy eLylyth list.  This also ended with me being bombarded by long range shooting.  That Ravagore has a really good range on her feat turn and Rahn was sad.  Natalie was great to play against as well and we got to talk about her local area since the game ended so quickly.

At this point I was beginning to think I was having some bad karma from being so cagey in my first game playing against so many ranged lists which are my least favorite.  Not because they beat me but because the game is so boring.  Davies actually had some interesting points with me trying to kill the right Fennblades to avoid Vengance strikes but still not my ideal game.  At least my opponents were all fun to play against.

Game 4

Interestingly enough, I played Geoff’s son Brian in the last game.  He was playing an Amon list with a bunch of jacks, the choir and a vassal.  Amon turned out to be an interesting opponent because knocking him down didn’t really help that much and he could not be CRAed.  There was some positioning in the beginning ending with my Invictors with Polarity Shield lined up against his jacks some of whom were behind a wall.

At this point I had to decide between trying to take out some of his jacks and play the attrition game or go all out and try to shoot Amon up.  I figured I’d lost all the previous games anyway so I should just go for the glory and see what I could do.  I had gotten lucky with my invictors  and the fire on a number of them went out.  Allocated 4 focus to his jacks, popped his feat and force hammered a jack over Amon doing a bit of damage.  Amon was now knocked down(irrelevant) but visible.  Eiryss hit him with a disruptor bolt dropping his armor.  The invictors who could see him aimed giving them 8s to hit while the ones who had to move needed 10s.  I got lucky and 2 of the 3 needing 8s to hit and the second needing 10s also hit killing Amon.  I had a few more invictors, a loaded up manticore and a phoenix still to go, so I think I had a pretty good shot even if the invictors weren’t so lucky.

Thoughts

The list actually worked out better than I thought it would.  One thing I didn’t like was how shooty it became.  As you may have figured out, I’m not a huge fan of heavy ranged armies.  I had thought that since most of the army have dual roles(jacks, invictors) that I would have a lot of options.  What seemed to happen was that I played toward the opponent’s weakness.  Since I got destroyed by the ranged armies, I didn’t have much chance to use the combat potential of the unit.  When I played melee heavy armies, the ranged component worked well.  I think that with more practice, I’ll learn some more tricks.

As a side note, this week was the first time I had played a game with a unit with CRA.  It provided an interesting set of options and seemed a little easier to put into use than CMA.

I’m definitely a fan of the invictors.  I’m thinking that I might actually use the Griffon with them to make the Flank easier to use.

I still think that Rahn has so many tools to pull out options of so many situations.  I’ll be starting to look at other casters I’ll like to play.  Ravyn is out but the others are all in play.  It will be interesting to see what we get in Wrath.

That random jack would be fun to paint, check out that tier army, I’ve got a really cool idea for X army, these new bases I found would look really cool with army X.

And these are just within a single game, like Warmachine.  What about when those other miniature games catch your eye, or you’re tempted to paint up those models for that cool board game.  Miniature games aren’t the only ones to suffer from this problem.  I have real troubles playing all the way through a long video game.  Many people think that 10+ hours game story in a game is a good thing but it doesn’t work for me, I just don’t sit all the way through it.  This is another reason I love the episodic games by Telltale Games, I can play through an episode in one sitting and have a sense of accomplishment.  But I digress…

I’ve currently declared that Retribution are my next army after having played Cryx for so long.  Vying for their attention include but are not limited to the following:

• Battleboxes I’d like completed including
  • Khador
  • Legion
  • Skorne
  • Trolls
  • Circle(not yet purchased)
• Other armies I own but have only gotten various progress in
  • 25 pt Cygnar force
  • Many Legion beasts and Rhyas and eThagrosh
  • Various additional Cryx models
  • Random Skorne models
  • Random Troll models
  • Bastions I bought to try out the plastic models
• Armies I’d like to paint but have not yet purchased
  • Circle Construct army
  • Searforge Commission models
  • Gators!!!
• Board Game Pieces
  • Descent
  • Shadows over Camelot
• Other miniature games
  • Malifaux
  • Dystopian Wars
  • The thousands of Warhammer and Warhammer 40k models I have that keep calling to me

This isn’t meant to brag about how many models I have as I know there are many people out there with many more than I.

I think many people have this problem to one degree or another and there’s nothing wrong with buying models just because they’re cool.  The problem occurs when this stops you from achieving your desired goals.

I think that I did a really good thing in telling myself that my goal with my Cryx was to just get it painted.  I wouldn’t paint them like garbage, but I wouldn’t obsess over everything.  I painted them in ways I knew would be quick and look good on the table.  I endeavor to only play painted with my Cryx in tournaments.  If I wanted to play with something in a tournament, I needed to paint it.  I now have a bag filled with a painted army I can bust out at any time.  I will continue to add models to the army as I want to play with them, but it’s largely on the shelf for the time being.

With my new project, The Retribution, I’m not sure I want to take quite the same road.  I’d like to spend a little more time on them and document them with painting guides.  The tedium of this combined with all of the above distractions I didn’t have quite so many of when I got all gung-ho into Warmachine and Cryx mean I have to contend with gamer ADD.

I have decided to embrace it.  I will paint 1 part of my Retribution(1 unit, 1 jack, 1 group of solos or 1 warcaster) followed by 1 ‘other’ thing.  This could be some models from a board game, an equivalent unit from another Warmachine/Hordes army, or an equivalent unit from another game.  I think that it is okay to do multiple units from The Retribution if I’m feeling inspired but not the other way around.

The first thing to be painted will be my Retribution Chimera, since it will be used in many of my Retribution armies.  I’ll let you know what comes after that.

What do you think people?  Anyone care to join me?

We figured that we liked Betrayal at House on the Hill and we liked Arkham Horror so we would like this.  I was a little apprehensive about the predefined stories for replay value but I figured we’d at the very least get a handful of good games out of it.

After reading the rules, the game did remind me of a combination of Betrayal and Arkham but with a little bit of Descent thrown in.  Because the Keeper(Overlord) is controlling the story but in a competitive way against the players, you get that same feeling as Descent, but with a better story.  All these impressions were confirmed during the game.

We had a blast playing the game.

After playing through once, I can see how the choices made by the Keeper can make a story different when played multiple times.  Since there are 3 different winning conditions, the orientation of the house and some of the rooms isn’t really that big of a deal.  This made me think that we really can get 15 unique plays out of the game.

The game did seem like it was a little more linear that we had anticipated, I’m just not sure why we thought it would be different.  The group entered the house which thematically, told them to go to a very specific room.  When they went to that room, it thematically told them to go to another room and so on.  If they didn’t get there fast enough, the story cards which were counting down, forced the story on them, which was cool.  Even though it was basically room A->room B-> room C, the story itself was fun and made up for it in my opinion.

One problem we had was the fact that there was no epilogue.  The game ended, and nothing in the game had me tell the back story to the players.  I won’t spoil anything, but in my choice for the back story as the keeper, there was a really cool reason for the goings on in the house, which the players never would have heard if I hadn’t read it to them.  Just seemed kind of odd.

As to whether or not the game is balanced, I can’t really say and don’t really care.  Even though there is a competition and a winner, I think that it is all about the story.  In this game, I was way behind as the keeper and didn’t come close to achieving my goal.  I think that playing against 4 players made it more difficult than it would have been against 1 or 2 but I can’t really say for certain at this point.

Initial Review:

Check this game out if:

• You like Betrayal at House on the Hill(can be played with 2 people, is a longer game)
• You like the theme of Arkham Horror
• You like the overlord component of Descent
• You like Battlestar Galactica(even though it isn’t a traitor game, it had a similar feel to it which I can’t pinpoint – it was by the same designer)
• You like thematic games

Skip this game if:

• You want a quick(under 2 hours) game
• You don’t like the Arkham theme(that’s most of the draw)
• You want something balanced and competitive
• You don’t like railroaded theme

The ruling was that if a model voluntarily forfeits its movement, this does not trigger effects like Admonition and Counter Charge but moving zero inches does.

There was lengthy discussion about whether the rule should be this way in a perfect world and other such topics but the one part that interested me was that of how people would react to this in a tournament.

I made the statement, and I stick by it, that I would never call someone out on this ruling if they moved zero inches and I had the ability to trigger off of that 0″ movement.  I don’t expect this of others, but I will not do it myself.

A number of people disagreed with me.  People said that it’s a tournament and you have to play by every rule and that everyone is on the same ground, and it a fair move to call it out.

While I respect this opinion, I do not share it and it really made me think about why.

It’s also fair to say that a number of people also said that they wouldn’t call someone out on this, though many if not all of them are admittedly less competitive minded players.

I think that many people draw a line between tournament play, and non tournament play.  In tournaments, you have to know every rule, because you never know how other people have interpreted them.  You have to know exactly what’s going on to head off differences in interpretation, different house rules, and heaven forbid a straight up jerk.

I realized that I don’t necessarily draw my line in the same place.  I see competitive games, and non-competitive games and I rarely play the latter.

I realized I can deduce why I don’t want to call people out on silly things with a couple of questions

Does winning a game/tournament/prize make me happier?

While this may be the case for many, and I think is fairly common, I think that for me, it really doesn’t.  In a vacuum, I think winning would make me a little happier, but that amount pales in comparison the the happiness created by a good game.  This is where I get my philosophy:

Always try to win, never play to win.

You have to be trying to win.  If you don’t almost all games break down.  If your made up goal in a game of Warmachine is to get a model to get a model into each of the four corners of the table while your opponent is actually trying to win by the rules of the game, it is not going to be any fun for him.  You have to be trying to win or it will ruin the game.

This is totally different from playing to win.  If you are upset if you lose and do nothing wrong, then you might have some sort of problem.  Like they say,

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.”

If you could not have done anything better there is no point in getting upset about it, you’re just going to make yourself miserable.  If you are playing and the only thing you want is to win, I do not want to play you, in any game.

This all being said, I just want to have a fun, enjoyable game and winning isn’t primary, secondary or even tertiary.  Because of that, even in a tournament I just play my best and don’t worry about it too much.  But the key is that I am trying my best to win, because that’s the game.

Would you rather win because someone misspoke a technicality in the rules, or lose because you gave them the benefit of the doubt?

You can probably guess my answer to this one.  I don’t know if there’s anyone  out there who would actually rather win that way than beating their opponent with no questions but I believe that many people would rather win this way than lose.

In our example rule, calling someone out on not saying they’re forfeiting their movement might give me an advantage.  I might even win because of it.  But for the rest of the time I remember that game, I won’t know if I won because I actually would have beaten them, or because them made minute mistake in wording.  I don’t feel like I beat them.  They’re also at least slightly bitter I would guess and the rest of the game will be more tense that it otherwise would have been, and I’m less happy because of it.

My position is that if it ever comes up, I will ask the person if they moved 0 or forfeited their movement.  If they inquire about why I ask, I will explain the difference.  If they for some reason say they moved 0, I will assume that they now know the consequences and are choosing to move 0″ for a reason and play accordingly.

‘Take backs’

Some people will see this as a ‘take back’ and say that you can’t allow that in tournaments.  Again, I don’t care about reasonable ‘take backs’ in any competitive game.  I just draw the line when stuff becomes gray.  If you moved a model and want to take it back, I may not allow it because it becomes almost impossible to determine exactly where the model was before.  This starts to mess with the game itself.  What if you accidentally(or on purpose) don’t put it back far enough?  You’ve given yourself an advantage you shouldn’t have had, and that is unacceptable.  If we can’t determine something reasonable, we’ll have to determine a way to figure it out or just take the move as done.  Also, if other game actions have transpired since the ‘take back’ move, that also doesn’t work.  This game has a lot of moving pieces which all affect each other.  Once even a couple of other things happen, it becomes too difficult to figure out ‘what would have happened’ and that’s just too ambiguous.

This is how I play in tournaments and all games where we’re both trying to win.  Occasionally, I’ll be in a game where my opponent asks if he can rearrange something or try something and we start moving all the pieces around.  This becomes a different exercise, and not a competitive game.  Apart from things like this, I play all my games like they were a tournament, that’s just how I play.

Disclaimer

I sounds as though I’m being pretty judgmental here.  That is not my intention.  It just came to my attention through some of these discussions with friends that we think a little differently.  I by no means think down on anyone who interprets differently than I have described above.  In fact many of my best gaming friends would call me out on things like this and I would totally understand.  Just because I may allow something, doesn’t mean I expect others to do the same for me.  In fact, most of the people I’m referring to wouldn’t take a piece back even if someone allowed it in a tournament, because they hold themselves to the same standards and they hold their opponents to.  That, I think, is one big thing that separates people you want to game with, from that guy and that is why I have no problem with people who have a different opinion on the subject, as long as they’re consistent.

I went with a khaki scheme that I hope to carry through some of the other Cygnar models I have.

Craig from The D6 Generation has been raving about how much he and his wife love this game for a long time but it had been out of print since I’d heard about it.  I’d been looking for it on ebay but not finding anything under $160, and it didn’t seem worth that much, especially used.

I had high expectations and other than the problems with the warping tiles which everyone mentions is surpassed those expectations.

Things I love

The stories.  I love the individual stories.  There are 50 different ones in the game and after a dozen or so games, we have yet to hit a repeat.  Each one is really unique.  This is the hook that usually gets me in most games.  It’s the reason I love Battlestar Galactica and Arkham Horror and Betrayal delivers in spades.

The ease of play.  The mechanics are simple and don’t get in the way of the story.  Not much more to say, but it’s a nice feature.  Somehow this reminded me a bit of A Touch of Evil, except I didn’t hate it.   I think this is because this feels more about the story than grabbing items and whacking a dude until he’s dead.

Things I love less

The tiles.  This is my only real complaint.  The tiles really do warp something fierce.  Luckily, the manufacturer has said that you can call them to get replacements, so this point may be moot.  I’ll post again once I receive them.

Things other people may love less

The balance.  This is by no means a balanced, competitive game.  There is a winner and a loser but how easy it is for one side or the other to win or lose can change dramatically based on how explored the house is, how randomly damaged players/the traitor have become, what equipment different players have gotten and where different rooms end up.  I personally don’t really mind since I look at that as all part of the story.  The goal is to have a fun experience and I do that through the story, not winning.

The hidden information.  When the traitor is revealed, they generally go to another room to read their book and the rest of the players read their book.  One group may not know certain things like how the other player wins or can hurt them.  Again, I see this as all part of the fun but it may bother some people.

Check out this game if:

• You like your game with a cool story
• You like Battlestar Galactica
• You like Arkham Horror

Skip this game if:

• You’re looking for something competitive and balanced with deep strategy
• You need to know exactly what’s going on in your game at all times