We finally mowed our lawn for the first time this year today. Its June, I know. Our lawn was replenishing the ozone layer all on its own. We had to get an international logging permit to cut down certified rain forest. It was tall enough that when my dog went outside you could barely see him in the grass. It was really ridiculous; I'm sure my neighbors didn't appreciate it either. But the spring has been unusually wet this year and when we did have a clear day three weeks ago I got out the lawnmower to find that the fuel line had broken over the winter and the mower was inoperable. I ordered a bunch of parts on-line because it hadn't been serviced in a few years and needed several parts that probably would have to be ordered by the local store anyway.

The place I purchased the parts from took plenty of time to fill the order; about a week and a half. When they finally did ship it it took another week to get here because they are in Maryland. When it got here today, at about the point that my lawn had been declared a national disaster, the package was lighter then it was suppose to be. They had mispacked one of the items and so I had to run to a local store and pick it up anyway.

At least my front lawn is mowed now. Tomorrow I will break out the GPS and my hiking gear and venture into the back yard with hopes that I will return safely.

Our 1-1-1-1 tournament for Warmachine/Hordes is just over a week away and I am not prepared. I volunteered to help one of the local players by putting together his models but I am so swamped with other things that I am not sure when I am going to finish them. Plus I have models of my own that need to be finished before the tournament. So I have my little assembly line set up. I have my hobby knife and my metal files on the table to clean up the casting flash, my sink and drying area to wash them and my assembly area with my green modeling putty and my super glue. I plan on spending a ton of time tomorrow and Saturday until all the models are finished.

I have been agonizing over my army composition for this tournament since the first day I knew we would be doing it and I still haven't found a good list that will fight combat lists with Haley, Sorscha, or Kreoss in them. My first list would have done decent against a lot of warcasters but the power choices for each faction all have ways around my gimmicky idea. I think the thing that bothers me more then having a sub-par list is my mental breakdown when under even minor stress. I really foresee myself loosing on dumb mistakes more then my army composition will loose me anything. But really thats why I like warmachine so much, your army list will only get you so far. To really play well and be able to win against a skilled opponent you need to be practiced, you need to make very few mistakes, and you need to be able to take full advantage of any missteps they might make.

When I am on top of my game I play well, but when I see my opponents make a mistake I get excited and forget what I was doing and attempt to do things too fast and end up handing my opponent the win. I plan on trying to get as many practice games in as I can between now and next Saturday. I don't think I can prepare for all the lists I will see at the tournament but I think if I at least know my army well I have a decent chance of finishing higher than mid-pack. I guess I am looking at the whole thing wrong, I should be just looking for a good time, an enjoyable experience. Normally I am in charge of the tournaments, I am the local "Press Ganger" and this is one of the rare opportunities I have to actually compete with the rest of the guys. I should take a deep breath and try to enjoy not having to organize and run the event.

...but dang would I really like to win it.

So I spent the morning working on our current Warmachine/Hordes campaign, and planning for the next 6 months of events. I am really surprised at how well things have gone for the Warmachine and Hordes scene here locally. Last year at this time it was just a scant handful of players with most of them not playing very often. This year we have fourteen participating in the campaign and eighteen signed up for our next tournament (two are on a waiting list because we only have table space for sixteen players!). It certainly helps that Privateer Press provides so much support for organized play.

My campaign games this week were horrible, and then I topped it off with a stinker of a game on Friday, to make my record for the week 0-3. I get so frustrated with my play sometimes. Warmachine/Hordes is deep with tactics and strategy and can be very unforgiving to mistakes. When I am at the table my mind gets scrambled or something and I just don't seem to see the correct choices. I consider myself an intelligent person (maybe somewhat arrogantly) but at the table I feel like a bumbling idiot. I guess thats really the core of my anguish, my failure to play to my ability. Maybe I need to write up a short list of things I need to thoroughly think through on my turn, a checklist of priorities. On Tuesday I played a game where I forgot to allocate focus one round and in another round I placed one of my own guys right in front of my own charge lane, and not just any ol' charge lane, the charge lane that my entire plan for that round hinged upon. I tried to recover by killing my own model but by accident (with the same attack) I killed the model I was planning on charging, compounding my mistake. These are such easily avoided mental errors that I want to pull my hair out in shear anger at myself.

I would feel a bit better at my mistakes if I could blame them on my misunderstanding of my opponents force but unfortunately in almost every case my mistakes stem from getting ahead of myself, failing to know the limitations my own force, or just plain handing the game to my opponent. On Monday I played with my Trollbloods horde. I had my opponent on the run and felt like I was in a really good position to win the game. On the round I lost, I moved my warlock (Borka) up to try and threaten my opponents warcaster (Siege). I could have (and should have) sat on four fury to keep Borka difficult to kill (allowing me to transfer damage done to Borka to my Warbeasts). I had already slammed his cavalry with my Troll Impaler and had him basically against the ropes. But in a mad fit of complete insanity I spent all four fury on a spell that had less then a 30% chance of doing what I wanted and it failed. Even if it had succeeded my opponent probably could have still brought enough of his force to bear on my warlock to kill him because I had wasted my fury and would not be able to transfer the damage. My actions were completely foolish and equated to throwing the game into the open arms of my opponent. I look at it now and its perfectly clear how poor my decision was, but at the time it seemed like a great idea!

I did have one good thing happen this week; I got my report card from school. I got straight A's again and have maintained a perfect 4.0 GPA since returning to school. It feels good to have my hard work rewarded with great grades. I still have a lot of work to do to finish my schooling and I have a lot of school related goals that I have not completed, but it is encouraging to be on my way towards completing all of them.

So yesterday it came out in Privateer Press's release schedule that Hordes would be getting epic warlocks. Trolls will be getting an epic Madrak. I am pretty excited about this, but I am not sure why. Epic warlocks and warcasters must be fielded in 750 point games and I can count the number of 750 point games we have played here locally on my one hand. It is my goal to get more players playing 750 point games because I think it opens up a whole new world of warmachine (and soon, hordes). Anyway hopefully by this August, when Epic Madrak will be released, we will be playing a lot more 750 point games.

Also No Quarter #18 was released yesterday and I have to say that the rules for the new Cryx dragoon are simply awesome. He gives all soulhunters (Cryx cavalry) similar abilities to the Hordes light cavalry: they can't make ride-by attacks but they can move their speed in inches after making a combat action and cannot be targeted by free strikes. This actually makes them playable with casters other then Terminus and Epic Skarre, however I would have preferred to just see them errata'ed to this instead of having to take another model to get them to work. I really like the Cryx cavalry in theory. In theory they should be able to get soul tokens then use them to become more deadly but in practice they charge in and get soul tokens then die the next round before they can use them. With Darragh Wrathe on the field they can get back out of combat and hide from retribution, which makes them much more useful. I foresee me playing a lot more soulhunters after his release.

My Hordes Trollblood models arrived Thursday and I played my first "painted" game with them yesterday. It was a lot of fun having painted models; I must say they look great on the table. When they arrived almost everything looked great, except for the fire on my pyre troll and my kriel warrior standard bearer. The fire on both of them looked retarded, and that's after I asked them to change the fire from the original that you can see in the links.
It sort of boggles my mind how everything else in the force can look so great yet the fire looks like they got jiggy with the finger paints. So I got some paints out and did my best to fix the fire problem. Now I'm certainly not the best painter in the world but I think what I have done with the fire is far superior to what they did. However, overall I'm very happy with the finished product and it's going to be a lot of fun playing with them over the summer.

As far as yesterdays game went, I lost, but thats not uncommon for me. I seem to overextend myself frequently and put key pieces to my army in compromising positions. I was playing with Chief Madrak Ironhide one of the most durable trollblood warlocks and still managed to put him in a such a horrible position that I think it would have been difficult for my opponent to not win. For some reason I do not see the options on the table and do not pick my order of operations well when playing with a new force. I have helped others play new forces quite well but it's as though my powers of observation are ten fold better when I'm not actually involved in the game. I guess thats why I play the game, to learn and get better.

Speaking of Warmachine and Hordes, we are starting the final chapter to our campaign tomorrow and I'm very excited to get a chance to play my forces against a wide array of players here locally. The campaign has had an overarching story that has developed in the last couple of five week chapters. I wrote all of it myself and while I think generally the plot is fairly poor, as stories go, it has still been a lot of fun. Currently I only have five people committed to playing in the spring campaign but I know a lot of them are procrastinating to the last minute before giving me the lists they will be playing in our campaign (for the campaigns we are using static lists that can't be changed for the duration of the campaign). The fall and winter versions of this campaign had six and twelve players respectively and I believe we will have a similar number to the winter campaign this time around. It should be a lot of fun and you can look forward to hearing more stories of me overextending my force and getting crushed beneath the heals of my opponents'.

So about two months ago I decided I really wanted to have my Hordes Trollblood army painted. I have artistic talent, but my desire to go cross-eyed attempting to paint miniature models is not very high. I love having painted models as opposed to bare metal miniatures it just looks and feels so much better. I truly believe that having painted models on the table brings a certain intimidation factor against an opponent without painted models. I also think having painted models helps improve the players confidence while using them.

With this desire in mind I began looking for various artists or studios that might be willing to paint my models. I had a few of people show interest and a lot more flat out scoff at my request. I wanted the trolls painted orange and I had a significant number of models I wanted done. I didn't have that many to start with but I figured if I was going to get them painted I might as well get enough painted that I wont need any additional models for a while. So I picked up probably another 20-30 models to round out my force. The combination of orange (a difficult color to paint miniatures with) and the shear number of large models involved (hey they are trolls! what can I say) were the main reasons most people didn't want to touch the commission.

In the end I decided to go with Blue Table Painting. I have used Blue Table in the past with mixed results. I had a Necromunda gang painted through them that didn't exactly turn out how I wanted, but it was certainly reasonable. Blue Table gave me a reasonable price and a turn around time that frankly I don't think anyone else in the world could have matched. I don't have the models back yet but they have been completed and if they weren't shipped out yesterday they will probably be shipped out Monday. Thats less then a three week turnaround on sixty-six models! I was honestly quite amazed at how quickly my project was finished.

The models can be viewed on Blue Table's web site. From what I can see in the pictures I really like what they have done; however, pictures can be deceiving, especially when you're dealing with small models. So I will withhold final judgment until the models arrive and I can personally inspect them. But I am really excited to get these back.