Well our 1-1-1-1 Warmachine/Hordes tournament happened last Saturday and it was a great success. We got the vast majority of the people that signed up to show up and play. We had four 8'x4' tables going with two games a piece on most of them.

I have not participated in a tournament since last fall and I did horrible in that tourny. The tournament last fall was in Boise and I made a lot of mistakes loosing some ugly games, it left a strong impression on me and my play. I really wanted to do well in the 1-1-1-1 tournament and had been practicing and agonizing over my lists for weeks. I knew what some of the other players were going to take and I feared that I did not have the best tools to deal with those lists. However, I put together what I thought were playable lists that could deal with most opponents reasonably well and prepared myself mentally for the tournament.

In the week leading up to the tournament I played several games to prepare myself. During these aforementioned games leading up to the tournament I played fairly well, rarely making the mistakes that have become my trademark over the last couple months. I reacted well to my opponents strategies while facing some very difficult lists. So coming into the tournament I was going on something like a 5-0 record, having played some of the best games I had played in a while. I feared that my luck could not hold out and that my tournament play would become derailed at some point.

I did not sleep well the night before the tournament. I tried to go to bed at a reasonable hour to be rested but I tossed and turned and ran over different scenarios in my mind. What would I do if my opponent brought Sorscha and how was I going to stop the Stormlance blitz. I had already seen some very tough lists in my practice games and they had not been easy wins. I was more going over my own response to these threats as I feared that I would make a fatal mistake and put a knife in my own game. The morning of the tournament I stopped at a convenience store and picked up two 24 oz. cans of energy drink. I was already wired and frazzled from the prospect of playing in a competitive environment (which I don't normally do as the local Privateer Press representative, normally I run the tournaments) and then I added in some energy drink just to rile me up some more.

My stomach was topsy turvy as the first round began. I got matched up against one of the tournaments strongest players. He is always a possible tournament favorite. He won our first tournament of the year and has placed well in all the others including taking second at the ICON Warmachine tournament. Plus he had brought one of the two lists I had agonized facing. He had a full unit of Stormlance Cavalry and out of fear of his second list I had taken my Witch Coven list. The Witch Coven was a very unorthodox army for the tournament format. However they proved to be a good choice as I do not believe my opponent had ever seen them before and underestimated their ability to kill a warcaster all by their selves. On his first round he made his first mistake and moved his warcaster to far forward giving me a chance. I ran my arc-node across the board and fired two stygian abyss spells at him with the witch's in perfect conjunction. It was text book for the coven. My dice rolls betrayed me though; average rolls should have killed his warcaster. I left him with three wounds remaining and my most important model (my one and only warjack; a Nightwretch) sitting right in front of his entire force.

The one mistake I feared, I had not made, I had used the coven's feat on the round that it mattered. He would have a difficult time retaliating against my failed assassination attempt. He attempted to kill my little Nightwretch using Kathrine Laddermore and a Lancer. Here he made his second fatal mistake, he did significant damage with Laddermore then moved the Lancer up to finish the job. He decided to use the Lancer's shield in an attempt to remove my cortex. After two hits with the shield he left me with three damage boxes. Those three damage boxes were the only three damage boxes on the card that mattered: Hull, Movement, Arcnode. Had he used the Lancer's spear for those two attacks the little warjack would have been completely destroyed. He used his feat (Stryker; +5 armor) with his blinded (from one of the stygian hits) warcaster and finished his turn.

I had one chance and it wasnt a great one. His caster had +5 armor from his feat. I moved my arc node out of engagement with ghost walk then cast another stygian on Stryker. I hit and rolled 11 on my three dice for damage; Twenty-four damage. "Not enough, you needed one more to kill him" my opponent replied. I had puppet strings up allowing me to re-roll the damage roll so I rolled it again. Again my dice came up 2, 4, 5. I couldn't believe it, I had put all my eggs in one basket in the hopes of striking down my first opponent and I had come up short. I was horrified, once again I had pushed myself into a compromising situation with my warcaster (the Witch Coven) way to far forward and far to easy to kill. My chances at winning the tournament a failure at stared at my dice again and in one last futile attempt did the math again, this time when I added it up I came up with three wounds of damage! All of a sudden there was new hope, that I had succeeded. I double checked the math with my opponent. He looked down at his card and again at the dice and realized it was over, I had killed his warcaster.

The second round I faced a Legion of Everblight player who was using Thagrosh. I got the feeling that my first win had given me significant momentum, he and a few of the other players started to murmur that I would be difficult to stop. While this was somewhat flattering, I knew better. I knew that given the chance I could easily be my own worst enemy. In this game my opponent gave my army a wide berth, staying pretty far back on his side of the table. I set myself in the center of the table holding the scenario objective and feeling his force out as I worked on a way to win the scenario in the third round. At the end of the second round he ran some of his force into contested area in an attempt to keep me from winning by scenario(or at least thats what I thought). On my third turn he only had four models in the contested area and both within easy reach of my two hardest hitters, Goreshade and the Deathjack. He seemed somewhat surprised that I declared the game over after killing his models, he had made a serious mistake in forgetting to keep track of the rounds and the scenario objective.

The failure to observe the scenario objective was also my third opponents mistake. He also gave my models a lot of distance not wanting to become engaged, and moved to the side of the objective only putting one model into the contested zone. I used the terrain to stop charge lanes and ran my fodder to engage his cavalry before he could charge. At the end of his third turn he had two models in the contested zone of the scenario, Katherine Laddermore and a Lancer. At this point I was already sick of seeing these two models and Laddermore can avoid being killed in a single round by a model without reach because once she gets dismounted from her horse she can be placed outside of an opponents melee range. This was a serious issue because there were only two models in my army with enough hitting power to kill both the Lancer and Laddermore in one round and they were out of position. The Deathjack who doesn't have reach needed to be on the Lancer and Goreshade who did have reach needed to be on Laddermore, yet Laddermore had just charged the Deathjack and had him engaged and he was standing between Goreshade and Laddermore. I took a small chance and had the Deathjack leave melee with Laddermore to charge the lancer, killing it quickly, and then crossed with Goreshade to kill her. I had won again and now I was 3-0 with only one other player undefeated.

The final round was again against a player that had very limited experience with Cryx and had very little knowledge of my threat range and my abilities. He quickly made his first mistake. The first round he ran his Thunderhead up 10 inches and within range of a Goreshade charge plus feat. He really had no clue that I could get that far across the board on turn one. In my head I quickly did the math to make sure I would have the range. 28" apart at deployment, minus 10" for the Thunderhead's movement, minus 9" for Goreshades charge, minus 3" for the range I could place the Bane Thralls out in front of Goreshade, then a 8" charge from the Thralls. It was possible and my heart leapt. I was so close to finishing the tournament 4-0 and going home with the overall win. So I began activating models and moving up my unit then I looked down and realized I had not given the Deathjack a focus point. In my mind I saw the freight train flying off the tracks and the imminent crash coming as started making massive mistakes that would end my day. I stepped a half step back from the game board and took a deep breath. I was too close to allow myself to make a mistake here. After I got my wits back I realized it was not half as bad as it could have been, but I could not let that happen again, the next time it could be fatal. I sacrificed a mechanithrall to the Deathjack to keep him from trying to kill Goreshade and moved him up. Then I moved Goreshade, used his feat, cast mage blight and charged the Thunderhead with the Bane Thralls created from the feat. The Bane Thralls shredded the Thunderhead in 4 hits even with arcane shield on it (it didn't hurt that my third damage roll was 4, 5, 5, 6). My opponent was at a loss for words, he had not been prepared to loose a major portion of his army before his second turn. In his flustered state he attempted to move his warcaster (Haley) up and cast temporal barrier, unfortunately for him he had moved into range of mage blight and his spell failed. It only took a soul gated Deathjack to kill her on the subsequent round.

After all that agonizing I won the entire tournament and did so in fairly convincing fashion. It felt very good to have such a good showing. However, I feel that each of my opponents made some very critical mistakes and I'm not sure the outcome of the games would have been as clear had they avoided these mistakes. Yet I was able to capitalize on each mistake and avoid making game ending mistakes myself, and really thats what competition is all about isn't it?

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.

I'm falling behind on keeping this blog up to date. I said when I started it that I wanted to post three times a week. I'm falling down to the one and a half range, but posting that much is an improvement to my previous attempts at doing this. Sometimes I sit down and stare at the computer screen and think "I should really put something on the blog... but what would I write?" and I end up not writing anything.

*5 minutes pass*

Ok so I have typed about ten different sentences then removed them. Apparently talking about writers block creates writers block, much like yawning causes more yawning.

I have been up to a lot of things lately. I have been running a campaign for the local Warmachine/Hordes guys which entails creating scenarios to play, writing the plot line, and playing in it myself. I have been playing lots of other games just to get practiced up for the tournament on June 14th. Tonight I played two games and gave a demo of the game to two kids. As I lamented earlier on this blog I was having a serious loosing streak and that streak did not end after my personal pity party. I went 0-4 last week giving me seven straight losses and making me wonder why I even play the game. Fortunately for my bruised ego I won the two games I played today. It's a good thing too, I was about to break out the balloons and confetti and have an uber pity party.

My Wednesday night gaming group has finished all of our current campaigns and we are going to be playing a Savage Worlds game so that I can better learn the rules for the gaming convention in July. I have decided, and my players agreed, that the game should be set in the Thundarr the Barbarian setting. This is really only a temporary campaign until we move on to the game I had originally planned, but the concept of a post-apocalyptic earth with some weird science, mutants and magic is pretty darn cool. It's a complete wonder to me that the cartoon ever got canceled! It was only on for a couple years but it was easily my favorite Saturday morning cartoon while it was on. Anyway, we are suppose to be making characters for this short campaign tomorrow and I haven't even started figuring out the special rules for the playable character races in the setting. Who knows when I'm going to get around to doing that, but I better start soon considering I need to have it done by tomorrow evening.

My Saturday night group has completed Something Rotten in Kislev of The Enemy Within campaign and are now moving on to Empire at War (a fan made replacement for Empire in Flames). So sometime between now and then I need to read a quite a bit of back story and plot and prepare for four hours of gaming for Saturday night. This is coming on such a crappy week I have no clue when I am going to do this prep work. However, it's somewhat comforting to see a light at the end of the tunnel and know that the campaign will be coming to a close soon. It feels really good to finish a long term campaign and have it feel like it was a success and the players who played through it all enjoyed it. So while I will miss the campaign, when its finished and we have moved on to the next game, it will still feel pretty good to have completed it.

In my spare time I have been working on a gunstock for a Ruger 77/17 that I purchased from my dad probably two years ago. I rebarreled it with a Clark Customs barrel and then purchased an unfinished stock from Richard's Microfit Gunstocks. The stock is made of grade A claro walnut with a rosewood tip and cap; its a pretty piece of wood. Anyway it's been a labor of love for a long time and if I had known how much work it was going to be to fix the inletting, sand it, and finish the stock I probably would have skipped the whole deal. Yet it's strangely satisfying to creating something with your own hands out of wood that is so beautiful you just enjoy looking at it. So as soon as I have completed it I will definitely be posting some pictures of the gun here. Maybe you won't feel it's as neat as I do, but to me its pretty spiffy.

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'.

There is nothing quite like the sound of a toddler giggling in the morning. My two year old is playing with my wife and her little squeals and giggles fill me with joy and happiness the likes of which are difficult to explain.

ICON finished last night and it was two days of tons of board games and a lot of warmachine for me. My wife got the opportunity to play a lot more games then I did, she won one of the raffles for a board game (it was one we already had so we traded it for Micro-Mutants, which is a blast by the way) and she won the Nexus-ops tournament! The prize for the nexus ops tournament was Conquest of Pangea which I personally really liked although I have only played it once.

The warmachine tournament was still a bit disappointing in the end. I really wanted a better turnout and I held out for people to show up that I desperately wanted to show. In the end no one showed that didn't explicitly say they would. However I cannot be too disappointed with nine players and some very intense games. One game came down to a d3 roll for the number of attacks Vilmon would get on Caine. The roll came up a 1 and then Vilmon needing a 6 on two dice to hit (and with the charge attack roll four dice damage) and most likely kill, the already injured, Caine. However he rolled a 4 and failed to hit ending the game in the most exciting tie I have ever seen. If Vilmon had rolled more then one attack or hit with his attack the game would have most likely gone to the Menoth player.

We used chess timers for these games and overall I really thought they were a great addition to the tournament format we used. I was very happy with how they worked out. I think in time as the players get used to using them it will be a much better solution to the time issues and victory point issues we have had in previous tournaments. It certainly didn't solve all the problems but I think it was a much needed improvement.

I have been incredibly busy this week with school, with the board gaming convention that starts today and with the RPG convention I am helping organize for this summer. I wanted to sit down and write something but things have just been too crazy.

The Idaho convention for board gamers starts today and I am running a Warmachine event at the convention. Its been completely frustrating. When we first started planning the event I really wanted to see a lot of the local people participate and wanted some out of town people to participate as well. I planned for sixteen players which is more players then we have here locally but not by much. I keep a database of all the local players, what faction they play, and their contact information. I have seventeen players on that list; granted some of those players are not very active, but my goal was to get ten to twelve local players and then get the rest from out of town. In order to get people interested from out of town we decided to provide a 50$ gift certificate to the overall winner. Its been almost two months now since I began advertising for this tournament and I have a grand total of seven people signed up. ARGGGHHHH! I have gotten absolutely zero interest from out of town and several of the people I expected to support me in making this tournament a success are refusing to participate. So what this boils down to is we spent over a hundred dollars on prize support and I don't think we are even coming close to covering our costs.

I am helping organize a Role Playing Game convention this summer as well and we wanted to have fliers and tickets for iCon (the board gaming convention). So I have been swamped the last two weeks with finding some graphic artists willing to help, delegating tasks to others, dealing with logistical issues and even creating some of the graphics myself. The gaming community here in Idaho Falls is absolutely great. People have jumped at the opportunity to help with this convention and without them it would just not be unfolding like it is. As of right now the venue is secured, the tickets are printed, the fliers have been printed, and I have a dozen events committed and being created for the con. Its been a hectic week but seeing this develop has been amazing and I am very excited to see how well the convention goes.

Even though I have been busy, things overall (other then the lack of committal warmachine players) have been great. Yesterday in the mail I received notices from my college letting me know that I have been awarded two scholarships, a total of 1500$! This was absolutely great news as I have been leaning heavily on my dad to help me with tuition costs and I feel somewhat guilty about it. I wouldn't have felt guilty ten years ago but I'm thirty now, own my own home, and have two kids; I feel as though I should be self sufficient at this point, but obviously if I was self sufficient at this point I wouldn't need more schooling. Cyclical I know, but regardless of the argument for not feeling guilty, I still do.

I played Lord of the Rings RPG (by decipher) tonight with friends. I play a hobbit and have a lot of fun doing so. He is a warrior, and is constantly having to prove his worth because he draws little respect from those around him. Amazingly he is an excellent fighter, easily the best in the group, but his lack of stature causes everyone to misjudge him.

Tonight while the group was crossing through the Gap of Rohan we ran into a large group of goblins. Milo the warrior hobbit dispatched nine of them by himself including the goblin leader. The game master called my character a "rabid wolverine on meth." There are several running gags at the table about warrior hobbits (or should I say the lack of warrior hobbits in middle earth). Its fun to play a character that does not fit the norm and is surprising in his ability and demeanor. Everyone seems to have an idea of what hobbits are suppose to be and when one does not fit perfectly within the mold there is consternation. He does fit the hobbit mold in many ways though... his day simply is not complete without five or six meals.

I also sent off a bunch of announcements for the Warmachine tournament I will be running in a few weeks at the iCon board gaming convention. I had a goal of 16 players for the tournament, but its just a little over a week and a half away and I only have 7 players signed up. Its a bit frustrating when I started working on people over a month ago and still I'm not even half way to my goal. I want this tournament to be a success and I want to see the player base for Warmachine/Hordes in this area grow.