Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Lucius and Crew - Pictures!

Lucius, the leader of the Guild Special Forces. I have had him built for a while but never got around to a full set of pictures. I did complete painting my third Guild Hound this last Sunday, so that helped a bit with the picture taking. This whole crew was painted to a Table Top Standard, so nothing exceptional! Here are some pictures

Lucius - the Pimp himself

Woof Woof - Guild Hounds




Ryle





Lawyer




Guild Guard Captains - notice the Wyrd W on the left captain!




Drill Sergeant




Guild Guards




Lucius and Crew (missing 2 Austringers)




I realized as I was posting these that I forgot a couple models. My Austringers never jumped out of the case into the picture. Sad day, I will have to remember to rectify that at a later date. I will admit, I am really looking forward to the Wardens from Twisting Fates being released. I think they add an incredible amount to both Lucius's crew and the Guild in general.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Pictures Pictures Pictures

As mentioned yesterday, I was blessed with time over the Thanksgiving holiday. I used some of that time on Sunday to not only get caught up on my painting but to also start chipping away at the horrible backlog of pictures I need to take. With that said, I plan to parcel out the photo's all week this week.

So, lets dive right in. Sunday one of the models I completed was my Male Gunsmith for my Arcanists. More importantly, he completed my Kaeris box set.  Its a shame I was impatient and painted up the fire gamin prior to the league starting. If I had waited a week I would have been able to get the "Paint a new box" achievement. Ah well.

Here they are:
Kaeris


Fire Gamin (Denis, Precious, and Sparky)




Male Gunsmith





Female gunsmith




Soulstone Miners




Kaeris and Crew




That's all of them. I still have a Large Steampunk Arachnid to put together, but I am not in love with the model. For the time being, I think Kaeris will do just fine with the crew as is! Ahh, I must not forget the Johan who just showed up in the mail. He will be joining Kaeris soon!

Monday, November 28, 2011

Colette Commision Recieved


A couple weeks ago I received a completed commission from my friend James over at 4-Ones blog. He had painted up my Colette crew for me, and they look fantastic. As I am sure you, faithful reader, are aware, I have been lax lately in getting pictures taken, never mind posted.

Thanksgiving weekend was a blessing on the time and picture front. I was able to knock out a bunch of models this weekend in addition to grabbing some long over-due pictures. I felt it was only proper to show off Jame's incredible work. Here they are, my new showgirls!

  
Colette, the girl herself

Cassandra

Performer and Mannequin

Performer and Mannequin

Doves
Coryphee and Coryphee Duet

Friday, November 25, 2011

Battle Report - Rasputina v Lilith

I realized while cropping these pictures and uploading them that the majority of the battle reports I have posted have been vs eChris. From reading these reports the readers would think he is my only opponent. This is not the case. I think eChris likes seeing battle reports posted, so he consistently reminds me to take pictures during our games. As such, our games are the ones that get posted. With that said, here is another Battle Report to be posted. I really expected this to be a slaughter when I saw eChris put out his Lilith crew, but I jumped in with a smile.

Set-up
This was a game we played as part of our ongoing Achievement League. I am playing Arcanists in the League while eChris is playing Neverborn. We agreed to a 30 point game, flipped standard deployment, and flipped who would deploy first, resulting in my having first deployment. We were playing on a small village board set-up prior to the game. 

 We started flipping for strategies, with eChris flipping Line in the Sand and me flipping Distract. eChris contemplated burning a stone to re-flip but decided to stick with his choice. I proceeded to my case and contemplated what to take. My Arcanist choices were Kaeris, Colette, and Rasputina. I had had some luck with Raspy previously on Distract, plus I only had 1 gunsmith painted. I did not think Colette would be very good at Distract, so stuck with Raspy for the mission. At 30 points I figured I would take a fairly direct crew, grabbing 2 SS miners (MVP in previous games) and 2 Silent Ones to heal them up. I grabbed the essence and decided to sit on an 8 SS pool.

Upon selecting my crew, I glanced across to see what eChris was bringing so I could pick my strategies. He brought Lilith, 2 Lilitu, Lelu, a Tot, and the puking snake. With that in mind, the choice on schemes really fell to what I had left to accomplish for the league. My choices were Bodyguard, Breakthrough, Extermination, Eye for an Eye, Frame for Murder, Stake a Claim, Steal Relic, and Reflections of December. Looking over that list here were my thoughts:

  • Breakthrough - Not likely since I would need the miners for hitting power
  • Extermination - Very unlikely to near impossible
  • Eye for an Eye - tough but possible
  • Frame for Murder - Impossible unless I hide it, and this game was not worth hiding a Scheme
  • Stake a Claim - Not likely, but possible
  • Steal Relic - I did not want to be close to Lilith without attacking
  • Reflections of December - Possible, and I am not sure how many more games I will have with Raspy
  • Bodyguard - Possible, only because I will have a fair number of SS to prevent damage.
So, I ended up taking Bodyguard and Reflections.

30SS Scrap
Bill - Rasputina, 2x Silent Ones, 2x Soulstone Miners, Essence of power, 8 stones
       - Distract, Bodyguard, Reflections
eChris - Lilith, 2x Lilitu, Lelu, Tot, Primordial Magic, 8 stones
       - Line in the Sand, Holdout, Breakthrough



eChris's Crew & Deployment
 My crew and deployment


Turn 1

My turn started in a fairly mundane fashion. The essence linked with Raspy, moved forward and cast pillars to cover up the middle dynomite marker. Following that the miners dug up soulstones for Raspy to use, and the Silent Ones healed the miners back to full. Each silent one, on thier activation, cast other spells to try and surge and stack my hand for later in the game. eChris used his turn more productively, sprinting and transposing models around the board and grabbing the first objective on the left of the board (from my perspective). He pulled forward and sent Lelu to work breaking down one of the pillars and activated a second objective as well. Not bad, 2 objectives on turn 1 is a strong start for eChris, and puts me a bit on the back foot.





 From eChris's side of the board.






Turn 2
Turn 2 turned up the pressure with lots of action. I do not remember the exact steps of the turn (unfortunately), but to sum up it went something like this. eChris activated Lelu, smashed apart the second ice pillar, then moved over and activated a third objective. In conjunction, Lilitu drifted around the house and started luring one of my silent ones forward. I was pulled up, but resisted a couple times. My silent one activated and put up north wind, just covering Raspy where she was sitting. eChris moved his second Lilitu forward and pulled the Silent one the rest of the way into the scrum, but was not able to get any attacks through. To get some range, the second Silent one moved forward to get Raspy in range of North Wind, then popped the spell up. Lilith made a run across the street to position for the other two objectives. Raspy activated and blasted into the scrum, killing lelu with blasts and leaving the Lilitu's with some damage. Raspy finished her turn by putting up ice pillars to block Lilith from getting inside the building and grabbing her objective there. eChris ran his Tot to the back of the board, then followed up with the totem transposing one of the Lilitu's to get her to safety. I activated my miners, ate a soulstone for Overdrive, then moved forward and tunneled. At the end of the turn I shifted one tunnel marker forward (the corpse counter) and the second one to the left between the small and large houses. My goal was to threaten eChris's crew with 1 miner while the other went to deactivate dynamite.





 From his side of the board



Turn 3
Turn 3 let me finish what I had started on the previous turn. eChris started by moving to threaten Raspy with his Tot. I responded by moving my silent one away from the objective and damaging the tot with her healing spell. eChris moved his rear lilitu forward to position near the center of the board and lured my silent one forward. My silent one moved closer to the tot, pulsed and killed it off. eChris moved the second Lilitu to the center of the board, getting Raspy, totem, and a silent one in melee range. Raspy activated, defensive stance, then walked out of combat. I forgot at that point to pull my totem to me with link, leaving it engaged. I tried to use my (0) spell to knock one of the Lilitu's down but failed the cast. I then followed up shooting my blast spell into combat. Flipping for the targeting in melee ended up with my targeting a Lilitu. I then flipped the red joker for my irresistible flip, realizing that had I remembered to snap my totem, I would have had that joker on my cast. I followed up with a cast and stone to drop severe damage on one Lilitu, and blast onto the second. This left one of them at 1 wound remaining, and the second at 2. Lilith then moved out from around the house, but I do not remember what she did. My totem dropped two more ice pillars to block Lilith from moving directly to Raspy next turn, then it came time for moving the Miners. Miner #1 moved to be next to Lilith, and #2 moved onto the far left objective. At the end of the turn the two Lilitu's healed one of them up to 6 wounds, and the other one died.





Turn 4
At the start of the turn, I brought both miners up from Tunneling. I won initiative (13 to a 12) and started with the Miner next to Lilith. He attacked 3 times, missing 2 attacks, and dived back below ground. Lilitu started by luring and killing a Silent One then moving forward to engage Raspy. The second silent one moved forward and pulsed near the Lilitu, putting 2 damage on her. Lilith activated, broke through the ice pillar and charged the silent one to kill her. Shatter had Lilitu down to 1 wound, and had Lilith had prevented most everything. Raspy activated and threw everything she had at Lilith, killing Lilitu in the blasting. The soulstone miner dug up another stone for Raspy, then the tunneled one moved over next to Lilith.








Turn 5 & 6
Turn 5 started with the miner popping out and then I again won initiative. The miner attacked and got a luck shot off on Lilith, killing her. Raspy then moved forward stand next to one of the activate markers. The non-insignificant miner shut off the far left objective. On turn 6 Raspy and the other miner shut off the remaining objectives.



The game ended with a win to me (very unlikely game). I think there were mistakes made on both sides, but the bulk came down to eChris focusing on his line in the sand early in the game and not picking apart Raspy's crew, allowing me to build up my stones and start picking apart his crew. Final score, Raspy 8 -> Lilith 2 (holdout).

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

BatRep: Rasputina vs Pandora


Intro
The Winter Achievement League started up on Tuesday and I rolled out with Arcanists for this 6 week period. I have my Collette crew currently at the end of a commission, due to return soon for play. I also just picked up Kaeris who I am very excited to play. These two combined with Rasputina give me 2 masters and a Henchman to play around with for the league. With that said I rolled out with the only Arcanist models I had available, Rasputina and her old crew. I decided before getting to the store I would aim at getting at least 1 25 point game in, and make it a fun lark of a game overall. I had pre-picked my crew as there is an achievement in our league for picking a crew before flipping for strtegy and another for playing with nothing from the starter box in your list.  eChris was willing to oblige, which worried me a bit as he is playing Neverborn for the league. At the end of the day, its all for fun so we rolled into the game.

Set-Up
We played a 25 point scrap. I took:
  • Rasputina - 8 SS pool
  • Essence of Power
  • Jack Daw
  • Hanged
eChris took:
  • Pandora - 6 SS pool
  • + Avatar
  • 2 Sorrows
  • Doppelganger
  • Candy
I had Contain Power, then Kill Protege (Candy) and Sabatage (on the statue furthest from me in the picture below).
eChris had Deliver a Message, and I forget his schemes.

Ok, so this was going to be a fun game, but still a bit tough. We used our ruins board and flipped corners deployment:


Turn 1
Turn one kicked off with me losing initiative to the damn negative flip from the Doppelganger. No worries, eChris started with linking his sorrows, clearly working to out-activate me. I linked up the Essence of power for my first activation, then moved forward to the fence. I followed this up with using Magical Extension to put two pillars touching my objective and just to the right side, blocking some LOS to my crew.

Following that there was a fair amount of movement, Candy moved up to hide in the small doorway of eChris's ruins, Jack moved up to touch my sabotage objective and put up Severed Ties (can't cheat or stone within 6 inches), Doppelganger copied Dementia and cast it on Pandora before moving forward on my left, hanged moved forward on my left. Raspy moved forward to position for next turn. As the last activation, Pandora activated, used her dementia to push forward into the large door of the ruins with a pacify on the Hanged. Once there she use her new LOS to try and cast a spell at Jack, but being unable to cheat she failed her Demetia flip and was stuck. She followed up with a Walk outside of Jack's Severed Ties bubble, then cast her spell at Jack (Project Emotions), failing to cause any damage but forcing Jack to run with her trigger. Unfortuantely, Jack ran to the closest board edge which put him standing right next to Pandora and her Sorrows at the end of the turn. Pandora tried to pacify Jack and push away, but was again unable to cheat or stone and failed to overcome Jack's WP.


Turn 2
eChris realized his only way to truly deal with Jack was to run him off the board with Pandora. I won initiative with a Red Joker flip in the negative initiative flip and started out. I knew I would have trouble while rallying with Jack so started by moving the Hanged over to face off with the Doppelganger. I wanted to force eChris to make a choice between killing Jack and losing his Doppelganger, or taking down the Hanged and keeping Jack around. eChris activated Pandora, forced Jack to run to the board edge, then pushed over to try and take down the Hanged. The Hanged took a couple wounds but lived through the attacks. Raspy then activated in companion, moving forward and dropping a couple blasts which resulted in the Sorrows both being killed, Candy taking some wounds, Pandora taking some wounds, and the Doppelganger getting hurt. It also resulted in the Hanged being taken out, but that was worth the sacrifice. The Doppelganger copied sweets from Candy, healing herself and walking forward a bit. Jack rallied on the board edge, and then Candy activated, used sweets on Pandora, and started to retreat toward the back of the board.



Turn 3
Turn 3 started with a loss of initiative again, I really needed to take out the Doppelganger. eChris started with Pandora killing off the Essense, putting a wound on Rapy, and pushing around the corner of the building to my left. Raspy was able to burn stones and cheat high cards to resist Pandora's assault. Thank God for eChris drawing a crap hand. Jack (rallied and not pacified) double moved toward Candy and put up his Severed Ties bubble. Candy moved to hide behind the building, Using Sweets to heal herself and position near Pandora. Raspy moved forward to Sabotage the terrain and then nuked the Doppelganger, splashing the blast damage onto Pandora who burned stones to resist.



Turn 4
Turn 4, with the Doppelganger dead, I pulled initiative. I did not want to go head-to-head with Pandora's WP while she could still cheat so I started by moving Jack behind the wall (next to Pandora and Candy) and putting up his bubble. Raspy walked twice to get outside Jacks bubble, then tried to hit Raspy with a spell (I think it was Self Loathing). A timely black joker let Raspy resist, and opened up Rasputina moving forward and nuking Pandora dead. Candy followed with a quick heal on herself, a run for the back of the board, and made herself harmless.




Turn 5
Turn 5 started with eChris winning initiative. He decided to go all or nothing, and moved Candy forward to face off with Rasputina. This was not a bad move, as it kept Raspy from casting her nasty spell. Raspy then followed up with biting Chill to take Candy down to 1, and tried to hit her with her stick which didn't work. I then brought Jack forward and hit Candy for 1 damage to kill her off. eChris unhappily reached into the muddle and pulled Candy of the board.



Game End
Our game ended 8-0, with a win to Rasputina. It was an interesting game overall.