Batrep - Misaki v Zoraida

It's been a while since my last battle report and pictures, and it appears from the hit-count that battle reports are popular. Our local group is currently doing a 6 week achievement league and I took Ten Thunders for my faction. Tim and I grabbed a quick 25 point game last night so I could get my achievement for the smaller point value game. I was planning to grab a game with Dan later in the night, using Mei Feng, so I left myself open at 25ss. Over that, I really do not feel Mei works well at 25ss as Ten Thunders, feeling she does better at that level as an Arcanist. Of the 3 masters I currently own (Misaki/Jakob/Mei), I think Mei is the only one who needs to run at a higher level. We flipped strategy and I figured the best choice would be to go with Misaki. We then got down to hiring crews and starting the game.

Set-up

We had already pulled out the ruins board at the store for a small game vs Skillless-Brian's son, so Tim and I tossed some more scatter terrain on the board to get it to a full-game playable level. When I picked out my schemes I wanted to grab some I had not taken a lot. When I realized I was facing Zoraida I was a bit worried, as the schemes on the low end of my selections were not favorable to facing Zoraida. That said, I wanted to give then a whirl so picked out Assassinate and Eye for an Eye.

Our crews were:

25SS Scrap
Bill - Misaki, Yamaziko, Ototo, Ronin, Archer, 4 Stones
       - Turf War, Assassinate, Eye for an Eye

Tim - Zoraida, Bad Juju, 2x Stitched, Wicked Doll, 7 Stones
       - Deliver the Message, Frame for Murder (Juju), Grudge (Ronin) 

Turn 1

I ended up having to set-up first, but also grabbed initiative. I had tried to set-up in a way that would make it tough for Tim to get Zoraida into LOS with my models I hid my archer behind Ototo, hid the Ronin behind Yamaziko, and sat Misaki out front. I ended up grabbing initiative and was able to bring Yamaziko over in front of Ototo and block overall LOS to him making sure there would be no Voodoo Doll action on him. In response Tim moved a Stitched together out in front of his crew and put up the Creepy Fog. From there turn 1 ended up being a lot of movement. Misaki was able to use up her three moves and make an attack on a Stitched together, dropping him to 1wd remaining, but not triggering his Does not Die. Misaki then used Shadow on Zoraida.  Unforunately I did not get pictures of the end of turn 1, but I did get pictures at the start of how our hands looked. Tim drew his hand and promptly showed me as it was pretty darn bad.

A hand like that certainly did not bode well for how the game was going to go, especially when I had this draw on turn 1.

Turn 2

Turn 2 really turned up the action. I grabbed initiative and Misaki started out. Misaki finished off the stitched together from turn 1, then walked and took a reckless action to diving charge the wicked doll and killed it. Tim opened with having Zoraida create a voodoo doll of Ototo then charged the Archer, removing him solidly from the game. Yamaziko activated and moved up the board, the Voodoo doll obeyed the stitch to charge Misaki (missing the attack), Ototo moved toward Zoraida, and the Stitched delivered the message to Misaki. The Ronin did not need to go anywhere yet, so stayed where she was. Bad Juju came out at the end of the turn, charged the Ronin but I threw the joker to stay alive.

And View number 2, with a look at where Misaki ended up

Turn 3

I knew I was going to lose my Ronin this turn, and had to make the choice between attacking and doing damage to Juju and starting out going after Zoraida. I chose to move after Zoraida first, activating Ototo and charging Zoraida. His Height 3 balanced out the height of the ruins, so he charged to the edge of the 2 inches and tried to attack, but missed due to Proper Manners. He then braced, making sure Zoraida could not move him away with Obey. Tim started as expected and activated Juju to attack the Ronin. It took both Juju's actions to kill the Ronin, leaving him stuck at the far side of the board for the turn. Misaki activated and charged Zoraida, moving the the ruins, B2B with Zoraida but on the ground at the bottom of the ruins. Her 2 inch reach allowed her to overcome the ht4 of the small wall, and she attacked. Now, its important for those keeping track that I was holding a 11 and 13 of Ram's in my hand to attack Zoraida with. The charge attack missed and I proceeded to attack 2 more times (Melee expert and reckless) with Negative flips from Proper Manners and missed both attack. This was a big mistake, as I should have used Your Mine to become paired, and then have been able to cheat to hit Zoraida. Instead I ended up burning off 3 stones in this round of attacks for no success. The Stitched walked around to put some hurt on Ototo, hitting a Red Joker on Gamble your Life and dropping Ototo to Hard to Kill. Poison from the Voodoo Doll will kill him off the next time he activated unless I could figure out a way to heal him. Yamaziko moved across the board and dropped a heal on Ototo, bringing him back up to 3 wounds remaining. Zoraida obeyed the stitched to gamble his life, but ended up having that reversed and it took 3 damage.
 

An Alternate view

Turn 4

I got initiative on turn 4 and Yamaziko moved around just a little bit to block LOS between the stitched and Ototo, following up by swinging on the Stitched to trigger Does not Die, then healing Ototo again. The stitched activated, walked around Yamaziko to get LOS on Ototo, and Gambled his life to bring him back to his hard to kill. Misaki activated and focused an attack on Zoraida but the cheats and stones went to Zoraida and the attack missed. I followed up with 2 more attack, still not remembering that I should use Your Mine, but missed them all. Zoraida cast repulsive (needing to cast it twice due to a black joker), pushing Misaki back to the board edge and pushing her own Voodoo doll to its death off the side of the ruin. She then used Raven to fly over to the other ruin, allowing Misaki to walk toward her due to shadow. Bad Juju finished up by moving up the board.

Turn 5 and 6

Initiative once again to me, which was a theme for the game. Misaki diving charged into range of Zoraida, attacking and finally remembering to put up Your Mine. This time I was able to cheat but Tim's soulstone advantage took its toll, with me missing 3 more attacks. Juju moved toward Yamaziko but missed his attack. Yamaziko healed Misaki and ran for the Tim's deployment zone. Zoraida cast repulsive three times to push Misaki off the ruins away from her.

I did not grab a turn 6 picture, Misaki started out by jumping back to the top of the ruin and attacking Zoraida again. I burned off the last of Zoraida's stones, used Your Mine, then hit and killed her with my second attack. Misaki grabbed Reckless and moved off the ruin, away from Juju. This was another mistake as I had just enough movement to make it across the mid-line of the board for Turf War, but chose to get away from Juju instead, losing my turf-war. Tim passed his AP with Juju and the game was over.

At the end of the game it ended up a win to Zoraida, 6/4.

Misaki: Turf War - 0, Assassinate - 2, Eye for an Eye - 2
Zoraida: Deliver the Message - 4, Grudge (Archer) - 2, Frame for Murder (Juju) - 0

Final Thoughts

Tim and I both made critical mistakes in the game, but I made more and ended up losing. Tim forgot to use Zoraida's trigger to take Moderate or Severe damage and no longer be attacked when he was cheating his defense on the last turn. This let me attack him a second time and kill Zoraida off. I forgot to use Your Mine in both turns 3 and 4, which would have really locked the game up at that point. I was burning stones on negative flips and Tim was able to counter me nicely. Had I remembered I could have started with the Decapitates on my early attacks and Zoraida would have been killed on one of those earlier turns. That would have left me time to consolidate up the board for Turf War.

Overall, it was a fun and quick game.

Random models and Statistics!!!

Its been a while since I used the shark picture, and here it is again. Everyone loves statistics right? I mean, I keep a spreadsheet of statistics on games I play and hobby I accomplish, with points and graphs and everything. I guess all that means is I like statistics, huh. Well, too bad... you came to the blog today so you get to read about me and my musing on statistics. I probably should offer something different for those people who think the statistics are just an egotistical love fest I have with my own hobby. Ok, you convinced me (didn't take much, did it?). Before we dive into some graphs I enjoyed checking out, lets look at a couple painted models.

So, we open up with my second Mature Nephilim. I enjoy playing a Nephilim grow list and have done so for a while now. Its a successful list for me, and I find it to be a lot of fun in games for both myself and my opponent. With that said, I was missing out on a second Mature Nephilim until recently. I have the capability to get two of these bad boys out on the table with my grow list, but was limited to 1 because I did not want to put an unpainted one on the table. Well, thats changed now and I have a second painted one. He is slightly different from the grey Mature I have, but still fits the overall crew. If only I could find room in my Malifaux cases, as it stands I have to specially pack him when I believe I might be using my grow list.

I also painted up the Nightmare Edition models I picked up at Gencon this year. Gencon 2012 had a Nightmare Hanging tree set, which included a large Hanging Tree plus two Hanged models that are resized onto 50mm bases. These are all cool models as the digital sculpting allowed for incredibly detailed Nathan and Eric models to be hung from the tree. The Hanged models also came with new stat cards specific for the nightmare versions which allow them to be played with the larger base size. This is kind of cool overall. The detail on the trees was nice, but the fit of the models when assembling them was a bit rough. The price seemed a little high as well, compared to the similar sized GW trees that were released a couple years back. Overall, I am not too worried as this is a one off limited purchase that was fun to paint up.

Hobby by Month 2011

Hobby by month 2012

Ok, so now we saw some pretty painted models, we can jump into the statistics and graphs, right? Actually, I was intrigued to take a look at the differences between my hobby progress this year compared to how things went last year for me. As we can see in the graph to the right, September was a fairly low month for me but November really burst with activity. I was painting and assembling pretty much at the same time last year, not spreading things out as well. This year changed that a bit with some assembly happening in bulk, then painting happening in a separate effort. This is something Rush tended to do more than I did in the past, and I am not finding my hobby time splitting up. The differences in productivity per month is kind of interesting to look at as well. Knowing that I picked up a lot of stuff at Gencon this year, you can clearly see my excitement to get it assembled and painted to get it on the table by the spike in activity January of this year. The lull from last December also followed me into the beginning of this year, with on l a little activity until we hit April, where things started to pick up. There are fewer spikes through this year as well, unlike 2011 where my hobby had a lot of peaks and valleys in activity. This probably has to do with the splitting out of assembly from painting.

Hobby by Faction/Army 2011

Hobby by Faction/Army 2012

So what does that mean for diversity? In 2011 I was heavily focused on four different Factions/Armies. I still had a little bit of Eldar being painted and assembled. Past that, I built and painted a lot of Guild and Neverborn and a little bit of my Arcanists. Moving into 2012 we see some real diversity overall. The first thing that jumped out at me as the tremendous lack of anything GW related. Thats not surprising when you consider my journey away from GW games and deeper into the Wyrd universe.  I still have a heavy focus on Neverborn and Guild, but now we see a dramatic increase in both Ten Thunders and Arcanists. A lot of this comes from the Dual Faction nature of the Ten Thunders, plus an expansion of a couple Arcanist crews I have enjoyed painting and playing. We also see Puppetwars added to the list, although thats really a small amount to augment the Puppet Teddies added to my commission painted PW set. We also see Resurrectionists and Outcasts jumping into the fray, again pretty heavily due to crews outside those faction. Lastly you can see the small bump in terrain on the list, as I just started really tracking that this year.

Games by Army/Faction 2011

Games by Army/Faction 2012

So, the last things to really look at in this article is the overall gaming I have been doing. 2011 was really the year of the Guild for me, with Guild dominating 40 percent of all my gaming. Neverborn pushed in with a healthy 29 percent, and there was still the glimpse of some WHFB and 40K on the list. Granted, Hordes had enough games to actually register a percentage while the GW games didn't, but they were there a little bit. 2012 has been the year of Malifaux lock stock and barrel. The graph of games so far this year leaves no doubt that Malifaux is my dominant game at this point. From January 1 through November 12th I clocked in 157 games reported, which does not include games considered demo's or games where I did play testing. I am not exactly sure what tracking those would do to the number, as I am fairly certain I have an additional 15+ playtest games under my belt this year. 2012 has seen a more even split between guild and Neverborn, although the weight still falls on Guild. Ten Thunders has only been out for three months at the time of this article, and my games with them are already increasing dramatically in percentage, carving a healthly slice of my gaming pie. I am surprised to see the lack of Hordes on the list this year, but that really just comes down to time moving quicker than expected. I did not realize it had been nearly a year since I played my last Hordes game.

So, those are some stats from this year. I am leaving my win/loss/tie records and things along those lines up on the spreadsheet. They are interesting to me, but not really super important. I do enjoy the occasional spot analysis I am able to do tracking the games and hobby as I do. This is not everything for 2012, we still have about six weeks left in the year for games and hobby.

Ten Thunders / Arcanists Dual Faction

Mei Feng is our Arcanist / Ten Thunders Dual faction master from Book 4. This is the first of the currently (Gencon) released crews that I grabbed some pictures of prior to completely painting all the models. I am having fun playing Mei Feng, and am exploring how she works as a 10T Master. Overall, I have to say that I believe she is stronger as an Arcanist master with how she works. This is not swaying me from using her as 10T, and playing around with different crew builds for her.

Mei comes in with her trusty totem, the Emberling. Some who have followed this blog for a while might know that I enjoy painting up burning and fire based models. This goes a fair way back to my Eldar Avatar model, and the Balrog I grabbed from the Lord of the Rings line to practice painting the burning cracked skin theme. The Emberling was no different, as he is really the fire from inside a train engines furnace, come to life and jumped out into the open. Mei herself is a fantastic action piece, coming with the broken lumber she is kicking her way through. This actually made it a bit tough to put her on a base, as the broken lumber just did not fit well with the placid sand zen gardens I have on my other bases. No worries, I still liked the broken wood so just based her alone with that. I ended up painting up the wood first, then going back and adding Mei Feng to the lumber and painting her after.

Mei is all about the constructs, and brought some new robot friends along with her. The big add for Arcanists and for Mei Feng is the Rail Golem. This was a great model to put together and I am really happy with how he assembled and painted up. This guy is a beast on the table and is a large model, filling in both play wise and table presence wise as a center piece model. The Wyrd Asian base insert worked really well for basing this guy and he was much easier to paint up that I expected. It was a fair amount of metalics, followed by wash then touching up the wood and other details on the model. He assembled very easily as well, with all the pieces clearly popping into play. I think the girder in his hands was the only challenge, as it has a hand on one side which actually affixed to the model on the upraised hand, then slides into the lower hand which is not affixed to the girder.

Mei Feng's box set released with her, the Emberling, then three Rail Workers as her base starter. On both the Wyrd boards and the Podcast I am on record as not being a big fan of the Rail Workers. I will be painting them up despite not being a fan, but thats because I am a competitionist. They are not on the fast track, although they are sitting on my paint tray currently and are getting a little bit of work here and there. I finished up one of them to try out in my lists, as seen here. I figure one is enough to show they just do not stand up to alternatives, and if I find something to be different I already have the other two getting painted up. This ends up being a game play situation more than a model situation. The models look pretty good overall, and are full of character with their modifications.

The last set of the Storm of Shadows arcanist models I have painted up are the Metal Gamin. These three little guys are a lot of fun in game, although I am only fielding 1 at a time currently. They are little protection pieces with some decent utility and also work as tremendous tar pits within the crew. Being constructs, they provide a nice jump point for some of Mei Feng's abilities. I like the models overall, and they were very easy to paint, with some metallics and washes. The Thickset guy to the right was the first piece of art I saw for the Gamin, and I loved it. Overall he is probably my favorite of the three, although the other two have grown on me. The Gardener guy with the little tree was something I thought was cool, and the tree from the Wyrd Asian accessories kit was a nice fit for his base. The lizard looking guy was not something I was a fan of when I saw the sculpt. I was heavily reminded of the Skink's from GW's Warhammer Fantasy Lizardman line. After getting some paint on him I was much happier with how he looked and now have him in my case as an alternative to the heavy set guy. Going with some green wash on the brass coloring set him apart into a mechanical construct from the more organic lizard creature I kept seeing when I looked at him.

So whats missing? I have not gotten Willie painted up yet, but he is incoming. Willie is a crazy guy with a wheel barrow of dynamite, so he should be a lot of fun to paint up and the models I have seen are great looking models. I also have the additional 2 Rail Workers to paint, although I expect they will go straight to the display case.