Vassal Battle Report! Gaspy3 vs. pBaldur

So I recently started playing Vassal, which has been great.  It is not nearly as clunky as I recall it being, plus it can keep a log of the whole game! That makes battle reports so much easier, so big thanks to Sleet01 from the forums for mentioning that.  Anyways, I think it's going to be pretty nice to use since I won't have nearly as much time to go to the game store for games after I get married. On to the game at hand!

The lists:

My list:

Tier 4
Points: 50/50
Asphyxious the Hellbringer (*4pts)
* Vociferon (0pts)
* Cankerworm (5pts)
* Kraken (19pts)
Bile Thralls (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
Mechanithralls (Leader and 9 Grunts) (5pts)
* 2 Brute Thrall (2pts)
Mechanithralls (Leader and 9 Grunts) (5pts)
Necrosurgeon & 3 Stitch Thralls (2pts)
Necrosurgeon & 3 Stitch Thralls (2pts)
Pistol Wraith (3pts)
Pistol Wraith (3pts)

Necrotech & Scrap Thrall (0pts)

The tiers net me the following: 1) free necrotech and scrap per helljack/colossal, 2) AD Pistol Wraiths, 3) a model can start with a soul/corpse token per unit in the list., and 4) +2" of deployment.

Calamity’s list:
Points: 50/50
Baldur the Stonecleaver (*6pts)
* Woldwarden (9pts)
* Woldwarden (9pts)

* Woldwrath (20pts)
Druids of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts) (7pts)
* Druid of Orboros Overseer (2pts)
Shifting Stones (2pts)
* Stone keeper (1pts)
Shifting Stones (2pts)
Blackclad Wayfarer (2pts)
Druid Wilder (2pts)

 Initial thoughts are that Gaspy is going to have a fuuuuun feat turn.  Anyways, the goal is to avoid any teleporting assassinations and to kill the models that he has that can kill the Kraken.

Deployment: 

We played Gauntlet, and I won the roll and chose to go second.  Deployment was as shown below.  If you look closely, you’ll notice that I forgot to deploy any Bile Thralls.  Whoops, guess I’m playing 5 pts down this game.

Circle Turn 1:

Druids cloud and countermagic, while his heavies rile and run forward.  Shifting stones warp up, and the Woldwrath also riles and runs.  Baldur casts Solid Ground, Stone Skin on the Druids, and his solos run up behind the Woldwrath.

 

Cryx Turn 1: 

3 focus to the Kraken, zero to the Cankerworm.  PW’s run to be on the hill behind the stump for cover to be DEF 20.  Both units of Necrosurgeons run/walk forward, and are followed by running McThralls.  The left unit tries to stay on the hill so that they’ll be DEF 16 when Gaspy puts Ashen Veil on them, which he does next after casting Mobility and walking up to be on the hill.  Kraken moves up and shoots at a Druid who’s in range, but misses even with the boost.  Totally forgot about immunity to blast damage.  I also forget to move the Cankerworm.

 Circle Turn 2:

He leeches his 6 fury, and upkeeps Solid Ground.  Druids move up and the Leader uses Counter-magic while the officer does a Devouring on one of the Brutes on the hill with Ashen Veil, hitting and killing another McThrall, leaving 2 thanks to terrible rolls.  Druids make a few more attacks on McThralls/Brutes, along with boxcars on the Pistol Wraith at DEF 20, plus some clouds.  His front stones shift, and then he rock-hammers and kills 2 more McThralls.  Right Warden move up and Earth Spikes at McThralls and then gets conditioned by the Wilder.  Left Warden moves up and throws out more Earth Spikes, killing McThralls and adding a pip of damage to the Cankerworm.  Baldur then charges a Druid in the back and feats, misses the Druid with his charge attack, then puts Stone Skin on the Warden next to him.  Woldwrath moves up and misses the boosted shot at an Ashen Veiled McThrall, then riles for another point.  His back stones shift behind the Woldwrath, and the Blackclad teleports to them.

Cryx Turn 2: 

Upkeep Ashen Veil and camp 6 since I probably won’t be getting any charges off here. Right Necrosurgeon walks up and drop 3 dudes, then the McThralls run to engage as much as possible and be in the way.  Kraken goes and shoots at the Warden with the 2 shots he gets from the little gun before I realize that the stone is stealth and I can just shoot Baldur.  Big gun shoots at him needing boxcars to hit, but I miss.  L McThralls run to engage as much as possible and then the L Necrosurgeon runs.  I run my back line support stuff, and then move up with Gaspy and feat, camping 6, trying to stay out of Woldwrath charge range since I really don’t wan to be KD because of those shenanigans.  Cankerworm then moves up in front of Gaspy to take up real estate.  Pistol Wraith runs behind his army, and does nothing.

Circle Turn 3:   

Baldur upkeeps solid ground, and I totally forgot to nab a soul from that… doh.  Anyways, turns out, that one soul really won’t matter.  Front stones shift, which is somehow not magic, just trying to get in my way I guess.  He tries to Rock Hammer a McThrall in the back, but forgot I was engaged with his Druid’s reach, deviates and kills 3 of the 4 with blast damage.  L Woldwarden goes, punches 2 dudes, and then he Geomancies Earth Spikes at McThralls on the hill… stupid ignoring elevation bs.  Anyways, kills more McThralls, and 3 more souls to Gaspy.  Baldur moves up and smacks a Brute for some damage, and then drops his forest to block LOS to himself and buys an attack that misses on a nearby McThrall, sitting on 2 fury for transfers.  His Druids walk up,  Countermagic, Devouring at McThralls, and clouds to give me 6 more souls.  Woldwrath moves up and shoots the Kraken, boosting damage, and casts his animus for another 2 souls.  Back stones shift, then the Blackclad sprays down McThralls, killing some and giving me another soul.  R Woldwarden punches some McThralls, then Geomancies at the Pistol Wraith on the hill, boosting, but misses.  The Wilder then moves up and Conditions to give Gaspy another soul!  So he ends his turn, and I have 22 focus next turn.

Cryx Turn 3: 

Hrm... 22 focus, what to do with it? To start, I check to make sure I’m out of Countermagic range, which I am.  Drop Ashen Veil, 2 focus to Cankerworm to kill the stone in the way, and we’re off. R Necrosurgeon moves out of the way and adds 3 dudes.  That unit of McThralls kills a druid and fails to hurt the shifting stone.  Cankerworm goes and tries to kill the stone with boosted damage rolls, but rolls crap and leaving it alive.  He scoots out of the way.  Back line support stuff gets out of the way so the Kraken will be able to move back.  Kraken then walks out of Gaspy’s way and kills the stone.  Gaspy casts Mobility, Carnage, and then Scything Touch onto himself, then charges my Brute in the back, killing it, then buying and boosting into Baldur until he’s dead.  6’s to hit, which leads to a miss, hit for 6 damage even with dice+2,  miss,  hit for 10 damage, miss, hit for 4 damage which he has to transfer, hit again for 4 damage, miss, miss, hit and game. 

Post-game thoughts:

So even with bad rolls, I kill Baldur with 4 focus to spare.  That said, if he hadn’t overloaded me with souls, I would probably have failed at the end there due to craptastic dice .  Anyways, it was a fun game where I was getting table pretty good, but he left me an opening and fed me up on my feat turn.  I might have been able to get some charges off on my 2^nd turn with some McThralls and maybe the Kraken, but I’m terrible at distance judging on Vassal right now.  Hopefully I’ll get better at that soon.  As for this being my first game with him against Circle (good for my feat turn), it was definitely fun, and there’s a whole lot of different ways that I could have played better.  That said, I’m really loving Vassal and being able to go back afterwards and look at dice, etc.  While in game it felt like he had a lot of good dice, his dice weren’t all that crazy except for just crit KD’ing or hitting some targets of opportunity.  So moral of the story, expect more battle reports like these.  I’ve got another log that I need to work through to put up as well.

Circle for Kingdom-Con (Video)

Yay for videos!

More Hardcore Practice! Terminus vs. Kromac w/ Pictures!

Since I always want to play more games, and Micah and I haven't had a game in ages, I drove down to his place this morning before work in the lab for some more Hardcore practice. Handy since Micah hasn't had any practice with the short time limits. I forgot my 4'x4' foam boards, so we ended up playing on Micah's ~3'x4' table. We still managed to get the killbox marked on the table, so no biggie. Micah also took lots of great pictures which you'll get to enjoy instead of my crappy sketches.

After we threw down terrain, it looked something like this


We rolled for turns, and Micah won. Sadly, he didn't want first turn... :(. So I unwillingly deployed first. Before we get too far into this, here are the lists of what we played.

Points: 50
Lich Lord Terminus (*4pts)
* Reaper (7pts)
* Seether (9pts)
Bile Thralls (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
Mechanithralls (Leader and 9 Grunts) (5pts)
* 2 Brute Thrall (2pts)
Necrosurgeon & 3 Stitch Thralls (2pts)
Revenant Crew (Leader and 9 Grunts) (9pts)
The Withershadow Combine (5pts)
Captain Rengrave (2pts)
Darragh Wrathe (4pts)
Machine Wraith (1pts)
Machine Wraith (1pts)
Madelyn Corbeau, Ordic Courtesan (2pts)

Points: 50
Kromac the Ravenous (*4pts)
* Argus (4pts)
* Feral Warpwolf (9pts)
* Pureblood Warpwolf (9pts)
* Warpwolf Stalker (10pts)
Druids of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts) (7pts)
Tharn Wolfriders (Leader and 2 Grunts) (6pts)
Wolves of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts) (4pts)
Druid Wilder (2pts)
Tharn Ravager White Mane (3pts)

I deployed the McThralls in the front row, w/ Biles & Necrosurgeon taking up the 2nd. Then Termy was right behind the front two rows in order to get as far forward as possible. Machine Wraiths & Jacks tok up the wings with Rev Crew & the Combine in the rear. The other assorted solos smunched in wherever they could fit.



Micah deployed his Wolves off to one side, with his Wolfriders & Whitemane on the other, while the Druids took the center to cover the advance for Kromac & his heavies.



With both armies deployed, they proceeded to run headlong at each other.

Turn 1:
Starting with Termy, the Reaper got a focus while the Seether just had the 1 he always gets. Then Termy casts malediction on himself, and "charges" at Kromac. Oh noes! He failed his charge! Everything else runs up. The Mcthralls form up in the front to take the charge, while the Rev Crew bunch up around Termy to be good Sac Pawn targets. Darragh moves up and casts Death ride to fix the spacings a bit, and get more Rev crew in front of Termy. Machine Wraiths end up camped out slightly less than a large base away from Terminus in order to prevent tramples and such. In short, everything runs.




Turn 2:
Micah runs up the Wolves into the forest on his left side, while moving up the Wolfriders and Whitemane on his right side. The Druids walk forward and pop smoke, while Kromac throws Wild Aggression onto the Stalker and Warpath on himself.


So round 1 ended looking like this





Turn 3:
I run stuff up some more, and try and cover any threat lanes to Termy. Not quite close enough to get a Bile onto the Druids or Wolves yet, so I hold off on the feat. Since I have the Seether out on the flank, I run him into melee with the Wolves to prevent them from charging and taking out a bunch of McThralls (and using up more of my time regenerating). He actually failed his command check, so I didn't even need to worry about them! Rengrave ghost shotted at a Druid, but missed. Everything else just tries to set up for next turn while minimizing the damage.


Turn 4:
Micah upkeeps Warpath and Wild Aggression while the Wolves keep quaking in fear of the big bad Seether. He starts by targetting a Machine Wraith with his magical spray, kills 1 McThrall and 2 Rev Crew while 1 McThrall toughs it out. This triggers a Warpath movement on the Stalker, which eyes the growing charge lane to Terminus hungrily. Druids kill the other Machine Wraith, the toughed McThrall, and not much else, but it was enough to get a line for the Stalker to charge Termy. The Stalker charges Termy for free, and warps for Strength. He's only able to get into Reach range of Termy, but that's okay. He's rolling at Dice-5 against Termy this turn, and with 4 fury, manages to put 16 damage onto Terminus. Micah finishes this turn with bare seconds to go without using his extension.

Lots of pics of this turn cause it looked way cool :p









Turn 5:
Time for me to retaliate. I allocate 2 focus to the Reaper so that it can help finish off the Pureblood, while Termy keeps 4 to wreck the Stalker. With Malediction upkept for free by the Combine, the Stalker is only a DEF 12, ARM 15 heavy to deal with. Termy takes it down to 5 life with 3 focus, and pops his feat to nab some souls/ARM this turn. The McThralls charge the Pureblood, and bring it down to 4 life. The biles then walk up, 2 purging on the druids (in order to not hit the Seether) and 1 purging onto a Druid (and nothing else). I still have a heavy sitting in front of a low-life Termy with mere seconds left, so I use my 3-min extension. The Rev Crew charge the Stalker and manage to finish it off thanks to Malediction. Rengrave aims and takes a pot shot at the Pureblood. With a 10, he actually hits it, but only manages 1 damage point. Darragh then activates and closes the hole in front of Termy thanks to Death Ride. Then my time runs out before I can activate the Seether and the Reaper.





Turn 6:
Micah beasts out with Kromac & drops Warpath. The pureblood walks away and dies to a free strike to make room for Kromac to leap. The Argus pushes Kromac forward 1" (although I don't think it was necessary), and then he walks up to the McThralls and leaps into Reach of Termy. 6 Fury and 1 failed Tough roll later, Termy's dead.



My thoughts:
Well, I lost again, but I think I learned a valuable lesson (well, I hope I'll remember it next time). The jacks are there to be much harder to remove than infantry, plus they resolve attacks against other heavies much faster. They shouldn't be on the flanks, but in the middle of the brick being a big pain in the ass.

Micah's thoughts:
Damn why is the Gorax sculpt so ugly. If the resculpt was out by now, I'd have that instead of the Argus/Wolves. Then my Stalker would have killed him on my 2nd turn!

and then I scurried of to the lab.

50 Points of Painted Circle

Like Jon said there's a tournament coming up this weekend with a raffle for having a fully painted army. That's a good enough excuse to get me motivated to paint up some Circle. I just finished my druids and pulled out the rest of the list to get a picture in. The major theme of this list is cram everything I already had painted in and then fill out the points. So...there you go. Kind of beast heavy and not an ideal list but I'll lose even if I have the perfect list so I might as well just go out there and have fun being fully painted. Oh and for the record, group shots are hard to take.

Wolf Riders and a WIP Druid

I finally polished off my min unit of wolf riders. I'm playing in a 50 point tournament the first weekend in February and there are special prizes for being fully painted. Given that I'm not going to win anything through solid play I figured I'd come up with a list that I can get painted pretty easily. I'll take a shot of the list once it's done but for now here's the wolf riders.

And here's a WIP druid. I still need to do final highlighting and details as well as the base but you get the general idea. I'm really hoping people's minds don't go straight to KISS.

Droooooids of Orboros

After being on backorder for a while my Druids finally came in. I've had an idea brewing for them for a while. I'm not a very good sculptor but I think I managed well enough so you can tell what is supposed to be going on. So I wanted to make my druids like ceremonial dancers dressed as different animals or performing rituals. 3 of the druids will just have face paint but the other three are pictured below dressed as 3 animals of the plains: a buffalo, a vulture and a snake.

Mohsar and the Butcher Painted

I finished painting my Mohsar. He's really small and fiddly so I'm not entirely pleased with how he turned out, but what can you do. I got tired of painting him so here he is.

I also picked up a commission to paint the Butcher. This was an interesting one because I've already painted him for myself in 5th Border Legion colors. I still enjoyed painting him even though it was the second time, I guess I just really like this guy.

Wolves and Wolds

I finished painting my min unit of Wolves of Orboros and a Woldwarden to boot. I didn't do any converting on either of them and the Wolves are pretty heavily armored for my Native American theme. I stuck with the same color scheme so they'll fit into the rest of my army but that's about it.

For the Woldwarden I wanted to do sort of a terra cotta/red rock thing and while I think it could use a once over for more highlights and depth I'm fine with it for now.

Modifying Mohsar

I finished sculpting a long headdress onto Mohsar so if it ever stops raining down here I'll prime him and get to work. Kromac is the only warlock I really play for Circle so I'm very excited to take Mohsar out for a spin. He seems tricksy and nuanced, which is a good challenge and something I'm looking forward to.



Here's a sneak peek of my side project in case I need a break from working on Circle stuff.



I wasn't a big fan of this model based on the pictures but in person it's pretty nice. Too bad I have to dump him out of my Viktorias crew to make room for Ronin. Actually not that bad because Ronin are freaking awesome.

Circle Stuff

I finished painting my Tharn Whitemane and figured it would be a good time for a group shot. I didn't do any conversion work on this guy because Tharn don't need much to fit with my theme. My druids are back ordered but as soon as those come in I'll be embarking on a more ambitious project.

I am the Gorax, I speak for the trees.

I'm going out on a limb here and trying something new, miniature sculpting. Like most of the world's population I'm not a fan of PP's Gorax sculpt. So my first foray into sculpting will be trying to scratch build a Gorax. Anyway, I started work on the head and here's what I have to show for myself.

I tried to think of something that would fit with my Native American circle and the only creatures I could find that would be at all Gorax like were Sasquatch and a Wendigo. Bigfoot would be pretty funny, but not exactly what I was going for. An Algonquin Wendigo is actually pretty much exactly like the Lord of the Feast. Emaciated, cannibalistic and one scary mofo. Luckily people have taken a lot of creative license with the Wendigo and turned it more into a yeti/bigfoot monster. So after some research I decided that's the direction I'd go, a Gorax loosely based on the PP monster with some of my own wendigo-like flair.

Beastie Boy

I just finished Kromac's beast form which means I'm all painted up and ready to go for November's tournament. While I still like the human form sculpt better the beast form was actually much easier as everything didn't seem so smooshed together.







I also painted some totem pole shifting stones for a laugh.

Warpwolf Stalker

I finished my Stalker so now I have the trinity of wolves fully painted. Exciting stuff! Sorry if the picture is a little dark, he kept warping prowl right before the camera went off.

Wolves Everywhere!

Yup more Circle updates. I finished painting my Feral Warpwolf so only 1 more wolf to go. I'm not 100% satisfied with him but as I'm itching to move on to other projects it'll have to do.






I also assembled and reposed my Stalker. He's getting primed tonight and hopefully I'll be able to work on him a bit. I was planning on doing some extensive sculpting on this guy because I don't like the stock pose a whole lot. Then I saw the model in person and decided it was actually pretty good and would take a lot of work to repose. Instead I just tweaked him a little. I was going for a pose where he's sort of wading through enemies getting ready to swipe.







And here's pKaya again. I know I posted her already but I wanted a better picture.

Druid Wilder

I painted up this Druid Wilder tonight and it was a really enjoyable experience. The model is fantastic, very easy to paint and characterful. She is part of a 25 point Kromac list I'm trying to get fully painted by November 16th for a team tournament Jon and I will be playing in. Only a Stalker and Beast Form Kromac to go!

Fur Pile

I know I've put this model up here before but I reworked the fur on him and added some feathered arm bands. Here is almost ready to paint, there's still some green showing through so he'll need a little more priming. The pictures make it a bit hard to see details, but you get the idea.

Painted Pureblood

I spent the afternoon painting up my Pureblood Warpwolf. There are some parts that didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped but overall I'm quite satisfied with it. Now I have 1 beast and human form Kromac painted and I'm getting pumped for the new Circle releases in November!