Ropecon 2011

The biggest roleplaying, larping and miniatures convention is now over. For me it meant two days of Warmachine/Hordes and avoiding larpers/cosplayers as much as possible. On Friday evening we had a 25-point Highlander v2 feat. No Characters -tournament. My list was pVlad, Devastator, Spriggan, Widowmakers, Marksman, Wardoggy and Greylord Ternion. My plan was to shoot infantry with Widowmakers, and be indestructable with Vlad and Devastator while Spriggan was lurking for assassination vectors.

In the first game I was paired against Jani's Trollbloods army (Grissel, Swamp Troll, Mauler, Kriel Warriors, Krielstone gang, Chronicler). I was really scared at first: Jani went first and the scenario was Incursion. So, after his first turn about whole his army was beyond the flags and up in my face. I moved up and started shooting with Widowmakers, inflicting damage nicely. On his second turn he charged Spriggan and inflicted major pain on him but didn't kill it. On my second turn I used my feat, ran Devastator to one objective and charged Spriggan to Mauler and to hold the second objective. Spriggan didn't kill Mauler, but Widowmakers kept shooting the endless waves of Trolls. On his next turn he scrapped my Spriggan and I had no choice but to send Vlad to hold the center objective. Though, I was not really worried about that, he seems to be quite tough nut to kill with Blood of Kings. His Grissel was close to that objective too and we ended up bashing each other's casters for a couple of rounds. In the end he was not able to kill Vlad and Vlad finished off Grissel.

My second game was against Olli's Cryx (pAsphyxious, McThralls, Surgeon, two nodes and Harrower). Scenario was Destruction this time. Olli started and ran everything towards me. I shot with widowmakers and moved up a bit. On my second turn I managed to charge Harrower with Spriggan, but on his third turn he charged Spriggan with pAspy, used feat and turned it into a pile of scrap. Widowmakers and Greylords killed all McThralls but Aspy was able to kill all my other models too besides pVlad. So in the end we had only Vlad and Asphyxious standing, watching each other. He could always move up a bit, throw some spells at me and Teleport to safety, so I saw no other choice than to try casting some missiles at him (while casting BoK to keep me alive). Missile missed, Asphyxious charged me, hit me and killed Vlad in that one activation. This game got me really frustrated as I had thought I could beat any caster in end game but it wasn't like that. But no worries, this was the more casual tournament and had only one game left.

In the last game of the night I was paired against Tero's Circle army (eKrueger, Stalker, Woldwyrd, Woldshooters, min Wolf Riders, Shifting Stones). This time scenario was the radial "control the center and contest a flag with warcaster". Armies met at the center, he charged and destroyed my Spriggan with Stalker. I was able to kill Woldwyrd with pVlad's charge (previously shot it with some Widowmakers) and sent Devastator to use Rain of Death against Krueger. I rolled 13 and already rolled a branch where he'd transfer the damage. He just raised his hand to shake mine as the Stalker was full of Fury. This completely caught me off guard, but I guess that's just fine in WM/H. I can't really remember another time where I have killed an opposing caster completely accidentally.

Later that night we grabbed some beers, went to sauna and played some drunken hardcore WM/H. Next time I'll write about Saturday's main tournament (and one of the most horrible hangovers I've had in ages).

RopeCon and Mael-ETC 2012

I have a couple of events upcoming: one in near future, one further away. RopeCon (basically translated to Roleplaying Convention) is the biggest roleplaying, larping, card game, and most importantly, miniatures convention in Finland. For me it means a lot of Warmachine/Hordes (and trying to avoid larpers as well as possible, they scare me!). There are two tournaments in RopeCon: on Friday evening a Highlander 2.0 (instead of just one of each you get to choose 1-2 of each) and on Saturday is the main event, a 50p SR2011 tournament. So far my lists are pretty much all open. I have a couple of quite good of them, now I just should choose it and paint it. At the moment I'm thinking Trollbloods for the main event (them being my main army and stuff) and Khador for the Highlander 2.0 (there are a couple nice lists in Khador for a smaller point event). But only time will tell what happens, I've had some other thoughts too...

On the other hand, me and some friends decided to attend Maelstrom's ETC next year, wohoo! Tickets must be bought August 3rd (hopefully we won't miss that). The list metaing has already began and we were thinking to start insane practising for the event (so we wouldn't be total losers there). I counted 112 Warcasters in WM/H. If I play twice against every one of them (or once against it and once with it against my list), it means a game more frequently than every other day. Not an impossible schedule, but maybe I'd better start playing asap...