It lives!!

Hello, again very long break between posts. Life keeps getting in the way and having been away from things for so long I've only just found my way back onto here, the other reason things have been incredibly quiet is unfortunately my local group have not really been playing Warmachine and Hordes in quite some time (back end of last year I believe was the last time the game saw play time) and as such I've had very little opportunity to see how the new edition has changed the way things play, although I aim to (given a little time to get back in to the system, when interest picks up again) revamp the site to have up to date profiles and battle reports for MK3, I do have a couple of profiles I was working on pre-hiatus which I will convert the information to MK3 although from what I've been told, not much has changed (drastically) apart from the new rules to give focus to jacks for just being in a caster's control range (good reason to keep them in close beyond the other positives). For now I'm trying my hand at a few new systems which I'm covering on my other blog: anythingbut1s.blogpsot.com, which I'm reviving as I intended this one as a pure Warmahordes blog and that one is more general in feel, so if you want to see some other systems head on over, if not. I'll try to post on here at least once a month trying to convert where I can, thanks again for all the support and views guys it's greatly appreciated and it's good to be back :)

Plastic Gorlar/Kodiak kit unboxing

So after a long wait we've finally got our new Vengeance jack - the Grolar in kit form boxed together with one of my jacks of choice, the Kodiak and in the drive towards Mark 3 I went out and picked up one and decided to do a mini unboxing post, with a little of my painting process thrown in for good measure.

So to start the box (see left) contains a bag of sprues, unlike the Clam jack box (Devestator, Demolisher and Spriggan) and the Heavy jack kit (Juggernaut, Marauder, Destroyer and Decimator) where the pieces were in a plastic contain with main parts all in separate areas. I gotta say PP have really done a nice job on this new plastic, I'd heard they'd changed it from the aforementioned kits and they weren't wrong. There are barely any mould lines visible and the plastic is nice to work with especially if you're used to the likes of GW kits in which case it's the same only scaled up some. Also the set comes with the standard colour stat cards and an instruction sheet that runs you through the steps of building the jack chassis and the the alternate builds for both jack load outs.

So damn nice, seriously

So in the picture you can see the sprues, two of which make up the upper chassis and the lower chassis, then there's a sprue unique to each jack (the top one in the picture is the Kodiak's to the right is the Grolar's). As I mentioned before there are some very clear nicely laid out instructions on how everything goes together, since the arms are a little more complex than the other kits this was quite a relief, even more helpful each piece is numbered on the sprue, making the instructions even easier to follow, I'm interested to see if this carries through into other models potentially units too, though having built a full compliment of Winter Guard Infantry and Weapon Attachments, I'm not sure that'll be necessary as they are pretty straight forward to put together.

Sorscha and her 'litte' friend

 So having figured the arms and other parts out here's a finished Grolar, I found that most the parts fit pretty snuggly together, so long as you file off the bits from the sprue, (I messed up on on of the sets of shoulder spikes, but everything else went together fairly easily). As it's the first model I've made in a while I opted to go for a different colour scheme to the other jacks I've made up till now basing it upon the picture of Sorscha and a Destroyer in the faction book, partly to make it stand out (like the hammer and autogun didn't already XP), partly due to the name being derived from the Grizzly/Polar bear hybrid and being people of the Snowy wintery variety I felt it appropriate to have a jack in a more winter friendly colour scheme.

All in all I've got to say I had a lot of fun putting the jack together, much as I enjoyed the quick fits of the older Mk 2 kits, I did enjoy taking my time on this, clocking in at about an hour, properly removing mould lines, dry fitting and just generally getting the feel of how everything fit together. 

White and metal, cold just like Khador :)

I'm feeling really quite positive about the newer jack kits PP is bringing out, like the Beserker chassis due out in July (though I will say I feel there'll be several conversion's on the Mad Dog's Kitchen Knife, I mean... Gladius, purely as it looks a little on the small side, but that's just my opinion on it, still shield cannons on a jack are always nice) and I can whole heartedly recommend this as a good purchase even as a hobbyist, the kit is a dream to work with if you're careful and on the tabletop both jacks have plenty of potential. Keep your eyes open for the Grolar analysis post coming shortly, till that keep rolling Komrades :)





 

Work in progress, but such a nice way to come back to the system

March to Mark 3

Well it's good to be back :) It has been a long long break. I've been away from the system for almost 18 months, in that time I've been doing rounds on other systems, burning out starting again and after much pining the jacks of war have been unleashed once more and there has never been a better time. In the past week we've seen the introduction of MK3 spoilers rolling out and the forums are currently buzzing with speculation and rumours flying about. 

So once more I'm booting up again, going back over some of the older posts once MK 3 hits and refreshing the old material, publishing the articles which I never finished before my disappearance into the ether, bringing back all of what I originally set out to do, bringing insights and strategies, while trying to not neglect the hobby side of things too (Most of what my down time has been spent doing to be completely honest) so expect unit analysis, battle reports, pictures of eye catching models, news of the impending edition change as and when I find any.

If you've not already seen it below is the announcement video from Privateer outlining some of the changes that are coming in the new edition. I for one am incredibly excited about these changes and looking forward to seeing how they change the landscape of the games, leveling out the colossal ground pound and bring back the jack supremacy that drew me to the game in the beginning. In the next post I'll briefly look at the new starter boxes, hopefully having some info on our new caster Viscount of Scarsgrad - Lord Kazlov, with a few unit analysis posts to come before then. Till then happy gaming and keep on rolling :)

 

Vengance: we have ours now

Again with the very long absence... Apologies to you all, my time seems to be like sand slipping through my fingers, however I'm back even if only briefly to discuss the new book and in my opinion a warjack Khador players everywhere should be incredibly happy about.

 

Spoiler Alert

So if anyone has followed the fluff you'll know that after colossals Cryx basically handed Cygnar and Khador's collective asses on a plate to them in the Thornwood, Menoth faced off against a horde of Cryx in Lael and Vlad came face to face with Hierarch Severious to get them to aid in the good fight.The majority of the main story is incredibly Cyganr centric (which I can forgive seen as they're the "good" guys of the fluff) so essentially we witness the combined force of Stryker, Sloan, Blaize and Kraye take the pain to Cryx and taking that all important althnac (essence of a dead Iosian god if recall correctly) from the Cryx and then set it on a boat with a rather uncomfrotable Blaize guarding it. However in the midst of all this happening we jump to Strakhov who being the Assault Kommando guy who can stealth himself does so and legs it into the necrofactorum, eventually finding a somewhat drained and no less determined Karchev, dialouge ensues outlining that as previously discussed Cryx want to turn Karchev against Khador, to which Karchev tells Strakhov to kill him. However, as we all know Strakhov respects Karchev too much to do that and simply stays hidden out of sight while hatching a plan... TBC...

So what we can glean from that is that A) It's highly unlikely that Karchev will be coming back as a Cryx caster, otherwise we'd probably see something to back that up, fair chance we may see eKarchev in a Cryx jack body, but if so I'm pretty sure he'd be on the Khadoran side of things, specially if Strakhov has anything to do with it. B) theres a fair chance we may see an epic Strakhov out of this little escapade seen as he's currently in the middle of a massive amount of Cryx and if/when he gets out he doesn't deserve an epic for that I'll be pretty amazed, especially seen as Butcher had to 'die' to get his (as did Vlad for that matter :P) C) Also sets up the chance of one of the casters deaths, PP have said people will start dying soon and I'd say if Karchev doesn't go epic, he'll get killed off, leading to Starkhov's epic or vice versa, though the rate we're going the race is on for old age to take Severious or Nemo first.

Fluff to one side I've previously covered the new releases bar one (as it wasn't known about then) so I'll focus on that for now and when I come to my next battle report in a couple of weeks I'll try a little more deatiled analysis then.

So the Grolar (hybrid of a Grizzly and Polar bear 0_o), based on the Kodiak Chassis (win) giving it Pathfinder, making it the third to have in built Pathfinder, without Relentless Charge (Kodiak and Conquest being the other two), the third to have Gunfighter (Demolisher and Torch) and the first to have a RoF five gun :). Getting to the details it does lose heavy boiler, so no free running, however it does pick up Fleet, which grants extra movement for a focus, so for two focus your Khadoran jack can be as fast as a Cyganr heavy, if you really want it to. It's hammer is one P and S lower than the Juggernaut's Ice Axe but picks up the special ability Ram, auto knockdown on a hit with beat back thrown in essentially, it still has an open fist so can do most power attacks and then we come to the juicy bit. The big cannon mounted on the Grolar's fist is essentially 5 blunderbusses strapped together, so while the stats are a little low for a weapon on a ranged jack imagine the following scenario, warcaster hides behind heavy warjack, for this example we'll say its a crusader, Grolar charges knocks it down and punches it, then thanks to virtuoso (I forgot I hadn't mention that the Grolar has that, so melee and ranged attacks in the same activation) pumps 5 shots into said caster, they may well not be dead, but it creates a large threat to deal with or more sensibly sets up an assassination with something else. This is one thing I noted when looking at the Grolar, it's primarily going to be a second jack, on it's own it can do lots of things but it lacks the killer blow, so combo with one of the three cheap jacks (Beserker, Juggernaut or Kodiak) and you have a winning tag team as not much will survive being knocked on it's butt before getting wailed on pretty fiercely.

One thing worth keeping in mind with all the Vengance release is that they are geared around one thing for Khador, speed and manouverability and nothing says that more than the Malakov/Grolar combo, for two words Red Line, a speed and strength buff with free charge or slam on any jack is harsh on the Grolar it's down right brutal, giving it a charge range greater than a jack superiority (and when the Grolar doesn't have reach thats pretty damn nice). Downside the jack takes damage for red line, not a great deal of damage but still enough to have a mechanic close at hand to stop your Grolar having issues in the middle of the game.

So thats all for now, I will have another battle report up in the coming weeks hopefully swiftly joined by the long promised painting tutorial (apologies on the wait for it, the friend who is doing it likes to take his time with things, then switches mid project...) and maybe some pictures when I can get them up, but for now, go out and play like you've got a pair.

Happy New Year

Hello again everyone, sorry for the long absence just real life has gotten in the way again, that and Warhammer 40k, which I'm now taking part in a year long tale of gamers with some friends, I'll be trying to put updates on the progress in that as I go, I realise this is a Khador blog, but I'm currently branching out a little bit, picking up Cygnar and getting back into 40k for a little bit, this doesn't mean that Khador will be neglected. In the not too distant future the long awaited painting tutorial will be posted up as well a new warcaster profile for my newest caster, eVlad. As well as that I'll be posting up some more painted pictures, passing on what I hear of Vengance (apparently we're due a Kodiak Chassis jack with a mini/chain gun type weapon), now slated for March 19th.

Asides from that I just wanted to wish all of you reading a very happy new year, been doing this blog for almost a year now and I'm really glad so many people have looked and hopefully found my ramblings useful or even entertaining in some way. Thanks again to you all and have a very happy 2014.

New years resolution - to paint more models than I buy/build and to play games more often, whats your's?

Once more with feeling...

Hello again, sorry it's been a long while since I've been on and posted anything new up, I've been quite busy with life getting in the way, but once again I'm disentangling from the mess that is said life and bringing you up to speed with all things Khador, today I'm going to very brielfy go over a few interesting thoughts I've had from the play through I had using Butchers latest incarnation, I've got to say he puts a whole new spin on the word terror.

The First Look

Looking at Butcher at a glance he's not changed too much in his basic stats, his focus is stable once again, he's lost a few warjack points, though the war argii, which I'll mention later do make up for that, but that aside he is the same old Orsus Zoktavir we've come to know and love or loathe dependent of which side of Lola you happen to be on. However, take a look at his spell list and you have a recipe for some very nasty tricks. Firstly, Energiser to give a little extra movement, Flashing Blade to make slicing units that little bit eaiser on your focus, Impending Doom to bring your opponent's units closer to you and Obliteration, because you can't have Butcher without it. Tag on his newest feat and Butcher is a terror generating machine, replenishing focus and making all command checks in Butcher's melee range to fail is just horrible, especially if your opponent is fielding an army lacking in high command or fearless. Having tried him out once I can say that while Butcher3 is essentially a one trick pony (essentially use your army to deliver Butcher to your opponent's doorstop and tear face) he is still a very fun caster to play and I'm sure we'll see a lot of him in the coming year.

Then you have the Argii, not as good as Circle's beasts, for obvious reasons, however with the unit (Butcher and the argii pair) having Vengence they give some flexibility, either to throw the dogs forward or screen Butcher as they're all on medium bases, additionally they have the ability Gang to give the Argii the ability to guard against sneaky assassination attempts, though I wouldn't count on it, having seen the mounted Daughters of the Flame that Menoth have just recieved (truly horrible, unless you can use terror ;)).

Thats unfortunately all I have currently, hopefully I'm aiming to get a little more gaming time in so hopefully I'll be able to start putting more articles out, also having picked up a Cygnar force that I previously passed on to a friend I hope to put out some articles regarding Cygnar models from a Khadoran players view point, but for now keep on reading and keep on playing ;) hopefully shouldn't be as long between the next post and this one

Fresh view on Khador

Hi, once again I'm slipping in putting up posts, I can only apologise for that, currently the Warmachine scene is incredibly slow right now. However this has given me a little chance to think and refine ideas or come up with some wildly interesting ideas such as my current train of thought, an eSorscha list.

Now as probably every Warmachine player to have played or played against Sorscha in her prime incarnation they will probably expect the Assassination run and defense buffs (and debuff in the form of her feat) that Sorscha's epic form wouldn't be that different, to a point they are right. That point being when turning epic Sorscha has taken it upon herself to send her army forward to do that and cause the largest amount of pain they can while she sits back and pops the unlucky solo plucky enough to go near her. Put another way, while eSorshca maintains her assassination style she uses her army to do the heavy lifting while she is mainly reduced to throwing out spells and buffs on on the other models in the unit.

Looking Forward: Vengeance

Hi, sorry for the massive gaps in posts, since the tournament and the journeyman wrapping up (I finish second overall in that, which I was quite happy with) Warmachine is tailing off at my local gaming club at the moment. That said there's still big things coming up soon, we've had the release of Convergence of Cyriss last month and though I've yet to see any hit the table top I'm told by a friend who has a 25 point army, it's really quite a nice army. More importantly for Khador players we've got the upcoming release of the new expansion: Vengeance, which I believe is set to drop in January 2014, bringing a whole new bag of good stuff our way.

The dust settles - Tournament Wrap up

Well, just back from the tournament, of the five games played, there were four pretty solid defeats and a close fought win and I mean close fought. A few things I noticed while there of the 8 people taking part (there were meant to be 12, but 3 no showed and a player volunteered to drop out to even out the numbers) 4 of those players (including myself) played using Khador, there was my list that I posted previously, a player using an Old Witch, eIrusk combo (the overall winner), a player with just Strakhov's tier list (and two min Assault Kommando sqauds as reinforcements) and a pVlad, Strakhov player. Now I'm pretty sure that the vast opinion of most people who have played Khador wouldn't have put money on Strakhov being featured in a torurnament let alone twice.

Last week of Tournament Prep

Hi eveyrone, sorry for the long gap of no posts, as  I mentioned in the title next week is the Ribble Rumble tournament I've been waiting for, so most of my time and effort is being spent looking at how my armies work, getting them painted and trying to get practice games in. Hasn't left much free time for me to attend to the blog, but as I've got a few free minutes I'm going to post up the lists I'm taking and do a quick run through why I chose what I did and how the army "should" work.

Quick post

Hi all, sorry I've not posted in ages, been up to my eyes in journeyman painting and tournament painting, then being drawn into Necromunda and Mordheim. It has been a very busy few weeks to say the least, quick side not to those of you who don't recognise the names Necromunda and Mordheim they are "Specialist" Games Workshop games, both skirmish based so low model count and relatively simple to play through, only in GW's infinite wisdom they decided to stop supporting the systems ages back so they're a little bit of an unknown to most people pre 2000ish.

Anyway, before I go further down the GW tangent, I wanted to just put a few quick things up as I've not much time spare and can't do full profiles, so heres a couple of snap shots on models I've been trying out.

Journeyman Battle Report 35 Points pButcher vs pStryker

Last match for this month and I was feeling really fired up for this game, given that if I won this game I'd be well on my way to boosting up the table again. Just so you can see how the table is at the moment here it is.



We're using the Privateer Press painting point guidelines and points are awarded as such: Win = 3, Draw = 2, Loss = 1. Currently I am sat 4th with a potential 28 painting points and 3 gaming points to go on, so really I wanted the win for this game. Getting back to the game, my opponent announced he was using pStryker for this match, which I wasn't greatly worried by, it just meant my opponent's army was more versatile than if he'd chosen to take eStryker (in no way am I saying eStryker is a bad caster, I got completely caught out and lost by caster kill as I forgot about Velocity, oops...).


Month 4 Scenario - Steam Roller Scenario 5: Incursion, three flags placed in the middle of the board at 12" intervals, at the end of player 2's first turn a flag is removed. Scoring begins at the end of player 2's second turn, 1 CP for controlling, 2 for Dominating, with Killbox in effect.

Journeyman Battle Report 35 Points pButcher vs eStryker

Month four of the journeyman league and I'd miraculously managed to claw my way up from 8th (of 9) in the table to 4th so I was looking for a fresh win to add to the points. I faced this opponent previously in month 2 so knew vaugley how they would try to play completely forgetting this month's special rule. "Month 4 - you may change your caster, but not your battlegroup", this meant that instead of facing eHaley as I had previously I was up against eStryker, by no means was I any more complacent for that fact mind, as eStryker is a pure assassination caster and I've quite often left Butcher out in the open feeling secure only for really weird assassination attempts to kill him in one turn, so I knew I had to be on my toes.

Month 4 Scenario - Steam Roller Scenario 5: Incursion, three flags placed in the middle of the board at 12" intervals, 1 CP for controlling, 2 for Dominating, with Killbox in effect.

Having played using Irusk the past few months I decided to return to my caster of choice, pButcher and given how his feat is all about damage potential I tried to build my list accordingly.

Life getting in the way

Hello, just wanted to put a quick post up as I'm aware I've not put anything new up recently, just in the middle of tournament preparations for a the Ribble Rumble, so I'm currently painting three different armies (pButcher for this months journeyman and my two rumble lists). Once they're all done regular posting should resume, probably starting with a mass of pictures of everything I've been painting as well as some battle reports, as I feel I've been slipping a little lately in terms of putting things up, I'll try to get my journeyman battle report up from last night, it may take a while though as the game went very very fast.

Encounter levels

There is one basic prinicple that makes Warmachine and Hordes what it is, it is a skirmish level game. This means that unlike Warhammer, 40K, Kings of war and such other games you are pitting massive armies against each other, you only have a small force comparatively. I have absolutely no problems with this idea, the issue that I have is when the game grows beyond the 35 point level (or 36 if you play in German tournaments) the game stops being a skirmish game due to the amount of models and units on the table. At a skirmish level you rely on army wide synergy and combos so x does this which helps y to do what it does making it easier to achieve objective a, where as once you get to the point beyond that it becomes more and more how can I deal the most damage to my opponent while trying to not to lose my important units.

Unit Profile: Kayazy Assassins

Widely regarded as the ugliest Warmahordes models available (although the Nyss hunters are pretty close), this unit is capable of more than compensating for this when they hit the table top. This tricky unit is capable of taking on most threats in the game and dealing some serious damage in a single activation.

Taking a look at their stats, the SPD is average for warrior models, a MAT equal to that of Doom Reavers, and a good DEF to boot, however it's worth keeping in mind that their CMD is relatively low, meaning that if the Kayazy have to make a CMD check they aren't as likely to stick around and they are limited as to how far they can spread out, making that CMD check a big threat if your opponent hits you. For this reason I'd recommend taking the Kayazy Underboss UA as he brings a great deal that makes this great unit, brilliant.

Character Jack Profile: Drago

Hi everyone, sorry I've not posted in a while, just life has suddenly picked up the pace and I had to drop a few things to manage, I should be able to start posting regularly again now though, thanks for your patience and enjoy the article :).

The cheapest character jack available in all of warmachine (tied with Erberus (a character Cryx Slayer hell jack I think)). In no ways does this make Drago a poor jack, quite the opposite, Drago is one of the best Character jacks Khador can field, also the model is one of the nicest to build and paint, so long as you don't mind the small spikes and other small detail parts.

As a Khadoran jack Drago shares the same basic stats line, however he is an upgraded Beserker, meaning slightly higher DEF as well as lower ARM and RAT. With the upgrade he comes with a fair buff to his MAT which is very nice considering this allows Drago to threaten the likes of Lancers and Chargers with ease on average, good thing to as like Beast in the upgrade Drago's target priorities changed from infantry to jacks. Basically Drago is designed to run into jacks chop them to pieces then move on to the next one.

Journeyman Battle Report 25 points pIrusk vs pSorscha

Month 3 game 1, to say that I was anxious about this game is a bit of an understatement. I'd just written up pSorscha's article so I was wary of her feat and most of her tricks and wasn't certain how my army would stand up to them.

Scenario Month 3: Steam Roller Scenario 1 - Destruction, 4 Monoliths (50mm bases) forming a 12" x 6" zone, CPs are scored by either controlling the zone, dominating (Caster controlling the zone) or destroying the opponents Monoliths (2 per side, player owns the monoliths closest to the player's deployment zone)

Warjack Profile: Destroyer

The original Khadoran ranged jack, features in the battle box and the starter box and with good reason. This jack is solid both in terms of it weapons and how it can be used, which is just one of the reasons players choose to keep it handy even after their army expands.

As with every none clamjack Khadoran jack, the main features of this jack are it's STR and ARM, it's other stats are average to poor (RAT, though this isn't to big an issue), allowing the destroyer to go toe to toe with enemy heavies and still come out the other side.

Warcaster Profile: pSorscha

Originally one of the most powerful casters in the game in Mk 1, since then she has been toned down, but still remains a very good caster. Hard to hit, but easy to kill.

Sorcha's stats are average across the board, apart from an above average DEF and slightly below average ARM. Similarly Sorscha has an average focus, which due to her spells being relatively expensive can leave Sorscha highly vulnerable, more so if your opponent can get round her DEF (looking at you pKreoss).