Tag Archive for Hordes

Lowering Your Standards

MPA

Once upon a time I worked for a miniature company you may have heard of called Games Workshop. Games Workshop would hold two annual tournaments. One was for staff and the other for the public. Both tournaments required all models be completely painted in order to be played. I would typically spend several months ahead of time planning and meticulously painting each model to the best of my ability in order to win the “Best Painted Army” award, which I was fortunate to achieve a couple of times.

Fast forward to today. I no longer seem to have the patience to paint models to showcase or competition level. Now, I find it quite frustrating if a single model takes me longer than two painting sessions to complete or a unit to take more than four painting sessions to complete. I can still achieve pretty decent results but the quality suffers a bit. If you’re not painting for competition and just want to get your models on the table then you may consider lowering your standards. This article may help you out as it’s all about painting to tabletop quality.

 

This lovely female painter is lowering her standards a bit.

This lovely female painter is lowering her standards a bit.

Creative list building vs. “the meta”

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Meta (from the Greek preposition and prefix meta- (μετά-) meaning “after” or “beyond”) is a prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter. 

If you’re anything like me, the first time you heard the word ‘meta’ it was probably attached to the word gaming, you usually heard it playing RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, and it wasn’t something you wanted to be accused of.  Meta gaming meant using your out-of-character knowledge to make in-character decisions and was typically most loathed when it was done for personal gain.  But I digress, many of you dear readers may not be as nerdy as I am and perhaps the first time you heard it was in the Warmachine and Hordes community where it gets thrown around so often.   If you listen to any of the multitude of podcasts on the subject (including the brilliant and amazing Lost Hemisphere Radio Podcast) you’ll hear the term thrown around a lot, but what does it mean to you?

The way people in this community use the term it basically means ‘the style or styles of play that are most advantageous and/or successful within the current rules, accepting the current range of models available for play’.  In other words; whatever is working right now.  That is the basic concept of Warmachine meta.  It is different from place to place and highly affected by the size of group playing the game at or in any given event or community, but it’s a fascinating concept and it’s a neat experience to travel to Cons, tournaments and even just stores outside of your local in order to see other metas.  Something that I have been noticing more and more recently is the trickle down from the national meta to the store level meta, probably because of the massive increase in the popularity of Warmachine podcasts these last few years.  People hear casters or other models reviewed poorly or read that they are bad on the forums and simply dismiss them without a further look, instead favouring options more popular on the forums or among the top national players.  On the one hand I think this is great because it gives payers everywhere a chance to try out a list or some tech that one of the best in the world put together, but on the other hand I worry that newer players may get sucked into the whirlpool of competitive play before they have a chance to bask in the glory that is the storyline, themes and narrative of the Iron Kingdoms – and of course the basics of the game itself.  It’s important to get a firm grasp of the basics before diving into last year’s Warmachine Weekend winner’s Masters list.  You want to remember that the game is fun too, and keep it that way for yourself and others as often as possible.  That’s most of what I want to address today but before I get too carried away:

Post TempleCon Blues

 

Having just returned from TempleCon 2014 and made reparations at home for my time away, I find myself a bit morose and melancholy at my desk as i write this, thinking of all the people I already miss and all the fun I just had.  If no one minds I think I’ll go back through some of the highlights here and talk about why TempleCon means the world to me.

Fearing the approaching snowmaggeddon, we hastily decided last Tuesday to depart early and drive all night to beat the majority of the snow and mess that would come with a Winter Snowstorm the day we were meant to drive 8 hours to Rhode Island.  We LITERALLY would have been driving through the worst part of the storm for the majority of the day, and that is not something I really wanted to do.  So rushed packing and hasty departures had Ragnarok and myself in the car and on the road by 8 PM, hoping beyond hope to not hit snow till early Wednesday.  We made good time and crossed the border fast after an awesome chat about being unique and different with the border guard and quickly got underway crossing the desolate space that is the I-90 in New York State.  Making but one pit stop for gas and a bio-break, we had what i consider to be a pretty good run all the way to Warwick, Rhode Island and the Crowne Plaza hotel.  We had heard from the second car that they were getting some snow, and I expected to get hit when we started to head south towards Providence/Warwick, but fortunately our car made it all the way to the hotel with no snow.  We checked into our room at around 4:45 AM Wednesday and went back out to get the bags from my car, only to be greeted by 2cm of snow already down in the time it took us to check in.

 

This was clear 5 minutes ago...

This was clear 5 minutes ago…

I’m Conning your Temple, 2014!

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That’s right people, it is Thursday, February the 6th of 2014 and right now, somewhere in the Crowne Plaza hotel in Warwick, RI I am sleeping off the first of many nights of copious amounts of drinking.  Alternatively I haven’t slept and am in the line to get access to the new Privateer Press shinies when their booth opens in the morning, hoping beyond hope that Stryker3, Vengeance Softcover and ALL THE CONVERGENCE DEATHBOTS pre release models will be mine.  TempleCon 2014 is here, and the best FOUR days in gaming have begun.  Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful, but it’s fine to resent me for the fact that i am here amongst many friends and fans of the Warmachine & Hordes games (including High Command!).

…Exploding On The Highway Like a Slug From a .45

MPA

Speed Painting 101

A common question I receive from friends is “How do you paint so fast?”.

It’s not uncommon for me to hammer out a full 50+ point army in roughly a month’s time.  How do I do this?  It’s likely a combination of experience and technique.  I’ll just run down some quick pointers and then there’s a 52 min video of me painting a Bull Snapper model from start to finish.

 

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Wear a smock or something if you’re going to speed paint like this guy!

Year of the Alligator

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I’ve been known to play a bit with the less popular factions. I love the underdog. To this end, for about a quarter of 2013 I was playing the Pigmen of the Iron Kingdoms, the Farrow Thornfall Alliance. I had specifically avoided collecting the Blindwater Congregation (Gatormen) side of the faction because it was generally deemed the more competitive half, especially after Rask had been released. Now, for whatever reason, I’ve got my competitive juices flowing and I’m ready to get back to my winning ways and pulling no punches so here come the Gators.

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What? Oh. No, not THAT Rask…

Rise of the A.I.

Banner being designed, this was too cute to pass up.

 

One of the things I see happen frequently is people making, sharing and discussing lists that they have created for an event, game night, or tournament appearance that bears some scrutiny by their peers.  The Privateer Press message boards have specific sub-sections for all of their factions to dedicate to list building and critique.  I enjoy building lists as well, and certainly listening to podcasts that discuss list building theories, ideas, and the merits of the pieces and parts to each list included.  With a blog like HH it’s going to be harder to get a full conversation going but it will allow me to get some of my list ideas out there and flesh out the why and what of the list, as well as if it has any merit or play test possibility whatsoever.  I’ll be looking for feedback in the comments section, as well as in any of the forum posts where I link the article.  And go easy on me, I am pretty simple/not that good at this game.  🙂

2013 Year In Review

 

I call 2013 the Life and Death of a blog.  Because really, I tried to get it up and running and recruit lots of people to blog, write and talk about what they are doing with their hobbies, but that hasn’t really worked out like I thought it would.  Turns out blogging is like work, and we all try really hard to avoid work at all costs.

 

However we here at HH are not to be deterred.  I am gonna look at the design of the blog, look at getting some more articles up and running, and see about motivating (with a whip) some of the guys whose content I know was well-written and well received by the small audience we have out there.  That being said, let’s talk about what I did accomplish in 2013:

Hey, I know a guy who lives in that city…

NFL(GS) Game Tape

MPA

Professional sports teams review old game tape for hours in order to improve their own skills and abilities as well as to learn their upcoming opponents’ play style.  These are athletes that are at the top of their game and studying game footage helps to keep them there.  What exactly are they looking for?  Well you can’t control what your opponent will do but you can investigate what they’ve done in the past and possibly learn strategic tendencies and tactics and from that info, you can learn how to counter it.  You can also study your own gameplay and determine what you can improve on.  So if you’re looking to get to the top of the Warmachine/Hordes competitive scene, why wouldn’t you review old games?

 

Enter the NFL(GS) Game Tape (Notable Friendly Local Game Store).  Alright, admittedly competitive Warmachine is not a professional sport but it is a competitive tournament environment where knowing the play styles of the major competitors and the typical models you’ll encounter across the table is essential to success.  More important is learning how to improve the strategies or positioning of models a typical player can make during a game.  Can you learn to recognize that your plan to out-attrition your opponent will fail and you should switch to assassination mode? Maybe reviewing the game a few times can help! As such, following in the footsteps of Matti K from endgamegaming.net, I have taken it upon myself to record a “game of the week” for the local players at our local gaming store, Heroes World.  Several of the players here will be going to Templecon to test their skills against the field and while only one of our local players has aspirations at seriously competing for the Warmachine Masters crown, I felt it would be good to let a variety of players assess their own games to see where improvements can be made.

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In Play 1, Knowshon Moreno wants to charge into combat but doesn’t know eEiryss is going to shoot all the Focus off of Peyton Manning. After studying the game footage, the player realizes he should have done Play 2, and sent Moreno to charge Eiryss so she can’t shoot Manning.

DOOOOOOOM!!!

Who's back, baby?

Who’s back, baby?

 

All right well it’s been far too long, and some great friends have been nudging me to get back into it and make some things happen, so let’s get going, shall we?  No time like the present and all that!

As an update, I’ll just let you know that I am working on my lists and play for Templecon, which is coming up soon in Warwick, Rhode Island February 6th to 9th, 2014.  If you haven’t yet got tickets, then WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU????  Seriously (Or “for serious” as my daughter likes to say), it is such a great social weekend that people occasionally play games at, you should come and hang out with us.  I am bringing my Legion of Everblight with me to TC, and to that end I am playing some lists and casters that I haven’t used before, and need to get some thoughts down and get some discussion going on what I am doing right, and what I am doing wrong with my lists.  In an effort to get more traffic and more discussions going I am going to get the message out there of what I am playing and how it is going, as well as try to showcase my efforts to improve as a painter with my Legion models.  So here comes the deluge of players and comments I hope!!