Recent Games and Reflections

September is the craziest time of year for me.  Coming out of the hibernation period that is the summer and being dropped right into a full boarding school teachers schedule is a bit intense.  Now I remember why I didn't start The Steam-Powered Gamer until October (OMG ALMOST A YEAR OLD!) - I was far too busy in September to do it.  Things are starting to calm down here a bit now 0 well, actually, I think I'm just getting into my groove.  Anyway, I have still been trying to be productive when it comes to Warmahordes stuff and I've managed to get a couple of games in at the local club.  Now that school is back in session some of the regulars have been coming back to the game club so I can at least get a game of Warmahordes in on Friday nights (typically).  That said, 2 games in the month of September is still not that great, but let me outline quickly how those games went.

Debriefing: pKrueger Battle Report

Yesterday I posted a battle report with pKrueger vs. Venethrax - the first time using Prezi to do so.  So far the response has been fairly positive, so thanks everyone for being supportive!  I clearly learned some lessons using Prezi for a battle report, as in the past I've only used it for teaching a lesson for class and I didn't use so many high-res photos.  I do like how it turned out, and I will use it again in the future, but I clearly need to streamline the process a bit and adjust the picture quality.  I promise that in the future, the photos will not be so intense and Prezi won't freak out so much and use up too many of your system's resources.  For those who had that problem, I apologize sincerely!

Beyond the lessons I learned from using Prezi for a battle report, there were some valuable lessons that I learned from my first game against Venethrax, and that is actually what this article will focus on.  Today, I debrief my performance using pKrueger at 35 points.

Prezi Battle Report: pKrueger

So a couple of days ago I played a game with pKrueger in practice for a tournament that's coming up this weekend.  I finally remembered to take pictures so I could write up a battle report for you all, but this time I decided to to something special!  I actually have to admit that I hate video battle reports.  They seem to cater too much to a cult of personality, I guess, and I'm more interested to hear about the game than hear some dude explain it to me.  I dunno, maybe it's just me.  Alternatively, I do like posting pictures which are narrated and annotated to show what happened in various steps along the way, but the limitation is that since activation order is so important in Warmachine/Hordes, it can be difficult to see the order in which things happen.  That's why I've decided to use Prezi to both annotate the pictures but to also emphasize activation order where appropriate.

Debriefing: Fiona

Yesterday I wrote up a battle report for my first time playing Fiona.  It was a lot of fun and was a really close game considering that I was matched up against eHaley, who is traditionally considered a top-tier warcaster for Cygnar.  While there was a couple 'Oops' moments we realized after the game where both me and my opponent forgot some rules (that you can't headbutt a larger base, Storm Striders have 360 LOS, etc.) the dice were really on my side and I shouldn't have won.  Even still, the experience itself was valuable and I was able to reflect on the list as a whole and how to use it in the future.  So now I'd like to debrief the battle report and reflect back on what I learned from the experience.

Battle Report: Fiona the Black

I finally got a game in with Fiona the Black!  I've had the model for over a year but I've finally had the opportunity to play a game with her, after all of the list-building I've been doing.  It was against a friend of mine and he has been playing around with the list he brought but he admittedly jumps around between armies fairly often (it's a local joke that we all buy his stuff on clearance).  This was the first time that I have played with Fiona and I had a really bad match-up against me, but my army performed quite admirably.  Without further ado, I will share the two lists and then as close as I can to a blow-by-blow of the battle.

Psuedo Battle Report

Thursday night I finally had the opportunity to play a game with pSkarre's Ships in the Night theme list.  It was a really great game and a good opportunity for me to try a faction other than Circle - with which I've been playing exclusively for the last couple of months.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to take any pictures of the game so I can't really give you a proper battle report.  I will, however, give the list that I played with and some perspectives on the list, how it performed, and some general reflections on various elements of the list and how to use them most effectively.

DOMINATION! READ! NOW! PART 7! FIGHT!

Today is the conclusion of the DOMINATION! READ! NOW! series, and I’m sure you’re all tired of seeing so many exclamation points and capital letters.  To conclude my initial analysis and impressions of Domination, I have a battle report to share with you!  Today’s battle report is pretty special not only because it’s the first I’ve posted on here, but also because it’s against a kid Drew at my LGS.  Drew is a good kid and I’ve been playing games against him for some time and recently traded my old Minions from the good Dr. Arkadius for his Cygnar.  This means that all of the painted models in the battle report today were painted by yours truly!  Let’s begin.