Well its the last day off in my work cycle so I guess I should be proactive and put something up. I am a wargamer, in layman's terms I play super chess with little figures that I assemble and (poorly) paint myself. Over the last year I had begun to pull away from the big company and see what else I might enjoy. Enter Warmachine. A Victorian England Steampunk themed wargame with giant robots wrecking house left and right? I'm listening...... I regularly play with my one friend as he enjoys the nerdy pursuits as much as I do, but he is much slower to purchase/assemble/paint so for the better part of a year I have collected a large force and never really gotten a game in. Yesterday I went to Heros World in Markham as Thursday is their Warmachine night to try and get some learning games in.

I was greeted with the usual cheer one can expect from fellow nerds and was able to get in 4-5 games that night. I had mentioned that while I have poured over the rules as best I can for quite a while I am still iffy on some things so most of my opponents were very mindful about explaining what they were doing and what it would mean for me. My first game was against a gentleman running a dwarf merc force. I ran the Cygnar battlebox with B13. The game was going well ( those little gun bunnies pack a whallop ) and with Earthquake from Stryker and some lucky damage rolls from my Charger I brought his Warcaster down to 1hp. Next turn saw my Lancer charge forward and Stryker arc Arcance Blast into him for the win. A fun game and John was a great opponent. ( I cant quite remember if I used the Chargers RoF 2 gun without paying the focus for it, as in a later game I was still thinking I could, but thats one more thing I will be sure to remember.)

2nd game was against a 15 point Circle force. I have been really interested in getting the Hordes mechanics down so I watched him with great interest. I played the same army. He had a caster that could basically Hulk out, a character heavy and another heavy. I managed to chip a good deal of damage off the one heavy and had set myself up so that my Ironclad would get the charge next turn. Turns out that caster has a spell that boosts the movement of his units so his character beast almost trashed my heavy in one go. After one more turn I figured if I was going down I was going down swinging, and charged pStryker in loaded with focus. BAD IDEA. There was poor damage rolls on my part but looking at it now I can see that pStryker shouldnt be doing that even under dire circumstances. He Cleaved me in twain his next turn. We were both laughing at how ineffectual Stryker was and he was excited to have won a game with his caster as he doesnt get many games in and usually gets rocked. A fun opponent and good guy to talk with during a game.

3rd game was with a younger player running a 25 point Merc list. I think he had Damiano with his character jack, min Nyss, Mangler, eEiyrss, Piper. I wanted to try eCaine as I really like the model. Caine had a Stormclad, Reinholdt, Squire, max Stormblades with UA and max WA, ATGM. This game was a lesson in waiting, my forces were taking a beating and thanks to Eiryss I couldnt use the Stormclad. He feated and had some other bonuses on his caster and I decided to take the assassination run. BAD IDEA. While I had used the back arc of his warjack to boost Caine's hitting power his caster was sitting on something like Def 17 ARM 19 or the like. I just couldnt get more than a love tap in. His turn sent Caine back to Cygnar in pieces. Not a bad game, my opponent offered his advice to me afterwards. Several players afterwards mentioned to me that he plays to win so I shouldnt feel bad about the absolute drubbing I took. I honestly didnt care, I have been around enough of the younger wargaming crowd to know that many are playing for the big W and I dont take it to heart.

The last game I got in was against another Cygnar player. 15 points, he had Siege with Defender, Squire and Reinholdt, eEyriss, B13, neither of us had a Stormsmith so he played with 14. I ran pStryker, Ol' Rowdy, B13, Hunter marshalled to Strangeways. We played the 3 flags 1 dissappears game. Due to oversight on his part Eyriss was next to his defender on Sieges feat turn which meant all he really was able to do was take out Rowdy's movement and bitch-slap my B13 back to momma. My turn 2 my hunter took one of the objectives and sent his Ryan packing, Strangeways repaired Rowdy's movement and then Rowdy charged at Eiryss who was siting on the other objective, it wasnt enough to reach her but enough to contest it if things went pear shaped. Stryker had feated so everything but the hunter was feeling pretty safe. He brought his B13 near my hunter to contest but Blur kept him from doing anything else. My turn Stryker had just enough movment to charge Eyriss and take her down. Which gave me the win by scenario. A nice game my opponent was really good about answering my questions and pointed out to me that I had been clustering my models. Apparently its a big way to tell who is coming from 40k. I went with a dozen or so of the guys for wings and beer afterwards. All in all a rather enjoyable time, I only wish it was closer to home. I will see if I feel up to it again next Thusday, I fly the following day and wont be back home for 2 weeks. On the table right now are 2 min units of forgeguard. I hope to be done them by next week.