Yearly Archives: 2017

Thursday Night Shadespire Tournament

Almost forgot to post about this: I helped organize a quick Shadespire tournament last week at Huzzah Hobbies.

We figured/hoped that the speedy play of the game made it well-suited to a weeknight activity and it’d be an easy way to ensure that a few folks got in a couple of games… and were totally right.

It was hugely successful: on a Thursday night, we got twelve people.  We got three games in, and were done at a pretty reasonable time.

I found this Winter 2017 Organized Play packet somewhere (the Shadespire FB group?), and we worked with that.  Some key points therein:

  • No best two-out-of-three matched play.  This makes sense, as it means you get to play more opponents.  And, really, we had time for only three games.
  • You need to track W/L/D and the Glory Point delta.  This actually maps down to Glory Points per player; the rest can be calculated.
  • 45 minute rounds.

Things went very smoothly except pairings.  According to the packet, you effectively group players into brackets based on their number of Wins, Losses, Draws (3, 0, 1 points each, summed; simple enough) and then pair within brackets, matching the highest net Glory Points player in the bracket against the lowest net Glory Points in the bracket (okay) shifting the lowest & highest within a bracket up and down a bracket to account for any odd number of players (this was just too hard to do).

I worked up a spreadsheet to track the event, ’cause that’s how I’m wired.  Came away from the evening with a few revisions to make, but for the most part it worked well.  You can access (and copy) an updated version of the Google Sheet to use for your events here: Shadespire Tournament Tracking Spreadsheet.

In terms of warband distribution:

  • 2 Garrek’s Reavers
  • 5 Ironskull’s Boyz
  • 4 Sepulchral Guard
  • 1 Steelheart’s Champions

Wade took 1st with Ironskull’s Boyz, Thel took 2nd with Steelheart’s Champions.

I ran Garrek’s Reavers and got the teeth knocked out of me: two losses and a draw.  I’d have come in dead last, but that draw was in the last round vs. Casey and across all of the games, I had one (1) less Glory Point loss than he had (-9 Δ vs. -10 Δ).

My games went:

  • Round 1 vs. Thel (Steelheart’s Champions) – Loss with -6 GPΔ
  • Round 2 vs. Caleb (Sepulchral Guard) – Loss with -3 GPΔ
  • Round 3 vs. Casey (Sepulchral Guard) – Draw with 0 GPΔ

So far as I can tell, everyone had a really good time.  I think the plan is to do it again in January.

Xi Guan Progress

Pretty much done with the two Xi Guan Shops, which means I’m halfway done! The final stretch isn’t going to be easy, since the Office Buildings are more complex, and while I’m not sure about the Tower, I have no illusions about Lo Pan’s Noodle Hut.

Also, “done” is relative. I’m working to get these things assembled, which means painting, varnishing, and assembly. I’ll varnish them again before I play with them, and once everything’s “done,” I’ll come back with some oils to dirty everything up.

This second batch of buildings went much more smoothly than the first. Some lessons learned, for sure.

I haven’t been able to spend nearly as much time working on my Xi Guan terrain as I’d like. It’s frustrating, but I’m starting to find a groove and hopefully I can build up some momentum so I’m not sinking months into it.

The two clinics are 90% assembled at this point. Once they’re all built, they’ll get varnished and grimed. I’ve got another six to paint and build (advice to do it in that order: extremely good advice), and then two Top Down Terrain buildings to get through.

Also got, and built, Necromunda this weekend. Debating trying to paint up a gang now, before everyone’s moved on from the game, but I don’t want to lose momentum on the terrain.  (They’re on square bases, because I plan to paint the bases separately.  But, really, if you’re going to have a 90° sight arc, you should probably be on a square base.)

Now I’m painting up some Dark Age terrain.

I should start on the Xi Guan stuff, but I’m procrastinating. That’s gonna take a weekend to get rolling, not a couple of hours after work.

Damage Assessment

In the end, things were worse than I’d have liked, but much better than they could have been.  Given that I had something like 23 models on the tray: only 3 were damaged (so far as I can tell).  That’s fabulous.

The worst was probably the Tsylong/Lunokhod – that stupid fender was a pain to get on there, and the fin in the back even harder.  I’m not surprised those went, and I guess I need to be thankful that only one fender broke.

The second worst is probably the Salyut: those antenna sucked to get on there, and although the antenna in the middle looked like it snapped, it was only bent.  The paint split along the bend, but that’s all.

The least extreme but most troubling was the Iguana. There’s a paint chip on his shoulder and his arm is extremely loose.  Shifting him jiggles it.  I need to decide if I want to pull it out and reglue it or just wait for it to come off before repairing it.  Regardless, I probably need to just keep in in the display case from now on.

I’ve already started gluing the remotes back together.  Hopefully that last fin doesn’t give me too much trouble.

Baltimore Brawl IV

High off of a great NOVA Infinity experience, I was pretty hyped for the Baltimore Brawl.  It was a great day of Infinity, though it did end on kind of a rough note.

The Brawl was a single-day, four game event at Games N Stuff in Glen Burnie.  I’ve heard lots of great things about GNS as a store, but had never been able to make it up there before.

Google Maps suggested it’d be between an hour and a half and two to get up there, so I left early; unfortunately, I’d mixed up setup times with check-in times and Google was overly pessimistic about the travel time, which meant I got there a good hour and a half or so earlier than I needed to.  Chatting outside the store wasn’t a bad way to spend the morning, but I wouldn’t have regretted an extra hour’s sleep.

These were my lists:

  • List A – Frontline, Acquisition, Supplies
  • List B – Firefight

I wanted to run the Kriza, but that sucker is so expensive the next thing I knew I was looking at 11 order lists, and at that point it made sense to dial it in to a single, full group.  I don’t think I like running things so tight; you have less wiggle room, and if there’s one thing I need, it’s wiggle room.  I think my List B shook out to be just a bad list,

Game 1 was against Justin (J-Skewers)’s Qapu Khalqi.  I had a great time playing with Justin, but every. single. roll. went my way.  When nothing goes wrong, that means everything’s going wrong for your opponent, and having been on the other end of that, I felt pretty bad for him.  It didn’t really phase him at all, though.  I won this 9-0 without losing a single model.

The most notable moment for me was using the Tsyklon to fire a Pitcher next to Justin’s hacker and then using the Interventor to Isolate, then incapacitate her.  I also made the right call with Intelcom and revealing my Hidden Deployed Spektr to push into his sector at the bottom of turn three to eke out dominance by the skin of my teeth.

Game 2 was against John (JBear)’s Hassassin Bahram.  I got my clock cleaned pretty thoroughly: where all my rolls went my way in Game 1, they pretty much didn’t go my way in Game 2.  I also made a couple of mistakes in terms of positioning, and I made the wrong decision re: going first (which was a theme for the rest of the day).  Even though I lost this one 0-10, I had a great time, and came away learning some stuff.

Not much in the way of memorable moments about the game (besides John’s graciousness as he kicked my ass up and down the table).  I kept forgetting my Stempler Zond was knocked out.  The Kriza performed well, but wasn’t even close to closing any sort of gap.

Game 3 was against Wilson (Masterofmelee)’s Bakunin.  Wilson’s one of the top players in the world (we had a couple of those: I think four of the top twenty at the Brawl), and I’d been second guessing this list since I made it, I didn’t expect to do well in the match.  I didn’t, but I do think I held my own.  I definitely goofed by choosing  to not go first. He knocked my teeth in in the first turn, but I was able to bounce back, hold my ground, and squeeze out a couple of OP.  Even though I lost this one 2-9, I’m proud of my performance.

In turn one, Wilson used his Morlocks to throw smoke and tear ass down the edge of the board and cover the approach of his Überfallkommando, who nuked my Interventor Lt and Iguana before I knew what was happening, so I started the game in Loss of Lieutenant.   After that, though, Kriza Boracs was able to hold the line, my Morans were able to defend themselves against the Morlocks and Zeroes sent against them.  What appeared to be an Intruder turned out to be my one specialist: the Bandit Hacker, who was able to nail both Classifieds.

Game 4 was against Chris(?) (Zah90)’s vanilla Haqqislam.  This game was brief: again, I made the wrong decision by not going first.  He had me in Retreat before my first turn, which was rough, but did mean I didn’t have to wallow in my poor choices for too long.  I lost this one 0-1; he’d have likely have gotten 10 OP except he pushed too hard and had me in retreat too soon.

This wasn’t an easy game, but I handled it well, I think.  I’m not very good at this game, and when you’re not good, you’re going to have games where you just get the shit beat out of you and you can either roll with it and try to learn something from the experience (I think I did) or you can find a different game to play.

So, I was in a perfectly fine mood (three great games, one learning experience)… until he spun his open bag around and his open bag front swept across my entire army tray.  It’s been a couple of days, and just thinking about it now makes my adrenaline race.  I still don’t know the full extent of the damage, but he definitely broke two of my S5 remotes: one of them had four pieces broken off, and another had two pieces broken off and one piece actually broken (as in what was cast as one piece is now more than one).  I don’t know what, if anything is or isn’t broken.  I put everything away as quickly as I could and sat outside counting to 10 for a while.

This sort of thing happens.  It’s happened before, it will likely happen again.  It’s never not traumatic, though, and the carelessness, the extent of it, and combined with it being done by someone with a bunch of unpainted minis (which, fairly or unfairly equates to “doesn’t give a shit about minis” in my mind) makes it really upsetting.  The last time something like this happened to my minis (my fault: I slipped and fell down the stairs carrying my Khornate Daemons), I couldn’t bear to look at them for a year and a half.  I need to psyche myself up to look at the damage.

Despite the upsetting end to the day, I had a great time.  John Junghans ran a great event, the Infinity community is really the best, healthiest game community I’ve ever experienced.  It’s tough to have a bad game of Infinity: I find losing games as or more satisfying than winning games, because I come away knowing a bit more about the game.  I can’t not point out that of four opponents, two were painted, two were unpainted and that’s something I’d love to see change: the lack of painting expectation is the greatest flaw with the game.

Anyway, I’ll definitely be back again next year.

It came from the lightbox: Shadespire Sepulchral Guard

Of the four warbands I’ve painted for Shadespire, I’m easily the most happy with these. These specific models are why I picked up Shadespire; that they turned out the way they did makes me even happier with them.

Ironskull's Boyz

It came from the lightbox: Shadespire Ironjaws

I’m only somewhat satisfied with these boyz: the chipping on the armor is awful, and the checks and dags aren’t as tight as I’d like.  If I had a time machine, I’d go back and leave the yellow armor untouched.

But they’re done and I’m ready to Shade some Spires.