Dark Sphere Local Practice Tournament

 

Last weekend, Dark Sphere held a small Infinity tournament so that the new players there could get the hang of playing in a tournament, and the person running it could get the hang of the tournament software. I volunteered to be a "ringer" - essentially, to play if there were an odd number of players so no-one had to take byes. And, oddly enough, there were indeed seven sign ups, so duty called!

I am a much more experienced player compared to the locals, so I decided to take Qapu Khalqi, a faction that is viewed as not being particularly great at the moment - and one I've never actually played before. I threw some profiles that looked good into a list and headed over to the shop.

The first game was Acquisition, and I was up against Shasvastii. The player, BizBozLoz was using a lot of the older Shasvastii models that she'd found lurking at the back of the store a few months back. There were a couple of proxies but everything was really clear as to what it was.

The Shasvastii snuck up cautiously and activated a console, while I pushed up a Haris team lead by the Al Fasid. A Sphinx did reveal to try and take it out, but unfortunately for the Shasvastii, I was able to put down a round of active turn shooting on it with some lucky rolls, and the Sphinx just evaporated. With only one wound left, the Al Fasid needed to get into a gunfight with Sheskiin in ARO to hold the centre box, but was able to put the necessary fire downrange, taking out Sheskiin and giving me a 5-3 win.

Second mission was Frostbyte, and I was facing Kosmoflot, piloted by flyer10. I was quite nervous about this as I've not faced them before. A solo Kosmosoldat started off the attack, and fell afoul of having to split burst against a Hafza Heavy Rocket Launcher and a Ghulam Sniper.

A Zenit Sniper revealed, and I was really worried about it blocking my route forward. I tried to take her out with the Djanbazan shooting through smoke, but she survived the attack and threw herself prone where I couldn't see her any more. I then dropped in my Yuan Yuan to run up and take her out in close combat.

With this done, the Al Fasid link started advancing, and co-incidentally caught the Kosmoflot Lieutenant from an unexpected angle and took her down. I was really worried about scoring as at one point my opponent had activated one console and narrowly failed to activate a second, which in Frostbyte isn't something you can swing back from.

Instead, I applied violence to the situation. A lot of violence. The game ended 5-3 in my favour, with me having 71 points left alive, and my opponent with 46 points still up.

At this point, one of the other players had to leave early, so I sat out the third round to let the regular locals play. It was a great day out, everyone learned a bunch, and Dark Sphere is looking into holding some more tournaments in future that will be more widely advertised, so watch this space!

An incredibly busy week

 

It's been a super busy week! I managed to get a little painting done - one of the Oathsworn Dwarfs is almost done, and I plugged away a bunch more base coats on the last of the Terrain Crate scatter. I also dropped in the first layers of the Corax Hasht repair / repaint. But a good indication of how busy I've been is that all the dwarf needs is their base washing and drybrushing, and the base rim painted, and I didn't find the time to do that over the weekend...

I helped out at a Dark Sphere Infinity tournament for their new local players by volunteering as the "ringer", to play if they had an odd number of players so no-one had to miss a game. I played two games then stepped back from the third round as another player had to leave early. It was a chance for me to deploy my Qapu Khalqi force that I haven't really played yet, as I didn't want to play a faction I'd been carefully honing all season against a bunch of new players...

I bought this book on a whim - it's an anthology of stories to celebrate 50 ears of the feminist publisher Virago. It was going to be my "if I don't have anything to do at the tournament" read, but I think it's going to end up being a train journey read in the future instead...

I've also had two crowd-funded efforts show up this week, too. These were when I was starting to really get into the idea of running an in person fantasy RPG campaign in the future using miniatures - whether D&D or some other system. First up, we have the Tanares Kickstarter. It started as a board game, and they've then released an RPG supplement for it as well. I had no interest in either the board game or the 5e additional material they were writing, but I backed a bundle of miniatures to get some unusual and interesting NPC and monster miniatures to use. I'll report back once I've gone through the box contents as to how successful that idea was...

I also had the latest Dungeons & Lasers Gamefound campaign turn up. It's mostly scenery that I've stashed away as a much lower painting priority, but it did also include a "Sample Pack" for their upcoming game "Deuslair". I am curious, so when hobby time returns, I'll see if I can get them assembled for a mini review. This is probably a shade optimistic, though...

Infinity Tournament Practice Game: Custom Mission - Dahshat vs Spiral Corps

The last game I managed to get in before it All Went Wrong was a tournament practice game with Riker. The tournament he was going to was using the Halloween zombie mission Corvus Belli put out a while ago (with the exception that no, you do not get a free Avatar).

I was running my Dahshat Company, while my opponent was running Spiral Corps. You had to kill the zombies, who you could only harm in close combat.

My early move was to have my Zuyong move up and shoot at the "Chaksa" that supposedly only had a Heavy Flamethrower, sitting in a sniper nest linked to two other Chaksa. Unsurprisingly, it was a Taagma Schemer with a Viral Sniper rifle using a Holoprojector to pretend to be another unit.

("Unsurprisingly" because you need a Taagma to create the link in the first place, and there's not really a profile worse for putting in a sniper tower than a Heavy Flamerthrower!)

I then tried moving McMurrough up through smoke to try and take out some units, but I was already a few orders down and I couldn't quite get anything effective off, and pulled him back so he didn't get easily killed off next turn.

Unfortunately, doing that had left my Zuyong Haris a little over-exposed instead. First the Rui Shi, got hit (and shot again to make it stay dead given it was about two inches from an Engineer).

And then the rest of the link was picked off one by one from the left, leaving them out of cover. After that, I couldn't manage to get back into the game. McMurrough suffered from it being just a bit too long a run in the open to get a good hit in, but was successful in his more rarely used role of "being a terrifying order sync as you try and kill him".

In the end, I just couldn't get enough zombies killed. I brought out Saito Togan in the last round, but my troops had been positioned such that most of the zombies had ended up running away from him rather than past him. It meant he had too far to go and just couldn't get the kills in.

All in all, it was a fun, pretty balanced scenario. I could see that playing it a couple of times before the tournament would definitely help out a whole bunch as you avoided mistakes like "set up ambush for zombies and forget to bait it".

As I mentioned before, this is the last game I had before lockdown. I'm having a look at Tabletop Simulator, and may get in some games there - but I'm also kind of enjoying being able to focus on the painting!

Malifaux Slow Grow League Game 3

For the last game of the Dark Sphere Malifaux Slow Grow League, I was up against the Swampfiends. It was up to a full sized game, returning to "Plant Explosives" as the Strategy, with a pick of "Harness the Leyline", "Search the Ruins", "Outflank", "Detonate Charges" and "Take Prisoner".

I knew Zoraida had way, way too much activation control to risk either Detonate Charges or Take Prisoner, and "Harness the Leyline" looked like a bit of a faff, so I picked Outflank and Search the Ruins. I'd later discover my opponent had gone for the exact same schemes.

Bishop got into an early punch up with the First Mate, and my opponent brought in Bad Juju to tie him up and then had the First Mate leap out of the way.

Big Jake had run up one side to drop his Explosives and score an Outflank, but the Grootslang jumped out of it's lair there and turned him to mush.

Going into the second turn, I drew the Red Joker and a face card Crow. Bishop has an ability to cause damage if he is attacked in melee and successfully defends using a card with the Crow suit. Bad Juju swings, I cheat in the high Crow, then draw well for damage . . . Bad Juju swings again, I cheat in the Red Joker, and Bad Juju dies. He has a once per turn resurrection that he uses . . .

. . . but that's the end of his turn and my surviving Victoria kills him and moves on to the First Mate, who desperately uses his defensive abilities to run away at speed rather than meet the same fate.

The Prospector and a Will o the Wisp have an ineffectual slap fight on my left flank . . .

Meanwhile, I have nothing left on defence and the Neverborn are happily scoring all their points for Detonate Charges and Plant Explosives.

Zoraida desperately tries to Obey Taelor into a bad position for scoring . . .

I get my move order ever so slightly wrong and fail to score Outflank in Turn 4 with my Prospector, trying to set up my Detonate Charges for the end of game. As you can't score both points for Outflank at the end of the game, but I could have done my Detonate Charges the following turn.

I also mis-positioned Big Jake's return, costing me another victory point in turn 5, leaving the final score as 8-6. I did practically no scoring defence, but in doing so was able to move around the Swampfiend crew and score most of my points.

That I was only two rookie mistakes off the spectacularly implausible 8-8 win made me both a little sad and very proud of how I'm picking up the game. I've signed up to a couple of Malifaux tournaments now (the London Grand Tournament and the UK Nationals) as I'm definitely enjoying myself and would like to get some more games in.

Malifaux Slow Grow League Game 2

I headed down to Dark Sphere again for another game in the Malifaux Slow Grow League. This time, the Soul Stone limit was set to 40, and from the two options available, we drew the strategy "Reckoning", where you score points for killing enemy models, and the schemes "Power Ritual", "Take Prisoner" and "Claim Jump". Power Ritual requires you to put markers down in the corners, Claim Jump requires you to have models near the centre, and Take Prisoner requires you to have models standing near enemy models.

My opponent was running Perdita, a Guild crew with lots of shooting. I'm still running the Viktorias, who run at things and stab them. Broadly, most of this game would come down to whether or not the Viktorias' charge landed - if they were shot down before I got there I'd probably lose, if they were both alive when I hit the Guild's big hitters, I'd probably win.

I did not trust my activation control in any way to score Take Prisoner, so I selected the other two. With a corner deployment, I sent one Desperate Mercenary off to one corner, and a Desperate Mercenary to the other, this time accompanied by Bishop to beat up anyone who got in their way.

In the middle, I got the Student of Conflict set up with a scheme marker behind Taelor. The Student has an ability that allows her to remove a nearby scheme marker to grant another model fast.

Perdita came forward and shot Big Jake off the table. He was standing in that gap where there isn't a model any more . . .

I had two choices with the Viktorias. I could either slingshot one of them up the table, get into combat with Perdita and get maybe one hit off, or I could go a little slower, focus, and try and weather the shooting. I realised after the game that I missed an opportunity to put "Shielded" conditions on the Viks as they moved, which would also have probably helped.

Perdita sensibly focused her fire on one of the Viks and shot her down. Life definitely just got harder.

The other Viktoria shot into Perdita and caused some damage, but the Proxy snuck in behind her - if he's killed, the model doing it takes a huge amount of damage, and it did risk killing Vik if she landed the blow.

Bishop handily took out the model that the Guild were sending to score the corner.

Taelor took the job of smushing the Proxy, then headed in further to try and take out Perdita, who wisely legged it.

I tried to push into the centre, but the surviving Guild were tougher and shootier.

I did at least get some a marker down in a corner, but it wasn't really enough.

In the end, I got gunned down and lost thoroughly. I was 5-2 down overall. All in all, it was a fun learning game and I felt like I was starting to get a bit of a handle on what some of the crew can do. I definitely want to get more games of Malifaux in!

Dark Sphere Malifaux Slow Grow League Round 1: Mercenary vs Foundry

I've been putting together a Mercenary Outcast crew for Malifaux 3rd edition for a bit now. When the local Henchman announced a short six week slow grow league, I was definitely in. Conveniently, I even had just enough models already assembled.

For the first round we designed a crew as if for "Henchman Hardcore" which requires you to have only 4 models at 30 soul stones. (Soul stones are the points for buying models and the leftover points become an in game resource.) There is usually a standard mission set for Henchman Hardcore but the league organiser wrote an alternative format as well, and we flipped a card to see which we got.

As it was, we got the standard rules, so we deployed in a wedge shaped deployment zone. We could score up to 4 victory points by placing explosives in the opponent's deployment zone, up to 2 for injuring then assassinating the opponent's leader, and up to 2 for fulfilling a vendetta between a model we selected and a model on the opposing crew who wasn't the leader and was worth more points than yours.

My crew was led by Taelor, and with the rest of the crew being Bishop, Johanna and the Student of Conflict. I was up against Kang, the Metal Golem, a Rail Worker and a Metal Gamin. I set Bishop as having a Vendetta against the Metal Golem, and started off.

Johanna is notoriously slow, so I used Student of Conflict to grant her fast, then had Bishop push her further up the field with Chain Gang before having her charge into the Rail Worker and punch it back  further into the Foundry deployment zone.

Bishop then ran over and punched out the Metal Gamin, with me hoping to charge into the Golem the following round.

The Metal Golem then used Rail Walk to jump to another scrap marker to get further away from Bishop and place a bomb.

As the Student of Conflict has Armour Piercing, I had her charge in and stab up the Golem, although her low attack and it's high defence meant a few attacks bounced off. Meanwhile, Taelor and Kang got into a scrap, and it turned out Taelor's hammer (and my cards) were better than Kang's hammer (and cards) . . . picking me up a couple of points over a couple of turns.

Meanwhile, I was able to get some bombs down in various parts of the table to keep scoring Plant Explosives.

Bishop then charged in, pulling the Student out of the way and landing enough of a blow to score the first point of Vendetta.

With the Rail Worker turned to mush by Johanna and more bombs down, I was up to maximum points on Plant Explosives and the Metal Golem made a break for it with a final rail walk, getting another bomb down for a second point for Foundry.

But Bishop and Taelor were able to charge in and finally take him down, scoring the final Vendetta point, leaving the total score at the end of the game 8-2.

Huge thanks to my opponent, who was very gracious, particularly at an obscene run of luck on my part, with several card duels won by a single point as I drew a lucky card. My first impressions of Malifaux 3rd edition are very positive, with plenty of thinking to do and lots of interesting interactions between models like the tricks I used to catapult the normally slow Johanna up the board. I'm definitely looking forward to getting more games in.

Finally trying Warhammer 40,000 8th edition

So, before I went on holiday I headed over to Dark Sphere Waterloo to try out the 8th edition of 40K. My opponent was bringing his newly painted Salamanders, while I dug out my old Tallarn. We went with 100 power level each so there was plenty to do. Unit wise, I just picked a wide selection of different units to see what they were like.

It's been so long since I played 40K that I am hard pressed to remember what's new and a change and what's really different. I know that tanks having wounds is new, but is alternating deployment a new thing? I've only really been deploying troops for Infinity for so long...

While we were both still trying to get the hang of the game, we were both using nearly completely painted armies, on painted terrain on a nice board. It's certainly something that adds to the whole experience.

I didn't get much of a chance to see what Leman Russ can do, as the Salamander Predators were deathly afraid of it and shot it an awful lot.

The Salamander bikes made the mistake of getting a little too close to the Hellhound, which shot up the table and burnt most of them to a crisp. Hellhounds still good, then.

An angry Space Marine with a Thunder Hammer took revenge, though, and soon the Hellhound was no more.

The Land Speeder and the Hydra had a disagreement, but the Land Speeder definitely came off worse.

Ratlings remain a useful, fun unit, but probably shouldn't get into quite as much of a stand up gun fight as I put them into...

The bikes then charged into my guard squads.

I was pleased to discover that while the Commissar's execution ability is . . . not great, the bestowed leadership is incredibly useful and helped hold the squads together.

Rather than try anything clever with pulling back and shooting, I counter-charged with a priest and a Commissar Lord and pulled them down with weight of numbers.

My Scout Sentinels on the left flank got 'jumped' by an assault squad. I've retroactively made that pun intentional, and I'm not sorry.

A hail of anti tank fire caused one of the Salamander predators to back the hell up behind a bunker to get better cover.

Overwatch fire and big stompy robot legs started making a difference in the assault squad / sentinel fight.

I finally remembered I had a bunch of Storm Troopers in reserve and air dropped them all in.

Inconveniently, many of them were then set on fire by some big robot suit Marines with big flame throwers. Aggressors?

I finally looked up with Tallarn's special rules are and started moving forward quickly.

I also got in a cheeky use of the "Grenadiers" tactic as the surviving conscripts all lobbed frag grenades at a nearby tactical squad.

The Commissar Lord managed to use his power sword to cause a bit of damage on the dreadnought...

While the Scout Sentinel - Assault Squad match ground on, and on, and on . . .

Initial Thoughts

I'd been thinking about giving up on my Guard army and starting something new. But I enjoyed this game with my guard so much that I am absolutely going to rejuvenate them and get them back into play for 8th edition.

40K is still a big tabletop game that takes a bunch of time, so I won't be playing it as often as my skirmish games, but I definitely love the new edition. The stratagems are characterful, the rules work pretty smoothly, and it all seems to hold together well. I am definitely very impressed.