An Intro

  
     Hello, I guess I'm an author for the blog so I figured I would give a short intro about myself. My name is Nick and I live in Minnesota. Short enough?  In all honesty, I am a tabletop gamer through and through. Futuristic battles, skirmishes, and death are exciting. For some reason I never got into video games, but I can live with that. At the end of the day I enjoy the excitement of living out a battle vicariously with little men.

Eh, close enough

          I started out playing Warhammer 40k with some friends back in 2008. I have a decent size Tau army, along with a Grey Knight army built out of the cool 3rd edition models. 40k, however, is not why I'm here. Infinity is the word of the day. Over a year ago I got lost in the war gaming section of the internet and found out about the game Infinity. I thought the idea was cool. Then I saw the models. Initially enthralled by Pan Oceania, I saw the Shang ji with a combi rifle; a part of the Yu Jing faction. A short while later I bought the model online along with a Guilang skirmisher just because they looked cool.

I may be bad at taking pictures. By "taking pictures" I mean painting.

     I thought that was it. I asked a couple of my friends what they thought and nobody wanted to shell out the cash to get started. (Coming from 40k players!) I also picked up some Warmachine stuff for the same rule of cool reasons. Unfortunately the same thing happened to Warmachine, no one wanted to start a new system.
      Going back to 40k for a minute, I was still deeply involved in the game this whole time, and went to a team tournament with a Tyranid player. We did okay, but the main take away was we were invited into the Frozen North Gaming Club. I noticed Scrap Square posted about a game called Dropzone Commander on Frozen North's Facebook page. We got to talking and I almost bought some stuff but it was out of stock. Eventually time went on and I forgot about it. Later on, he posted again about Infinity. I already had some models so we set up a game. I had never fully played before so it was definitely an experience. I had a lot of fun so we set up more games, and now we try to get a match in once a week or so. A couple of other people play, but not as often. So here I am now; two large forces for 40k, a small collection of Cygnar for Warmachine, the start of an Axis Dust Warfare platoon, and a growing Yu Jing Infinity team. That should keep me busy.

Dust Warfare World Championships

So I went to the Dust Warfare World championship a while ago.

I chose to play the Allies, with a gimmicky but awesome list!''

My list was:
Bazooka Joe
Grim reapers
Gunners
Boss squad
BBQ squad
Sniper squad
2x Fireballs with airdrop.

The tournament was held at Fantasy Flight's event center building on 6x4 boards with loads of terrain.
The armies represented were: 3 allied, 2 SSU, and 3 axis. The Allied lists all had at least one super heavy (which I think is almost required for allies to be good). The axis were a mix but they all included at least one Wutan (same here, almost needed to be good). The SSU lists were a little more varied with one helicopter heavy (Burner, and transport with FAYYYYYKEEELLIEEES)! While the other was mega walker heavy using them as shields/transports for close range squads.

The boards ranged from desert, to winter warland to an urban board. The terrain was a mix of area terrain and large LOS blocking terrain. We used the tournament builder straight out of the packet, which I like except for critical positions which kind of makes it a campy game.

My plan was to try to get force collision (I succeeded in this every time) and eliminate the enemy, taking advantage of my lists low unit count and high damage output.

Now onto the games.

Round one I had a bye, so I played Louis or Dakkon on the dust war forums. He had: (lists may be a little off)

Manfred
Markus
2x Flak grens
Kommandotroupe
Wutan
Flammenluther
Battle grens
Snipers

We got, Force collision, eliminate the enemy.
Game went in my favor from turn one as my fireballs shrugged off massive amounts of fire and I managed to kill 3 of his units and tank it out untill the game ended, only losing one unit (BBQ and joe).

Alright, onto my second round.
This was versus an SSU player named dennis his list:
Defense platoon command squad
Chinese volunteers
Transport helo
Faykeli
Battle squad
Burner
grandma and koshka
Howitzer walker

Our game was force collision and critical positions (urgh).
I deployed joe separate so I could get more points for the mission. I also left only one fireball in reserve as it doesnt gain me any points, and needed an offensive threat to push him off his objective.

I didnt need to prepare like that as he had one unit on his objective to my 5 or 6. He used the fly the helo off the board to have it come on way farther away trick, but my fireball killed its occupants then my grims blasted it out of the sky.

As he had lost his offensive unit he sent in the back up one in the form of his burner, and since I had been longtomming him all game, he decided to go after my command squad with the helo taking out most of them (minus the medic and commander!) before it was brought down by machine gun fire.
At this point, he conceded giving me full points for everything.

For my third game (deciding who would be in the finals) it was against Louis from my first round bye with his dual wutan chassis.
His list:

Manfred
Markus
2x Flak grens
Kommandotroupe
Wutan
Flammenluther
Battle grens
Snipers

Our game was FORCE COLLISION CRITICAL POSITIONS! WOOH! Our table was pretty terrain heavy in the corners with just one BIG BIG building in the center.

I stacked the terrain right outside of my deployment for points and kept my fireballs in reserve as I had a feeling he would rush that building in the center. He deployed with LOS blocked to all his army with the building so I couldnt long tom him.

As the game progressed he started moving towards the building in the center and occupied it as his piece of terrain. As he had way more units then me, I was quickly on the losing end here. As he was flanking his heinrich around to snipe my command squad, my fireballs landed with a thud. And the following could only be described as a siege. With my fireballs wiping out whole units with machine guns and flamers and them in turn getting burned by the flammenluther.

As the game kept going, I was slowly getting in the lead as he was losing units, while mine were all snuggled up in the critical position in my corner sniping at the marauding gorillas with rifle and grenade. Eventually I just won on points with me not losing a single model.

His dice were horrible :L.

So after some minor celebration (I got a sprite) it was onto the finals!

The finals game was broadcast, you can find it on Fantasy Flights justin.tv channel. My opponent chris was playing allies! His list:
Bazooka joe
Punisher
Hell boys
BBQx2
Grim reapers
Snipers
Boss
Cobra
Additional resources


Our game was critical positions eliminate the enemy. The board was VERY terrain heavy with almost no LOS from one side to the other.

The game began with me air dropping my two fireballs in a almost pincer move around his corner. I started out by trading the grim reapers (foolishly) for 4/5 of a BBQ squad, they were the closest thing to my fireball that could hurt it. From there I used the reactions from my fireball to kill another BBQ squad and take minor damage from the hellboys.

On the other flank my other fireball crashed through the building taking 4 points of damage from the cobra reacting, deployed the BBQ and had them destroy the cobra. As he was running out of units chris started positioning the punisher to get rear fire on my Grim reaper fireball, sadly this left it open to the other fireball shooting it in the rear and destroying it. While this was happening, bazooka joe was killed from two turns of long toms.

Since he had just a command squad left I slightly over killed them with the BBQ and joe getting something stupid like 28 dice against them finishing them off.

So all in all the tourney was alot of fun with me getting full battle points and something like 900/1200 break points.

Some interesting facts about my games:
Dakkon has the worst wutan ever, and should melt it and get a new one as it only hit like 4 times in our two games.

Helicopters go down REALLY easily from machine guns.

I lost in total 2 units out of all my games.

One of my fireballs had no machine guns and was on fire with a cripple drive train at one point.






Well hoped you liked it, I thought it was pretty fun.

Infinity battle report

http://infinitythegame.com/forum/index.php?%2Ftopic%2F13452-250-yu-jing-vs-qk-haqqislam-with-crappy-pics%2F

SSU faykeli squad painting

I recently started the SSU for dustwarfare (and won the world championships, report to follow). And started my army with a good ol' faykeli squad.

I started off by airbrushing the pants a mix of VMA meiden stone and sand, and going progressively more sand heavy for high lights.

I then started adding shadows by glazing a dark grey into the shaded areas.

I then painted all the rubber parts black and metallics with a mix of VMA gun metal and black.

Finishing up, i painted the ruck sack with GW khemir brown and shaded with dark grey and highlighted with 50/50 khemri brown and bone white then 25/75. (Ruck sack not pictured).

The rubber parts were highlighted with:
VMA light grey then VMA white.

The metal parts were highlighted with VMA chrome, and shaded with VMA black. Then i used black weathering pigments to add some scratches/damage.

The eye lenses were painted VMA light grey 25/75 VMA white, then glazed with VMA light sky blue. Then gloss varnished for effect.

I finished by going back over the hammer and sickle with white.

Infinity battle report (video)

Sorry for the terribad audio, fixing it.

Also If you're into video games, I'm starting a new video game youtube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/x22Jmac22x?feature=mhee


Mostly PlanetSide2 at the moment, have a lot more footage I'm editing.

Video:

Battle Ready bases review

Hey! Recently I bought a pack of battle ready cobblestone bases for my Haqqislam army for Infinity.
This will be the first time I've done one of these and will go on a scale of 1-10 for the whole product and explain my reasoning.

Here is how they look straight out of the package, minimal amount of flash and other molding issues.
After a quick filing and clipping some of the bigger pieces I rinsed them in soap and water.

The details are very good with no bubbling or warping.

Over all for $8.50 USD for 10 they are easily worth it in my eyes.

I would give them a 8/10.

I decided to do a quick painting tutorial too :D.

After a quick cleaning and washing I started with Vallejo Model Air Grey primer. After laying down a solid coast of that I hit it with VMA sand.

Once that dried, I washed it with watered down Model color black. To shade the cobblestones and add depth.

After that had dried I washed it with some Brown vallejo paint that has the label ripped off. Just use whatever brown or reddish brown you have. Ogryn flesh from GW will work.

This is to add color variation and make it almost like mosaic looking *shrug*.

After THAT had dried I over brushed the stones (its like drybrushing but the paints wet ?_?) with Vallejo sand and some GW kommando khaki. Try to use this to reduce the colors before that didn't make it into the cracks.

While I didn't get a picture of it I washed the rubble/sand parts then over brushed it with VMA U.S.A grey then 50/50 with VMA white to highlight it.

Over all they turned out pretty good in my opinion.

Heres a shot of my Jannissary heavy infantry on one of the bases. I'll take better pictures of the model itself in my light box later.

(Not pictured I painted the rim with VMA black, I know its super important but I couldn't get the lighting right to show how important it is).

Infinity the game

Lately I've been addicted to infinity and it wont stop.

I played the game actively a while ago and.got sucked into Warmachine and it's competitive nature winning a few tournies and such, but got quickly burnt out on the all competitive all the time approach.

6th ed 40k came out and with it I hoped everyone would stop taking the game so seriously.

Nope!

I got a few hundred points of eldar to pretty much say goodbye to 40k as I was tired of its horrible rules and such.

So taking stock of what else I have I noticed my Panoceania army on its corks sitting there staring at me so I decided to jump into infinity again.

Im not coming out of it.

With the help of a Yu-jing player near my gaming place and a few willing people we now have a growing community and things look up.

Now this all leads up to this, I am changing (heavily) what I will be posting.

This will include more video content, infinity content and painting lots more painting. I have been planning this for a while now and have everything ready for painting tutorials and such.

My co authors will probably keep posting the normal stuff however. So do not let this discourage you from reading.

Also expect more frequent posts and such.

I encourage everyone to try Infinity out at least once and just expand their horizons.

6th Edition thoughts

Psst I made that :D

So I originally wrote a legitimate thing about sixth ed and such (down below) but recent events have made me just look at 40k in general.

And how horrible its rules/mechanics are.

Lets start with saves shall we?

To win warhammer, you can just roll dice. Not even thinking at all, just put your guys on an objective and roll high. The saves mechanic is broken because there is no torrent of fire or anything to get rid of saves permanently.

Which in real life terms is like an enemy standing in front of you with just a armour plate on for protection over his abdomen and you just constantly shooting him there and the  bullets only having a small chance of penetrating it. When instead you could... ya know shoot him in the face?

I mean 40 guardsmen rapid firing at a terminator sarge with out a helmet on and not one of those shots hits him in the face?

Sure you can fail your armour save and die representing one of those lucky shots! But what if that doesnt happen? (harlequins with 2+ rerollable) How realistic is that? Not at all, thats why its retarded.

In dust you dont take a save for every shot, you can only take a certain amount of saves dependent on the type of armour you have. That kids, makes sense.


Now cover..ah cover I love it. If your getting shot at and duck behind a wall. Why do you do that? TO HIDE AND MAKE YOURSELF LESS VISIBLE. Well not in 40k! No you hide behind that wooden fence to protect your space marine armour from plasma guns that just seem to bounce off that wooden fence. BUT DUDE YOU CAN FAIL A COVER SAVE WHICH IS REPRESENTING THE COVER BREAKING AND STUFF! What if he doesnt fail his cover? And that plasma cannon explosion that 100000000000000000000million times hotter then the sun just bounces off that wooden fence, is that realistic? No.

Cover should make you harder to hit, not give you another save.

Now...wound allocation :). Picture this: 1000 guardsmen are charged by a tactical squad led by a captain with a chainsword and bolt pistol. They all rapid fire their 2k shots...All into him...any of the bullets go back and nail someone in the back? (other then look out son) NOPE! They all just pepper that captain till he falls over then the rest of the shots hit the guy behind him.

This is just stupid, if your shooting hundreds of bullets at them some of the bullets wont hit the front guys.
Is that realistic? No.

The best part of the whole game (40k) is that...adult men play this competitively, and act like its one of the most important things in their life.

Now people may argue that:

It isnt supposed to be realistic! Its warhammer!

It doesnt matter if its warhammer or not this is how this stuff works, all this crap leads to a confusing retarded game. Its insanely un cinematic and slows everything down.

Its been like this for years! They cant change the game to fit a certain type of people needs!

Well considering people "play" this at tournaments and get serious about winning it. They might need to change that....





So comment/whatever I'll be over here playing infinity/warmachine to my hearts content!

Plague Marines and You!!!

http://qkme.me/3qfh3c

So I haven't posted in awhile for multiple reasons, the biggest was the fact that I really had nothing to post about. But fortunately that has now changed. This week I wanted to discuss my very own take on the Epidemius list. I've wanted to use this character ever since I bought the $300+ limited edition starter wave that came out some 5 odd years or so ago. The only problem was running a mono-god daemon list wasn't great in any respect. However now that we get Allies in 6th that has all changed. I've been pouring over all the rules and FAQ nonsense for the past week and have finally set myself on a solid (I think) list that I'm planning on running next month at a tourney. So without any delay here it is:

Main Detachment: Chaos Space Marines

1 Chaos Sorcerer on Bike with Mark of Nurgle and Melta Bombs - 155

3x 5 Plague Marines with 2 Plasma Guns (2 have Personal Icons) - 445

8 Chaos Marine Bikers with Icon of Nurgle, 2 Plasma Guns and a Champion with a Power Fist - 334

Allied Detachment: Chaos Daemons

Epidemius - 110

2x 15 Plague Bearers - 300

Deamon Prince with Daemonic Flight, Mark of Nurgle, Cloud of Flies and Breath of Chaos - 235

Then lastly...

1 Fortress of Redemption with 2 Heavy Bolters and Krakstorm Missiles - 270

Total - 1849

So obviously the entire point of this list is to utilize Epidemius and his tally buffs. The basic way to set this list up is to put all three Plague Marines squads in the Fortress. This way whenever a flier comes in, or you fire one of the Heavy Bolters or Krakstorm Missiles you get to add to the tally. Because you have Plague Marines using the weapons, the attacks count as being from a model with the mark of Nurgle. Meanwhile you have 9 T6 bikes zooming around the board taking pot shots at everything with Plasma Guns or twin-linked Bolters. Anything they can do to add to the tally. Whats nice about the bikers as well is that their Icon of Nurgle lets you deep strike those deamons without scattering, even on turn 1. So you don't have to worry about Epidemius or your Daemon Prince being destroyed in the first turn from a mishap.

Ideally you'll be able to get that tally up or around 20 by turn 2 or 3. I mean you've got a TL Icarus Lascannon, Krakstorm Missiles, 8 Plasma Guns (2 of which are on bikes to give them more range) and then a FMC who kills 2-3 models a turn just by flying over them. Plus there's your Sorcerer who I usually give Telepathy, and then the Primus Power. With the maneuverability of the bike the 12" range of to power isn't that much or a draw back, and on average will kill about 2-3 MEQ if you successfully get it off. Each one of these attacks adds to the tally, so 20 by the end of 2 isn't too much to reach for. Now once you get to 20+ models killed your army is more or less a pack of raging pus and STDs.

So, why are we aiming for 20+ models in 2 turns? For those of you who don't know who Epidemius is, I shall explain. When you kill 5-9 models all your Plague Swords (which are what Epidemius and all your Plague Bearers have) wound on a 3+ instead of a 4+. Once you get to 10 kills all Nurgle marked models have Noxious Touch, meaning they now wound on a 2+. At 15 kills Feel No Pain is a 3+ rather then a 5+. And lastly at 20+ kills all attacks from followers of Nurgle ignore armor saves. Also, all these buffs stack. To put it into perspective, with this list, you now have 9 T6 bikers who have 2+ poisoned attacks that ignore armor saves. Now the poisoned attacks only work in CC, but the ability to ignore armor saves applies to all attacks, shooting and CC. Meanwhile all your Plague Marines sitting in the Fortress now basically have a 3+ re-rollable save, in others words they won't die.

All in all the list is decent, just looking at it and the numbers. In fact it's kind of a weak list. But if one is able to rack up those kills fast enough the entire army is nigh unstoppable. I know there are a few bad match ups that this list would have (i.e a 7+ Necron flier list), but as 6th evolves and more anti-flier tools become more readily available to everyone I feel like this list might start doing alot better. Now besides the flier list, a 20 man all Paladin list would also be hard to beat simply because of the fact that there is only 20 models. But I don't see that list being nearly as common since we don't really have KP missions anymore.

Anyways, that's the list, hope ya'll enjoy it. Feedback is more than welcome and appreciated.

Dust Warfare 150AP batrep

So a while ago I decided to take pictures of a game Tyler and I had, this is the following slide show battle report.

Please like and subscribe if you liked it, and please leave CC I know it sucks :).

35pt LOE steam roller report

So I went down to Tower games in Minneapolis this saturday to participate in a 35 point steam roller 2012 event with relaxed times and no reinforcements.


I brought Saeryn and Pvayl

Sareyn
Angelious
Scythean
Seraph
Shredder

Max swordsmen
Shepard
Gobbers
Death stalker


Pvayl
Scythean
Shredder
Seraph
Angelious

Max swordsmen
Shepard
Forsaken
Death stalker

Some random table shots

The players there was;

Trolls

Cygnar

Cygnar

Menoth

Menoth

Khador

Legion (me)

Cryx

So first round I went up against a trolls player

He played...madrak, I chose saeryn

Heres my set up and then his:

Game kinda went like:

We run up

I slip stream Sareyn up, she throwing knifes madrak then feats.

Angelious charges madrak and kills him turn two.

So I went to subway.

Then I played against Cygnar with siege.

Game went like:

We run up, I shoot at some gun mages. No one dies, he shoots back no one dies. I charged thunder head with scythean and feat and do massive damage to Thead. He thunder bolts the scythean away and KD's him.

He then gets tricky and siege, mage sights saeryn then shoots her with the rocket launcher and feats doing 17 damage! So i transfer to a seraph and he goes baa! Then he shoots again and misses (def19).

I then charge him with an angelious and he dies.

Game 3 was against khador, he played old witch.

Game went like:
I run up and shoot at eEryiess.
He gallows my angie forwards and pew pews it hard.
I slip stream my scythean who charges eyriess who was next to old witch and kill the witch with my second hit.

So I ended up going 3-0. Killed 3 models and lost none and got first place which nabbed me a typhon.

                                   Bane thralls ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

So yeah it was a fun tournament all together I think my opponents were a little too loose with their caster placement.

Hobby Update: Cult of Destruction

So a bit ago I picked up a box of Chaos Termies to kit bash with GK termies and make a Pali squad cause I wanted to make Pheonix Guard/Draigowing. Then I thought, I'm a big of enough douche already and I know I'm getting a new dex soon anyways. So like with the last box of Termies I had gotten I realized I could now have 9 Oblits instead of the usual 3 that I run. Plus the fact that there is an Apoc Formation called THE CULT OF DESTRUCTION made me wanna do I more.

So I went to work early on this week on these guys. And I have a absolute blast converting Oblits. Now the theme is slaanesh, as is everything with me. Now the only speed bumb is that I couldn't find the random termies I was making into a Dark Apostle in termie armor/Oblit Chaplin. Thus I used a spawn stand in!! XD

Hope you guys injoy, I am planning on having these all modeled in about a week and a half, then painted in another. So yeah...

So yeah, eat your heart out Hannibal

Dark Star GT picture vomiting/crappy report

Heres my barely 3 color min army in all is glory

Crappy display board is crappy, touched up like 2 hours before tourney with air brush

First round opponent: Loss, twolves got in my face too fast and GH wouldnt fail armour, I did get too close though.

This won players choice or something

Counts as GK made my camera blur

Super sick terrain here

Best prizes there

Cool themed GK army with like dice and templates

THIS LIT UP AND MADE NOISES, BEST TERRAIN EVER.

Look at all that LOSB terrain, first round table too :)

Second round table, my models kept falling off those hills

Second round opponent, tabled him 4th turn.

The best marines ever

Best painted right there guys

Intense SW player is intense

Is this a mermaid or a jack hammer?

So yeah, list looked like:

Haemonculi
Shatter shard

Baron

2x 3 trueborn blasters in venoms

4x squads of warriors blasters in venoms

18x hellions with Sarge with agonizer

1x 4 man wracks with venom

2x ravagers

1x razorwing


Uh, boring text bat reps yay!


First round was SW

I got first moved up, he came on (DOW) i killed almost all his LF
He jammed midfield like all SW players do, i for some stupid reason dont back up
I kill most of troops jamming midfield but he saves like 40+ 3+ on one squad who then just start like stunning my vehicles XD

I think im low on time so dont activate some stuff and t wolves om nomm nom

Im left with a ravager.



Second round was BA
First turn I immo his LR, detonate his SR and blow up his baal
He does nothing to me
I kill everything on foot, immo a DC dread,
He hops out of LR, bum rushes up, i kill them all for tableing



3rd round
More BA!

He had like 30 assault marines on foot, a razor, honour guard, baal, and 2 libbie dreads with a speeder, oh and mephiston

I blow away a dread
he runs towards me
I kill some stuff
He runs up, mephi pops a venom.
I kill honour guard that were providing FNP to everything and i kill pretty much his entire army
tableing

4th round was IG
Oh god, like 18 auto cannons with like 230 guys on foot? LR executioner and hydra
He gets first...
him: "Okay! This will go well if you dont steal the init-oh god you did!
I killed like 115 models first turn
He pops a few things, i eventually table him and my hellions owned a ton of em too XD.



5th round
GK ahh I was wondering when they would rear their heads.

He had like, 2x psyfelman, libby, SR death star with paladins and 2x strike squads and stuff,

It was intense with it coming down to me nuking his libby with a shattershard and the pallie squad with the hellions, then my haemie taking llike a kajillion psycannon shots and living for the tie.

In the end I won a kroot shaper in the raffle, then they started giving away plaques and stuff.

Hey i got best dark eldar! I got a plaque and stuff too!

I got like 19/45 on sportsmanship like i always do :3. I got 20/40 on painting.

I ended up 27/58 and would have gotten like 18th? If i had gotten at least 30 sportsmanship, its funny because all the other DE finished better then me but i still got best DE Yay pointless soft scores!

Well my after thoughts of the tourney were...I want to play more warmachine