Getting back into WHFB

It's been a long time since I broke out my High Elves and put them on the table.  I have to be honest, I haven't really had much fun with WHFB 8th Ed.  With the huge emphasis on horde-formation units, overly powerful magic spells, pre-measuring and random charges, it's pretty much a different animal from what I enjoyed in 7th Ed.  Don't get me wrong, 7th Ed. was filled with horrible things too.  These things were Daemons, VC and Dark Elves.  What's the difference between the two?  One was army books in the standard codex creep mannerisms that GW is known for and the other is the core rules the govern the entire edition.  It was the army books that caused a lot of the headaches for me, not the actual game rules.  If anything, only the magic rules needed a slight tweak.

What about you guys?  How is Fantasy doing in your area?  What do you like about 8th that's keeping you in the game?  I still have some friends that play, so I'm probably going to throw down next week and see how it goes.

Btw, here's the rankings for SCGT:

PS - I'm still on overtime.. so that's why I haven't been posting.

BR: 35pts eHaley vs. Xerxis

I played a game vs. my friend Skorne tonight and it was pretty educational overall.  It was the first time he played against eHaley and it was not a game that he'll forget in the near future.  This BR will be written in  my classic bullet point format and it will highlight the important plays.  Overall, I wasn't really happy with my performance but it has been a long while since I played Haley.

My list:

Points: 35
Major Victoria Haley (*5pts)
* Thorn (8pts)
* Stormclad (10pts)
* Squire (2pts)
Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team (4pts)
Stormblade Infantry (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
* Stormblade Infantry Officer & Standard (3pts)
* 3 Stormblade Infantry Storm Gunner (3pts)
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution (3pts)
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord (2pts)

His list:

Points: 35
Tyrant Xerxis (*5pts)
* Bronzeback Titan (10pts)
* Titan Gladiator (8pts)
Bloodrunners (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
Cataphract Cetrati (Leader and 5 Grunts) (11pts)
Paingiver Beast Handlers (Leader and 3 Grunts) (2pts)
Agonizer (2pts)
Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor (2pts)

Random thoughts and overtime

It's been a year now since I started WM and I must say that things have changed for the better.  Since I started learning the game, I must say that Warmahordes (Warmachine and Hordes) is just very solid.  In many ways, it takes me back to my Starcraft days where if you mess up, you're done.  The game is very precise on execution amongst other things and the competitive atmosphere is fantastic.  It's basically a game I wished 40K was since I'm not super happy about Steam Punk stuff compared to GW fluff.  I basically only play this game because of the game rules and playstyle is everything a competitive gamer hopes for in a table top.

Speaking of which, there are also rumors of 6th Ed. Warhammer 40K coming out in 2012.  What are some improvements you want to see?  TLoS was the big thing in 5th Ed and I'm almost 100% certain that it's here to stay.  Here are some things I'd like to see for 6th Ed. 40K:

• Cover system tweaked, 4+ cover on everything everywhere is just too generous.
• Remove wound allocation and bring back torrent of fire.
• Maybe a consolidation roll after vehicle kills or bringing back massacre rolls to go back into combat.
• Bring back vehicle destroyed results on the glancing chart.

On another note, I'm doing overtime again, hence why you see very little posting.  What's funnier is that last year, at around the same time I got into Warmachine, overtime hit me in the face too.  Awesome.

Circle and other news

I finally decided to pick up Hordes.  Since there were no Circle players in my group, I'm officially the first Circle player!  This actually means two things:  One, I picked up Circle obviously, and two, I've put my Grey Knights on hold for now.  Many of you are probably wondering why I put my GK on hold and the reason is quite simple:  The new GK book is not the same army I fell in love with those many years ago.  It was a tough choice, but in the end the dudes are going to sit there until I feel the urge to build the entire army up from scratch.  After all, I have Dark Eldar, Blood Angels and Space Wolves to cater to, and some say that's enough armies already!  I'll still play games with the GKs though, I have a ton of friends that started the army as well.  Bandwagoners.

Now that that's out there, let's talk about some other random stuff.  First, I'd like to say that I'm going to be doing a Podcast per week on miniatures gaming.  Most of the time, it will be about 40K but every now and then I'll throw in a Warmachine or WHFB segment.  My friend and I were discussing the finer points of wargaming and we dawned upon something invigorating and fun.   I've seen other videocasts before like Beast of War or some of the battle reports on BoLS and frankly, I'm not too impressed.  Beast of War is too nerdy and loaded with false hope and information and BoLS lacks the tactical acumen that I desire.  That said, I think I'll do my own thing and talk about the finer points of tactics, army lists, metagame and strategy.  I picture this kind of like the Day9 dailies of wargaming, except it'll be weekly, hopefully.

The truth about Dark Eldar

I love my Dark Eldar, I really do, but one thing has been bugging me about their new codex.  Now I know I go on and on about how Phil Kelly is a master writer and that's true, but something irks me about the new Dark Eldar book.  You know what that is?  How come the masters of surprise attacks, alpha strikes, infiltration and sabotage, have virtually nothing in their rules with Scout, Infiltration or anything of that nature.

No, Vect's 4+ to seize does not count.  And no, the Duke's ability to DS his Raiders and Ravagers do not count either.  What there should of been is Scouting Raiders loaded with troops, infiltrated Venoms or pre-placed WWPs like Servo-skulls are in the GK book.

Am I taking crazy pills here or has this been bothering anyone else?  Oh, and on more eventful news:  My predictions on Dark Eldar being a mediocre tournament army has been proven correct.  It appears they ran hordes of RB/Chimera-spam walls and died horribly at Adepticon despite winning in Battle Points.  Real shocker there.

BR: 35pts eCaine vs. eDenny

First game of Warmachine in a long time and boy do I miss it.  This game was a standard 35pt caster kill game vs. Cryx and overall, I think it went pretty well.  I'll tell you one thing though:  I was definitely pretty rusty.  Let me elaborate on rusty for a second; if you don't a wargame in a while, you start losing some essential things that makes you a good player.  I second judged my ability to guess range, double-checked on multiple activations and played a little slower than I usually do.  These are things you get from playing the game, and I feel bad for not playing my beloved Cygnar for so long.

Anyways, back to the game.  How did this game go?  First, the list: