Bavarian Open Team Tournament (BOTT) 2013

One of the most amazing Cygnar armies I have ever seen.

Well, our team, the Unboostables, have been participating last weekend at the 2013 BOTT with mild success - in the final ranking we ended up on 9th place out of 12. :-)

The BOTT follows the mechanic we see in international team tournaments in WM/H and 40K - there are teams from various nations, each five players strong, and they get paired in individual rounds battling each other. As soon as three or more players of a team win their games, their team obviously wins the round. The Unboostabels won one round and lost four. :-)

My two lists. I was playing eCaine and eHaley plus stuff. The armies are +Botond Gati's.

The Unboostables, ready to have a good time. :-)

3/5 of Team Albania. :-)

Team Salmiakki, our trusted blend of Swedish/Finnish Warmachine aggression with heartfelt friendship. :-)

He doesn't like it when you steal his lunch money.

Orange is way sexier.

The Unboostables battling team Albania. +Robi Deola, do you remember what happened there? ;-)

Lunch was awesome every day with supreme catering.

Norbert's preying eye makes sure rules violators stand no chance.

I just called to say "I love you".

The Unboostables playing the Iron Hookers.

Maurus scoring his first win at a major WM/H tournament. :-)

End of day one in a nice Bavarian Biergarten - I can feel how jealous +Angel Baker is on the other side of the ocean. :-P

The Iron Hookers.

Team Salmiakki to the upper left, Norbert in the center, team Stronghold on the right.

Big G tries to draft Zahnfee as our new recruit. ;-)

The number 1 team - German Lamers. :-D

Packing everything up and saying goodbye. :-(

Game 1

End of game 1.

Basics: game 1 I played with eCaine against team Albania's Oliver Eitschberger and his eFeora list. eCaine got assassinated by his Judicator and his Warjacks' ranged attacks. Yes, quite embarrassing.

Problem:Oliver knew what he was doing and shot his templates on low DEF grunts standing near high DEF solos. That way he shot away all my key solos until he went for the assassination of eCaine.

Solution: I should have remembered that Rhupert not only dishes out Tough, but also Pathfinder. My Forgeguard with Pathfinder should have charged the Judicator through the corn field and brought it down.

Game 2

End of game 2.

Basics: game 2 I played with eCaine against the Iron Hookers' Laszlo Vuray and his Barnabas list. eCaine got assassinated when one of his beast's performed a two-handed throw on Barnabas having him land too close to eCaine.

Problem: Barnabas hid all game in his mobile swamp, so I could not shoot him, until he started for the assassination run himself.

Solution: I should have played my eHaley list and have the Stormwall blast away. Also, I realized that my way of palying eCaine may be too risky.

Game 3

End of game 3.

Basics: game 3 I played with eHaley against team "Mein Bruder und ich"'s Alexander Hoschkara with his Scaverous list. Cryx, Cryx, and in case of doubt even more Cryx. I lost on scenario because I was playing too defensively.

Problem: there was just too much Cryx infantry. It didn't help that I didn't remember to place the Stormwall's pods until turn 3.

Solution: I feated defensively, used eHaley's spells to boost my DEF, and the Stormwall fired away - I was all happy with that. However, I should move my models forward more aggressively and block the Cryx infantry's moving lanes with the Stormwall's and the Black 13th templates.

Game 4

End of game 4.

Basics: game 4 I played with eCaine against team "Dead Fish Syndicate"'s Ben Fröhlich-Rodriguez and his eKrueger list. Once again I lost because of a caster kill and even though I was familiar with the Circle's double teleport.

Problem: everything looked wonderful for me at the beginning of Ben's last turn - or so I believed. eCaine was the boss on his hill with 19/18 and tough Forgeguard (Rhupert) and Boomhowler & Co. with Heightened Reflexes in front of him. Well, Megalith telepoted and cleared away Trolls and Dwarfs all failing their Tough rolls, then he used also some spell to drop eCaine's DEF. eKrueger himself moved in and dropped eCaine's DEF even further down to 13. Ghetorix teleported onto the hill, swung his axe, boosted to hit, and eCaine once again was history.

Solution: I should have either stood more back or have had more Dwarfs and Trolls in front of eCaine in hope that at least some of them would pass their Tough roll.

Game 5

End of game 5.

Basics: I played game 5 with eCaine against Team Stronghold's PalaTin and his eStriker list. This was a game with no surprises as we both knew very well what each other's army was doing. I lost on scenario.

Problem: once again it was infantry spam. Also PalaTin was excellent at moving his troops. The way he moved them was a case book study on how you should move them. He surprised me by running everyone in his second turn again, but only as many soldiers as necessary to bind mine in close combat while the rest stayed back for the countercharge in his turn three. My infantry jammed on and around the hill and could not develop its full power.

Solution: I should have moved my units the way he moved his to be more aggressive and go after the mission objectives. This game was an awesome lesson/experience that I will incorporate into my future games.

Looking at 40K with a WM/H mindset

Eldar Banshee by UltimaFatalis

While I have grown to despise GW for its business practices and shoddy rule books, I still look at Warhammer armies - because they are so iconic and well designed. Actually that sort of is a good thing as I still have thousands of points of Blood Angels, Dwarfs, and Wood Elves - and it would be sort of a waste if I didn't enjoy these models anymore, wouldn't it?

Either way, last Saturday's re-release of the Eldar rulebook spiked my interest in this race again, so I went to the FLGS after work to have a look at the new Codex. I have to say as a fluff player, I really like it, that army definitely has character.

However, as I was flipping through the Codex Eldar, I realized how ingrown WM/H habits have become over the last two years of exclusive PP gaming:

1. Thinking of units and armies in hundreds and even thousands of points again felt really weird.
2. The same weird feeling got triggered when I browsed the weapons section with the option to individually equip my troops.
3. The biggest difference was browsing the HQ section, especially the named characters:
1. I immediately checked how tough they are and their armor/saving roll to calculate the probability of losing them to a certain attack;
2. Running a quick army list through my head I was more hesitant to pick a character HQ model than a generic one; the WM/H tournaments' character restrictions have become so ingrown to me that it would feel feel weird to me to pick a named character in 40K unless I have to.

I have also come to realize that I miss fluff gaming, something IMHO that GW still is better at. Playing competitively in WM/H makes sense because of the well written rules and there is no doubt PP produces very nice models. However, GW creates very iconic and amazing armies and a wonderful background story where everything is embedded, so that's the magic that keeps me looking back.

Maybe I should just go back to 40K for a game of combat patrol or Apocalypse, just to get that feeling of fluff gaming again. Most likely I will frown upon the rules, but then I will also enjoy the narrative part. After all, playing the narrative track in Austin was one of the best experiences in my gaming life. From my point of view, smacking each other in 40K with optimized lists at 1850, 2000 or (looks like a new trend) 2500 doesn't really make sense because of the flawed ruleset and codex creep. However, to put models on the table because one loves their looks and background stories, 40K has a lot to offer. Gee, Jervis Johnson would probably love me.

In a perfect world, I would get the benefits of both systems in one game, of course.

The importance of thinning paints

One piece of advice one can repeatedly read on the internet is to properly thin one's acrylic paints with water. Why? Because it conserves details on the miniature.

Check out this back shot of pGrim, he has a rather thick layer of paint. (it's GW Foundation paint, Tausept Ocre, to be exact)
I have seen worse than my pGrim by people who either (a) don't use proper paint for wargaming miniatures, but regular paint like you use it on benches etc, and (b) people ruining their minis with excessive use of Army Painter Quickshade.
On the other hand, I know I can do better by thinning down my paints with more water as you can see on this Thunderhead:

When painting this guy I added more water than usually and the details are more crisp.

So how much water in one's paint is the right amount? It's hard to say... the best explanation I got myself so far is from a Swiss player named Krog-gar (Knights of the Table) who explained that one needs to add as much water until the paint drips off the brush easily. However, if it quickly and steadily drips, you have added too much water. If you wait like five minutes for a drop to fall, you don't have enough water in your paint.

So, if I knew how much water I was supposed to add, why didn't I do it?

Out of laziness.

This is how my palette after the last painting adventure looked like:

When I was putting paint onto my palette, I always added just enough water, but the point is on a simple plastic palette like this one the paint quickly dries. As a matter of fact, you can easily spot the crater holes where the paint already started to dry and I tried to get some still moist paint from the center with my brush. Yes, one could constantly add water, but that's a hassle.

That's where a wet palette comes into the game. The basic point behind a wet palette is to keep your paints save/paintable for days or even weeks when you have done certain mixes, but are not able to finish painting a certain color in one go. However, I found that the true value out of a wet palette for me is that pants don't dry while I am painting!

The idea of a wet palette is very simple: you pick a container, add water, add a sponge, and on top of the sponge you put a sheet of baking paper to mix your paints on. The moisture moving through your sponge and baking sheet will prevent your paints on top of the paper from drying in.

Now why did pGrim end up like this? Because I was too lazy to set up this:

This is a monster of a wet palette with a sponge that can be used for a car wash or other stuff around the household. With that you can store paints for weeks! The only problem that prevents me from using it anymore is mold. I used to paint in a cool/cold cellar and down there mold never was an issue. However, now that I paint in my apartment where it is constantly around 19-20°C I have mold on my baking paper after two to three days.

And that's why I went back to the simple plastic palette.

And that's why I started to build a new wet palette, something smaller that I won't use to store paints, but keep them moist enough as I paint. That's where my latest purchases, Trollblood Champions and Long Riders came in really handy as they have a perfect piece of foam for a small wet palette. After that I just had to find a proper container:

And this is for my Swiss readers so they can figure out where to get it:

And these are the models I will paint next with my new wet palette. :-D

Let's see if we can spot a difference between pGrim and eGrim. :-D

A fun bunch

Instead of complaining about painter's block, I decided to take +Tudor Stanescu as an example, be a man and get my latest paint job done. I had warlocks in various stages of painting, so I wanted to finish them to have at least one painted model no matter what list I play. ^^ Plus I won't have to answer the question as frequently where my warlock is on the board until the rest of the army is painted, too. ;-)

pGrim

pDoomshaper

pGrissel

Borka

I still have a serious issue with doing freehands. I try to push myself with every new hobby project and in this one I decided I wanna paint tartan patterns on my Trollbloods like they have them on the official PP photos. Well, it turns out even such a simple pattern is a big challenge for me as painting a single straight line is very hard to do. Back in school already I found it hard to find the proper mix of brush size, applied pressure with the brush, amount of paint, and paint consistency  to be in harmony for a single even line - and the challenge is even greater on the uneven surface of a model.

However, based on the encouragement experienced by fellow Google+ users I am going to leave the models for now as they are. Maybe I will come back in a couple years and redo the Tartan patterns, however. In a next step I guess I really should start to train doing freehands on white and even sheets of paper first.

At least for now I am done with all my warlocks. Oh, wait...

Glue for the glue god!

eGrim in his blister sweetening my day

The bad news is I have hit a road block in my painting lately, so this is an update on gluing my stuff basically.

Reasons for my painting block are several:

• I am currently trying to get all my warlocks done and I can't stop admiring how good they look on the PP website. :-/
• I am still not entirely sure on what warlocks should be my default, so I switch back and forth between attempts to paint them all at once or painting only a selected few.
• Every once in a while a tourney shows up and I rip them off their painting stands again. Don't ask me how many times I have glued pGrim back into his base after he came off the painting stand/white tack, but his base didn't.
• Oh, and more warlocks get added, like pGrissel one month ago and eGrim just recently.

Maybe I should take the picture of my pMadrak as a source of motivation and tell myself that done is better than perfect.

pMadrak in all his glory.

The good news is that I haven't let my self-discipline scatter totally so I at least kept gluing the most recent stuff. So that's what I did lately:

I twisted and bent the Razor Worm until it sort of had a shape as if it just had been hit by the Mountain King.

This is how it looks glued to the Mountain King's base. Since I have a snow theme for my Trollbloods bases, the Razor Worm will lie in red snow with fresh blood dripping down from the Mountain King's right fist.

On a nice spring day I sprayed all warbeasts of my two current lists with Army Painter Green. I hope this will boost my painting morale, too, as I will be able to paint with large tankbrushes and do some progress instead of messing with the warlocks' intricate details. I also stripped and assembled my Scattergunners and eGrim and his unit.

Last but not least I assembled my Long Riders so that Horthol has some company. I am still heavily contemplating switching my pDoomshaper T4 list for a pGrissel list with Long Riders.

So once again I am done with assembling all my models which is nice as I find gluing quite boring - unless it's building GW plastic models where you can combine bits according to your desire. Now on to painting again!

The social aspects of the Iron Cabal

Fathers vs. Sons

For me the most enjoyable aspect about the Iron Cabal tournament clearly is the social one. One big reason is that people from all over Switzerland unite to play WM/H together; since we are a small country with an even smaller community, this feels quite good.

Another reason is that +Robi Deola always comes up with new and cool ideas, like in the IC4 we had a Fathers vs. Sons special price as both +Gergely Gati and +Andre Suwanda play with their offspring. The rule was very simple: whoever placed better would either get the bottle of Champagne (Fathers) or the Coke (Sons). Actually, the Fathers trailed their sons throughout the tournament until the final game when they were able to close in for a tie, so we had two (i.e. four) lucky victors. :-D

However, for me the most important part of the tournament is lunch, even more important than giving away the prizes. Nothing beats taking a break and chat through all the sense and nonsense any way remotely connected with WM/H. Last Sunday's topic were the benefits of licking cats and toads. Don't ask me why.

It's the timing, fool!

So the 4th Iron Cabal is history and as always it was a very enjoyable experience. :-) This time it was especially nice becomes some guys from Bern, Basel, and even Bavaria showed up for the tournament. :-)

This tournament was also the second and last qualifier for the Swiss National Team for the World Team Championship in October. To make a long story short, I won't be on the team as I did better than I thought, but I am still far from doing well enough.

My tournament score sheet - three losses and one win with pDoomshaper and pGrim.

Game 1 - pDoomshaper vs Kromac

Setup

In my first game vs. Thomas Fuchs I had a really hard time to decide what list to play. On the one hand I was afraid of playing the pDoomshaper tier list as I knew he'd outmaneuver me with his stones. On the other hand, I didn't wanna play pGrim as I felt that list lacked the hitting power to be a serious threat to his warbeasts.

Well, it ended with a dead pDoomshaper. I realized that I should not play a slow and  beast heavy list against Circle again. I guess I should try playing my pGrim list against +Robi Deola next. Also what completely threw me off was Kromac's spell that didn't let me cast any spells for one round. This is awful for a pDoomshaper list where a lot depends on spells.

Game 2 - pGrim vs. Vladidmir

I forgot to take pictures in my game vs. Andreas Bernrieder for the most part. The story is quickly told - his Winter Guard sprayed away my front line. Basically they kept spraying my fennblades and my Nyss Hunters without seeing them ever get into a significant range to do anything. My warbeasts and pGrim were able to build up some pressure with their shooting, but it was too little and too late. I wonder if I should have run pGrim and the beasts more upfront so they'd get more chances for shooting.

Game 3 - pGrim vs. eMadrak

I went into my game with Chris Lehner with the knowledge that eMadrak and Kriel Warriors are an extremely good combo, but it never was of interest for me as I always thought other Trollbloods warlock's do even more awesome stuff.

Early in this game already, the Long Riders clashed into my Nyss Hunters and absorbed them for the rest of the game. In the center, the War Waggon and the Kriel Warriors built up the pressure. I guess I can summarize the game that I didn't feel like anything in his list is overpowered, but if your list can do many many well powered hit, every army dies sooner or later. pGrim was shot by eMadrak's thrown axe.

Game 4 - pDoomshaper vs. eCaine

Now this was the game that really sweetened the day for me. Everything that went wrong in the previous games suddenly started to work here as if it were some magic. I felt I am going to win this game as soon as +Andreas Balmer's Greygore Boomhowler & Co. stopped a couple inches short of my front line and started shooting their Blunderbusses. Back when I was playing Cygnar, I always did that when I wasn't happy with the movement at all.
Well, on my next turn on the left flank, the Runeshapers started shelling templates into the Gun Mages (primarily) and Greygore Boomhowler & Co. Mulg gave them a hand whereas the EBDT took care of everything on the right flank. The Mountain King held the center and killed Rowdy and the Stormclad over the course of the game.

I got a heart attack when +Andreas Balmer used Gatecrasher to teleport into pDoomshaper's back arc - I had forgotten about the spell and felt save behind Janissa's wall. I expected any kind of attack to come from the front of the wall.
Either way, once eCaine had teleported, I knew the only thing to save me was his limited focus left - Gatecrasher is quite expensive. My pDoomshaper indeed did survive because +Andreas Balmer didn't think about Hordes warlocks being able to transfer damage. pDoomshaper had almost full Fury (6/7) and Mulg hardly any damage - I had to transfer only once, pDoomshaper was able to suck up the rest. Once it was my turn again, pDoomshaper boosted his To Hit rolls and clubbed eCaine to death.

General Thoughts

I lose too many games because many models of mine don't really do anything. Why is that so? Because they are on the wrong spot at the wrong time. That's why my opponent tears me apart bit by bit while frustrated reacting is the only thing left to me.
How to solve that?
With better movement of my pieces and setting them up at the very beginning of the game in the first place.
I guess I will have to talk +Gergely Gati into doing learning games where we more or less just move around the pieces in various scenarios and try to imagine what would hapen.