Warmachine Masters at Adepticon

Warmachine "Masters" is a tournament that you have to qualify for by playing in one of the other tournaments, such as the Hardcore tournament.

The rules are:

• 50 points
• 3 Lists (with character uniqueness)
• Death Clock

Warmachine Adepticon Hardcore Standings

I saw someone over at the PP forums had compiled the standings for Adepticon's Hardcore Tournament so I thought I would do some analysis of the results.  Now we play much more casual in our environment so we have to take these with a grain of salt, but it does help show the state of the game's meta in general.

For those who don't know much about Adepticon, it used to be considered mostly a Warhammer 40k/Fantasy event.  However, more recently, it's become much larger in scale.  There's Warmachine/Hordes, Malifaux, Flames of War, Battletech, and tons of other gaming going on.  It's up in Chicago and it's something I'd love to go to someday.

For Hardcore games, you can only have one list.  This is pretty major.  You also have fast turn time limits (7 minutes) and everything in your army has to be painted.  There's also variable round lengths so you don't know exactly how long the game will last (unless you win by caster kill or scenario early, of course).  You can find the PDF of the standard Hardcore! rules here.

Netrunner Regionals: Lady in the Red Dress

With my new found love of Netrunner: Android and my continuing obsession with tournament play for all things games, I have recently found myself jacked in for entirely too long. I played a NR:A regional in Dayton, Ohio, got sixth place and had a great time, only to to gear up and grind games all this week in preparation for another regional. This particular tournament is at my local game store and I would like to make a good showing. My other goal is to play original (or as original as possible) decks that I have crafted. This has always been a goal of mine in the competitive L/CCG environment and it can be very hard. A favorite style of deck construction for myself is taking the current meta and building a deck that looks like it does that and doesn't at all. The Corp deck I built for the Dayton regional was an NBN fast advance deck with Data Ravens and Matrix Analyzers. People were breaking subroutines to prevent tags and dropping tags like the entire game depended on it, little did they know, I had no tag punishment whatsoever. That was the bluff and it payed off, my opponents were wasting clicks and creds, jacking out from data ravens to save themselves from the Tag 'n' Bag that didn't exist. The group think made that prevalent in the meta and I just let the group think assume that was my play.

Scorched Earth?

Not yet......

The assumed tournament scene meta: Noise PW virus spam, NBN no advance, data fort HB, Weyland bag n' tag, CT yog.0saurus, or Criminals. These are the Lady in the Red Dress. The constant distraction of looking for answers, how to run, when to rez. Completely optimizing my deck not just to the card but to how many cards. Grinding away for hours and watching other peoples matches to get an idea of how they play. I am still garnering enjoyment from all of this gathering of information and the search for what the META will be. However, in focusing so much on what to expect and designing my deck in such ways as to prepare for it, I am making weaknesses in both strategy and design.

Are you paying attention at all?

Today is the day before the event, my current resolution is to minimize meta game thoughts and go back to the tried and true, best all comers deck possible. I will be running Noise with no personal workshop and some criminal cards splashed in, including E3 implants because Oversight AI Janus is super annoying. It will also have two Plastacrete Carapaces because knowing that you are going to advance a breaking news if I don't run and seasource me if I do, is the worst. Corp side, its going to be Jinteki. I like the bluff game and need to work hard on it. It's design is super simple, fun to play and if I am lucky and you are not, it can win turn two (which will never happen twice against the same person.) 

Now I just need to work on like 6 cards and maybe some slimming and swapping....

-ryan

Convergence of Cyriss Sneak Peaks

Privateer Press put a few Convergence items up on their home page.  You can obviously view them there, but we've consolidated it all into this one post as well.

Convergence of Cyriss Battlegroup Starter (Plastic)

GRIND ALL WHO OPPOSE YOU TO DUST!

Emerging from their hidden temple workshops, the enigmatic Convergence of Cyriss have unleashed their sophisticated clockwork and mechanika weapons called vectors on the Iron Kingdoms as they begin the final phase of their Great Work. The indomitable Forge Master Syntherion sends his heavy Cipher to bombard opposing forces before closing to annihilate them with its powerful piston spikes, while his nimble Mitigator entangles other foes with its razor bola to knock them to the ground, making them easy prey for the Galvanizer’s surgical saw blade.

Contents: This starter box (PIP 36000) contains quick start rules and a complete battlegroup of four plastic models and corresponding stat cards for WARMACHINE including:
• Warcaster Forge Master Syntherion
• Cipher Heavy Vector
• Mitigator Light Vector
• Galvanizer Light Vector

Read on for more...

Warmachine Achievement League

One thing I've decided to do this year is run an Achievement League.  If you've played on the Xbox 360, PS3, or used Steam on a computer, you know what an achievement is.  You get points (good for absolutely nothing) for performing certain tasks within a game.  These can be super simple ("Hey, you pressed the A button!" or nearly impossible ("Complete the game on Impossible Difficulty without dying on a Tuesday in March with a friend named Steve watching.")

So, without much further ado, I present the preliminary achievements that I'm proposing for our 2013 COGS Warmachine season:

Warmachine Achievement Spreadsheet

The points aren't done yet, but I'd like to hear suggestions about the achievements before I start assigning point values.

Warmachine/Hordes Power Poll

I've added two polls over to the sidebar.  Please feel free to vote on both if you are familiar with the games.  The poll will probably allow you to pick as many answers as you want, but PLEASE just choose three for each poll.

If you have any commentary about your answers, just post it here.

Analysis: Midas

Greed, ferocity, and cunning are virtues esteemed by farrow, and Midas lacks for none of these. A potent bone grinder, he is empowered by lives stolen and feasted upon. The energies released in death are weapons and tools for Midas, who consumes his foes to gain their powers and knowledge. At his command, the bones of fallen beasts become animate and dead flesh rises to fight again.

In this episode of Analysis, I'm going to be taking an in-depth look at one of the best things to come out of the Gargantuans book: Midas.  He's not the most powerful warlock in the book, but he's certainly got flavor (insert pigs/bacon joke) and a lot more funny business available to him than you might think at first glance.

Christmas in April, Legion Style

We've all been waiting to see it and here it is:

Say hello to Lylyth, Reckoning of Everblight.  If you want to see the 3-d spinning version, check out the Privateer Press page.

So what do you think?  As cool as you hoped?

Gear Up 6 Available for Heavy Gear

I know Heavy Gear isn't the most popular game around but I still love it and love Dream Pod 9.  They're a great company who truly cares about their product and their players.  One of the great things they do is release a high quality magazine in PDF format FOR FREE.  They don't put it out often, but it's always worth a look when they do.

Did I mention it's free?  If you are interested at all in Heavy Gear, cruise on over to DriveThruRPG and check it out.  Here's the link:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/113116/Gear-Up-Issue-6&affiliate_id=4310

Now is a great time to be looking at Heavy Gear since they are also making a video game called Heavy Gear Assault which will be out... sometime.  I have no idea when.