Building on the foundation - More Convergence

With Prime Axiom done I needed to have at least a unit of all the servitors painted so he can create whatever I needed that turn.

Did the basic paint job but this time it wasn't as rushed so they are a bit cleaner with a highlight added to the blue sections.

Next I wanted to work on another unit of angels as I want to get my Aurora tier list going. I had ordered some sweet Dragon Forge bases, even though they are super expensive I like adding a little variety to the army.

I decided to pin a flying angel to add some variety as well since the Aurora tier list is going to be 15 angels.

Pretty happy with the finished result. The paint scheme isn't very complicated with them, but I enjoy seeing the flying angel. If I was more patient I'd even be tempted to adjust the bent leg.

Prime Axiom Finished!

I was really excited to get the Prime Axiom on the table and play with it. The biggest problem with this was the fact the model would paint better in pieces. So I was forced to paint it before I could play with it. I couldn't imagine trying to get around some pieces and get to some of the interiors.

Step 1. Paint my gold scheme on all the pieces. If you want the formula it's on my Convergence at Lock and Load post.

Step 2: Find where I could break up the gold with accents of silver.

Step 3: Was to make sure the silver clicked together so I would test the pieces together.

Step 4: Once I tested the pieces and was happy with the results of the silver I started painting my blue. Though unlock my other pieces I did 3 levels of highlighting for now. I still want to go back and hit the back coils and some of the larger spots with more blending.

Step 5: Not ignore the bored bulldog watching me paint!

Mochi

 Step 6: Assemble the model and start figuring out how I plan on getting him on the base.

Step 7: Actually paint the base.

Step 8: Set 3 pins in the base and drill holes in the feet of the Axiom. This is where the most painful part of the experience was. When you spend sometime with a speed 10 dremel high gauge bit drilling metal holes. Don't touch the metal! Though this picture doesn't show it, he is floating and even though I was very skeptical about it being stable it came out very well in my opinion.

Prime Axiom Prep

This model is a beast with 58 out individual parts if I counted correctly. So the first night I spent just cleaning the pieces. I went through and scrapped all the mold lines off, soaked the resin pieces in soapy water to prepare for the building phase I did tonight.

Tonight I grabbed all my clean pieces (now fully dry) and proceeded to build it in pieces. The reason I like to do this is see where I can build it in the largest pieces possible without getting in the way of painting.

Some of these pieces were extraordinarily small. I appreciate the amount of detail, but wonder if they would've been missed if left off?

With the base built I felt I had a good starting point for painting. So I decided to build the main torso next. Though I did put a pin here to secure the model a little further.

With the bottom done and pin ready I built the main body and connected them for the photo. Starting to look cool.

All my pieces are now primed and ready to get some final black touches before my real painting begins!

Convergence at Lock and Load

I played Convergence at Lock and Load this year. This was the result of luck, friendship, hard work and sleep deprivation. I need to start by giving a shout out to 2 of my awesome friends for helping prepare models, develop paint schemes, stay up late with me and cheer me on during games. Steve and Travis, my experience at Lock and Load this year was due to your friendship, thank you.

Buddies that helped me prepare my army. Steve (left), Travis (right)

Preparation
Once I got Steve and Travis to agree to help me prepare the models for the events, I went into planning mode. I brought a lot of my paints -- a mixture of Games Workshop and Privateer Press -- 2 exacto-blades, mounting putty, 30 small bases (painted ahead of time), 18 medium bases (painted ahead of time), 10 large bases (painted ahead of time), my dremel, 3 sets of pinning rods, 2 sets of clippers, a bottle of gale force 9 glue acccelerator, and a set of files. I had also mailed 2 cans of black GW primer a few weeks before. I love how cleanly it covers models--which I am very picky about, especially if I'm going to use a dry brushing scheme.

Paint Scheme
My paint scheme came from an old paint scheme I had tried on Necrons awhile back. I never finished the army because I just couldn't get back into the game. Sorry GW... just can't stand your rules anymore, even though the most recent edition does seem improved.

Over brush base brass - Balthasar Gold
Dry brush gold leaving lots of shading - Gehenna's Gold
Dry brush edges - Golden Griffon
Wash - Sepia

Base silver areas - Leadbelcher/Iron Breaker
Black Wash - Thamar Black + Sepia Wash + Water

Super Water Down Blue Wash for small recesses - Temple Guard Blue
Couple coats on blue coils - Temple Guard Blue

This gets you to where my models are now. I'm going to improve them further with a lot more work on the lighting effects, cleaning up some of the mistakes and missed areas. Also, some of the silver needs a solid highlight.

What the field of battle looked like when all was said and done... 10 hours later, 7 AM Friday morning and only 2 hours before I needed to be at Iron Arena giving me roughly 1 and a half hours of sleep.
I played Axis and Forge Master at the Iron Gauntlet Qualifier going 2-2. I had originally planned on doing a couple different list configurations, though running out of time and energy restricted my lists down to only one angel unit instead of the three.

The lists:
Forge Master Syntherion +6
-Monitor 8
-Monitor 8
-Inverter 8
-Cipher 9
-Galvanizer 3
-Mitigator 4
-Mitigator 4
-Diffuser 3
Clockwork Angels 3
Reflex Servitors 2
Reflex Servitors 2
Attunement Servitors 2

Axis +6
-Monitor 8 (had nothing else)
-Inverter 8
-Inverter 8
-Cipher 9
-Mitigator 4
-Mitigator 4
-Galvanizer 3
-Galvanizer 3
Clockwork Angels 3
Reflex Servitors 2
Reflex Servitors 2
Attunement Servitors 2

Iron Gauntlet

Iron Gauntlet is a really interesting format. I know I've heard lots of pros and cons about the possibility of the format impacting the game. So, I really wanted to see what kind of lists were going to be there and bring something crazy all my own!

I was super excited we had finished the project and I was going to play my first game of Convergence with the actual models. Before Lock and Load, I had created a pretty snazzy proxy army with Photoshopped cards and print out units and jacks to get a feel for the faction. I could only play Forgefather since he was the only fully spoiled caster but I took what I could get.

My first opponent was Anthony Wang, a great guy from my gaming area, though he usually plays in stores roughly an hour north of me. He brought out Mohsar while I brought out Forgefather. Didn't want to lose my first game by having no clue what I was doing!

Trying to recall every detail just won't happen in any of these game due to my lack of sleep. The quick skinny of this game was the Monitors made quick work of the shifting stones. My Inverter survived a Warpwolf stalker charge causing Lightning Strike to not work allowing me to eat his stalker. Angels, who were preyed, just ran back to my side of the board to effectively take prey out of the game. Meanwhile, my little ball mines chased the Bloodtrackers around the table.

In the end I won when Mohsar failed to assassinate Forgefather due to his nice armor (20 at the time), high amount of hit boxes (also 20), and a 5 fury Mohsar not rolling what he needed to get the job done.

The next battle was vs. Jay from Chain Attack. At this point my lack of sleep, lack of experience fighting against eHaley and Jay's very solid job of using his units/spells/feat gave him a solid victory over me. This most likely knocked me out of contention due to my lack of army points and CPs earned.

Honestly I can't remember the rest of my games detail by detail. The most memorable of parts of my other games were...

• Picking Axis as my hardcore caster after having played only one game with him previously.
• Axis landing a counter charge with an Iron Aggressioned Inverter on a whip snapped Garryth  in hardcore knocking him down.
• Dying to a really bizarre pVyros list with tons of Griffons and a couple Aspises. Though I had the army handled well, my caster got too close to pVyros.
• Being the 2-1 pair down for Brandon (spell check?) during the hardcore tournament. 
• Three Ravagores shooting at Axis over and over while my jacks tried to get through the clog of infantry was brutal.

I went 2-2 in the Hardcore as well. 5 games total with Axis. By the end, I felt very successful.

Overall

I really appreciated everyone's nice comments at Lock and Load about the paint job and how impressed they were. Some people may have received very quick responses, but this was mainly due to me being exhausted and hungry. But everyone was heard and helped me get through the day!

Overall the faction is very much like spoilers hinted. Lots of machine qualities to their play style. Stats of things are crummy for the most part, but with a few well placed flares and beacons, things become incredibly fast and accurate.

Here are a couple quick synergies/combos I pulled off in games:

• Angels with Axis' feat quickly become speed 9 Pow 14 charge attacks with a flare Mat 8.
• Forge Master has some weird assassination vectors with his feat + beacon + magnetic hold allowing a Monitor to charge 11 inches, then boost a pow 13 another 13 inches. 
• Inverter knocking down someone with a Counter Charge. (Helps a lot if Iron Aggression is up)
• Synergized Forge Master for a pow 20 mat 12 attack
• 8 consecutive Counter Charges in response to enemy movements. (this included Reflex balls)
• Axis' feat to prevent a Bronzeback from Counter Charging, Attunement Servitor flaring eMorghoul, then pounding 5 transfers out of eMorghoul until he had done 72 damage in transfer to beasts (killing the Gladiator).
• Not really a synergy, but a Mitigator under Axis' feat moving 7 inches and killing 8 shield guarded models with puncture.

Forge Master Syntherion

Resourcefulness is amazing and Synergy is incredibly fun. I've never played a Synergy caster before, but he's efficient at it. Aside from that, Reconstruct is a good bait spell and Hot Shot is great to put on a Cipher vs. swarm armies. Forge Master really needs the arc node solos to take advantage of 1 of his best spells on the card-- Magnetic Hold. 8 Inch range is a death sentence unless you're catching an isolated unit.


Axis, the Harmonic Enforcer
Axis is very much the puzzle caster. Placement of your own models is massively important to line up proper Counter Charges and to not allow your opponent to clog them all up with 1 model with reach -- so layering your models is important. The 360 vision on the light jacks also makes Counter Charge super helpful. As of now, Axis is also the caster to play if you're going up against a super heavy terrain table or a heavy terrain causing caster/faction. Also, Counter Charging with your Inverters to knock down models on their turn is a lot of fun.

Overall I've played 21 games with Convergence and I have to say, without some more releases, there are some rough match ups (need more than Angels for infantry), but over all it's a blast to play. I am really enjoying how well they run the Warjacks -- the main reason I was so excited for the faction.

I look forward to spending a lot of time with the faction, but if you don't like synergistic mechanics, this is probably not the faction for you. It relies heavily on proper activation order, stacking buffs/debuffs and proper placement.

Indecision

Ok so I can't decide! How should I do my base arcs?

Here are the three I've thought about so far.

I think the caution arc is too busy. The yellow stripes tough they don't show well in the picture are just a very simple choice, and the grey feels very bland too me.

I can go for a very dark reddish purple arc?

If you have an opinion go ahead and post.

More Convergence Prep

I got a few more games in with my proxy army and a few laughs this past Wednesday with my normal WM night group. So far my games have gone splendidly well. Undefeated with Forge Father Syntherion and his very synergistic play style.

I've massively enjoyed their unique style of play. They can run multiple jacks very efficiently if you can play properly. This is definitely not the faction for new players in my opinion, as the floor is higher then most factions.

In preperation for getting the nice models at lock and load I am painting up some custom bases. I have got some nice industrial bases, I wanted to do something a little different for my arcs. Does this look good? Or like a butchered bumble bee smashed into my base? Please post comments if you like it or not. Also if you think it'll be too much for an entire faction?

First Convergence Battle

My first battle with Convergence of Cyriss is a 25 point battle vs. Thyra.

Thyra
-Reckoner
-Blood of Martyrs
Errants + UA
Visgoth Juviah Rhoven & Honor Guard
Choir

vs.

Forge Father
- Monitor
- Cipher
- Inverter
- Galvanizer
- Mitigator

Turn 1 I threw out Synergy on Forge Father Syntherion, Hot Shot onto the Monitor and Reconstruct on the Inverter. Then advanced my army taking advantage of passing focus down the line running my army with 1 focus.

Thyra positioned the Errans in front of his heavies took a shot with the Reckoner and rolled very low on damage.

Turn 2 I took a shot with Forge Father Syntherion killing a errant. Convergence has a lot of great speed boost modifiers, but not in the units that are completely spoiled rules wise. So I positioned the Inverter with reconstruct to take the charges from his heavies. Mitigator punctured a few Errants.

Thyra charged with Blood of Martyrs doing some damage to the Inverter then side stepped out of the way to let the Reckoner charge in and finish the job, but fell short by 2 points of damage.

Turn 3 Inverter repairs from the Field Marshal rule. Cipher moves up with 1 focus kills an errant, powers up synergy, then Mitigator punches an errant not killing it (but powers up Synergy), Galvanizer moves up and repairs the Inverter by 4 points, Inverter destroys the reckoner with a pow 22 initial then a series of pow 19's after synergy. Then the monitor charges into Blood of Martyrs leaving it at 2 points. Leaving a cortex and arm.

Menoth goes powers Blood of Martyrs who finally finishes off the Inverter. Thyra then slams into the Monitor putting it at 2 points destroying everything except one hand.

Turn 4: This is basically mop up turn. Killing Blood of Martyrs to free up the Monitor who then moves up and kills Thyra. The things of special note that I found very entertaining this round was Convection allowed me to allocate a focus to the Monitor after it's self repaired fixed the system allowing it focus then the induction system passing a focus to it giving it 2 focus.

Sythnerion is an amazing jack caster. Resourcefulness makes him one of the strongest synergy casters in the game. His field marshal ability seemed lack luster in compaison to some of the amazing other ones like shield guard, counter charge and arc nodes. Self-repair does something that a lot of Warmachine players have asked for though. If you don't kill a jack within the round it'll be fully functional next round. Hordes no longer are unique in this area.

Convergence of Cyriss

With the coming of Convergence of Cyriss I wanted to get a taste for the faction. So with some help from my wife we made some easy to use and identify proxies using the rumors passing around the different websites and the release video. Play testing shall commence tomorrow!

Side Note: I have not given up on having all of my Retribution painted this year. With the adding of infiltrators to my force I'm at 20 models to go. So I'll be doing a large update once I finish all of those. Don't really feel like doing a mid way update though.

Kaelyssa Experiments

This article is going to be a series of lists, why they were built and how they did. Then each list will be modified based off the first one in the hopes of tuning my Kaelyssa list into a tournament caliber one.

First list:

Points: 50/50
Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper (*7pts)
* Hydra (9pts)
* Phoenix (10pts)
* Sylys Wyshnalyrr, the Seeker (2pts)
Cylena Raefyll & Nyss Hunters (Cylena and 9 Grunts) (10pts)
Dawnguard Sentinels (Leader and 9 Grunts) (9pts)
* Dawnguard Sentinel Officer & Standard (2pts)
* Soulless Escort (1pts)
House Shyeel Battle Mages (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt (4pts)
Arcanist (1pts)
Mage Hunter Assassin (2pts)
Mage Hunter Assassin (2pts)

Prediction: Lots of weapon masters + Aiyanna and Holt to hit hard move fast. Hydra with phantom hunter to snipe out key pieces then threaten caster late game. Assassins for threat, and battle mages to force my opponent to avoid getting plucked out easily.

Results: Hydra did exactly what he was bought for. Did amazingly well at threatening the caster and when necessary Aiyanna damage buff + Hydra did get some work done. Nyss Hunters failed miserably for the most part. Don't like Mat 6 weapon masters, I missed a lot.

Second List:

Points: 50/50
Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper (*7pts)
* Aspis (4pts)
* Banshee (10pts)
* Daemon (9pts)
* Sylys Wyshnalyrr, the Seeker (2pts)
Dawnguard Sentinels (Leader and 9 Grunts) (9pts)
* Dawnguard Sentinel Officer & Standard (2pts)
* Soulless Escort (1pts)
House Shyeel Battle Mages (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt (4pts)
Arcanist (1pts)
Dawnguard Destor Thane (4pts)
Dawnguard Destor Thane (4pts)
Mage Hunter Assassin (2pts)

Prediction: Daemon is going to get the phantom hunter this time. See if he plays better then the Hydra, though I enjoyed the Hydra. Banshee instead of Phoenix might be a mistake, but I enjoy the idea of denying orders and spells. Sentinels are staying in for the power since they work so well with the feat. Thanes are to replace Nyss hunters and gave room for Aspis to help with Kaelyssa dying from ranged.

Results: Daemon was very effective though Phantom hunter on him wasn't necessary. This is much more dependent on the match up. The banshee is a nice beat stick, but with the way the jack is played in this list (a giant gun) might be better to run Hydra + Daemon instead? Though this doesn't give me a reliable beater incase I hit big stuff leaving all the heavy lifting to Sentinels. With out a arc node no need for Sylys.

Third List:

Points: 50/50
Kaelyssa, Night's Whisper (*7pts)
* Aspis (4pts)
* Daemon (9pts)
* Hydra (9pts)
Dawnguard Sentinels (Leader and 9 Grunts) (9pts)
* Dawnguard Sentinel Officer & Standard (2pts)
* Soulless Escort (1pts)
House Shyeel Battle Mages (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
Lady Aiyana & Master Holt (4pts)
Arcanist (1pts)
Arcanist (1pts)
Dawnguard Destor Thane (4pts)
Dawnguard Destor Thane (4pts)
House Shyeel Magister (2pts)
Mage Hunter Assassin (2pts)

Prediction: The prediction this game is I'm going to miss having a solid melee reach jack. But I want to give it a shot with a very powerful pair of shooting jacks. My guess is Hydra will be replaced back too a Banshee or Phoenix after a few tests.

Results: I played against a heavy jam list and my army reacted very well. The sentinels, thanes counter punched hard, with daemon creating a large whole in the middle of his army. The reach beater wasn't needed vs. the list so I'm still unsure of Hydra + Arcanist vs. Phoenix or Banshee yet. But this will have to wait until I can get some more games in. 

After a long hiatus...

Though I haven't posted in quite some time I have been busy hobbying. My trolls haven't been very satisfying as of late and I hadn't had much luck with them either. I had painted quite a few of them but decided to shelve them for awhile and give another faction a fair shake.

So... I decided on Retribution. Since this is the year of play it painted I decided to only play this faction with painted models in 2013. I first tried them out in 2012 at Dual Con and promptly got stomped all weekend with them. Lately though I've been much more successful with them.

Below are some pictures of my current painting progress and I hope to finish up at least 1 of every model by Lock and Load where I plan on playing the faction and hopefully do well. I'll start updating more regularly on  lists I've been trying and tournaments I go to in preparation for Lock and Load.

Entire Painted Group

Battle Mages, 2 Magisters, Ravyn

Garryth, Halberdiers, Riflemen, and some more solos

Kaelyssa, some more solos and Sentinels

Discordia, Hydra, Phoenix, Thane, Arcanist, and Chimera

Hyperion

House Vyre Jacks