Jumping in the deep end!

Almost 3 months since the last post… Great job! 🤣 Amongst all the busy-ness, I have actually managed to mostly keep to the plan of gaming on Friday evenings at Bridge Troll Gaming Cafe. Mostly Marvel Crisis Protocol, but some Infinity here and there too. The latest incarnation of Morats have been rather fun and devastating Vs my regular Nomads playing opponent.

Tonight I plan to mix it up a little and play “friendly” aliens instead and dust off my Tohaa in order to play something a little more subtle than “brick to face”. Hopefully I’ll remember to take a photo or two for showing off, but then again if history proves anything, the chance of that is slim…!

But all of that is not the deep end.

I was looking at my pile of shame and thinking I need to motivate to finish painting stuff; I got so close to being fully painted with my Grymkin through the pandemic, and really want to complete that. So in order to help with the motivation, I need to game, but more than that I need an event as a hard back stop.

The Welsh Masters are about a month away… That’s enough time to learn a new edition and play reasonably well on clock in tourney conditions with a full 100pt list…. Right??

I have kept an eye on Warmachine MK4, but it’s really been only at arm’s length, and with the Khador Battlegroup that they were doing an early release for back at Gencon last year. Having proxied the starter box models in a game against a friend (Ant), I was left a bit dis-spirited with the state of the army while it waited for more releases. These releases are now known about and in the Warmachine App, but I have extremely little confidence about their ability to be released and in my hands in time.

Also, when the first wave of MK4 legacy armies were released there was significant issues with Grymkin that gave me no confidence in their performance or ability to function. So I didn’t want to touch them and deal with the cognitive dissonance of how I thought they should work Vs what they were actually doing. So I shelved them until things had settled.

Things have now settled, and the most egregious rules mistakes with Grymkin have been fixed, the Death Knell is now a Battle Engine again, and the Arcana have been tweaked to account for not having Trump Arcana anymore (the solution of 2 extra command cards and Grymkin specific command cards with bonuses for specific warlocks still feels like a downgrade considering they don’t get Feats, but it’s better than nothing), and Old Witch found her way back! Albeit less powerful than before.

But that said, having put them on the table Vs the New Cygnar at 100pts didn’t feel bad (see the header image for this post). The game took a long time, and I should have lost (dicey assassination for the win!), but things felt right. The MK4 changes felt intuitive, and comfortable far faster than I was expecting, and my Grymkin really didn’t feel kneecapped at all.

But yeah, I have 4 weeks, to settle on 2 lists, paint what little extra I need, and maybe manage 1 or 2 extra practice games? What could go wrong? My bar for success at the Welsh will be low – all I need to do is not come in last place… Just so that I can leave that historic honour in my group of friends to Ant just prior to Covid. I wouldn’t want to crowd his achievement 😜.