Going way, WAY back, I realized I had not posted any updates from Food Machine (the last tournament of `12). So, here our a few bits for your enjoyment:

The blurry scene from my Tournament Organizer Spot

Our glorious trophy

Our winner, enjoying a NOM

So, why the long wait in between updates? Well, people gots sh*t to do, yo. For instance, earlier in the month a small group of us enjoyed a game day at Atomic Empire….

Which also happened to be a Furry meetup. Who knew.

January was also Illogicon. Here was the view on the balcony leading to the GM food room:

And here was my view for the rest of the Con:

Unfortunately, our presence went mostly unnoticed at Illogicon. For those of you unfamiliar with Illogicon it’s a smaller Scifi (and in tiny subprint, Fantasy) convention that occurs in various locals throughout Raleigh each year. The standard staples of a retail room, Author panels, various social meetup groups and a gameroom were all present. We were placed in the very back of the game room, so if one was not already aware of our existence, one had to stumble upon us purely by accident. This, of course, is why there were only 2 WarmaHordes demos for the entirety of the Saturday I was present.

It didn’t help that we were in the darkest corner, either. It could be a very nifty convention to have around. The group who recreates Stormtrooper and other replica armor is neat. There’s surely a market for such a convention but I don’t think there was enough marketing or hype this time around, though.

Scarab happened on the 18th through the 21st in SC. I’ll leave it to those who were there to do any commenting.
And finally, this past Saturday was a maxed-out steamroller at Hanger 18.

Coming up for the Triangle:

February 17th is an Unexpected Allies tournament at Atomic Empire.
Spring Fever (wargaming convention) is March 8th through the 10th.
March 23rd is a steamroller at Endless Gaming.

Eleswhere in the world:

Templecon is February 1st through the 3rd.
Con-Nooga is March 1st through the 3rd.

This time I’ll focus on Minions. I won’t bother with Gatormen simply because Gatormen are good on their own, without any sort of buffing or model pairing. Anything you do to Gatormen makes them that much better. Instead, we’ll focus on their slimier cousins the Bog Trogs.

On their own, their stats aren’t all that bad: average SPD of 5 and Reach, decent DEF of 12/16/18 with Camo and with an ARM of 14 they have good odds of surviving most blast rolls.  They’re MAT 6 or 8 on a charge. For damage output they aren’t too terrible at POW 11 and they can scale this up with Combined Melee to deal with higher ARM targets.

One of their neater abilities, which also works against them, is Ambush. They can pop out late-game to go for an objective. Unfortunately, most Hordes factions have very little in the way of spell Arcing so a warlock will have to be near the edge they come into play from.

So, who to take them with?  pDoomshapers, Calandra, pGrissel, pLyleth, pThagrosh, Rhyas, Saeryn, Absylonia, Kallus, Bethayne, Grayle, Cassius pKreuger, and Mohsar can keep them alive longer or increase their damage output. Skorne adores minions. Of all the Hordes factions they are the most minion friendly. In fact, they have a solo devoted to minions. pMakeda, p/eHexeris, Xerxis, Zaal, Mordikaar, Rasheth and Naaresh all play well with Minions (more on this in episode 3).

There is, however, a set of interactions that provide synergy, and are quite strange indeed. pBaldur has a spell called rapid growth which creates a 4″ forest in his control area. If one was trying to control an objective, a forest can be placed next to the objective to provide what the Bog-Trogs need to trigger Camo. If one also took Lanyssa Ryssyl, she can stand in the forest (gaining stealth from Prowl) cast hunters mark on a target, and Trogs (no longer needing line of sight) can charge 10″ through the forest at the marked target.

One could combine eMadrak’s Blood Fury with Pendrake’s Beastlore for a unit with Reach, CMA, Pathfinder, MAT 8 + 3D6 to hit warbeasts and 4D6 +POW 11+ x on a 7″ charge.

You could do a similar combo with Kriel warriors, but you need a Fellcaller for Pathfinder which adds on 3 pts making them more expensive than the Trogs. Fennblades have a bigger threat range and slightly more survivability with Tough but you still need the Fellcaller and they’re MAT 6 with no CMA. However, Borka’s feat does give friendly faction models +2″ movement and with Lanyssa that’s a SPD + 7″ charge.

And I just know Circle players will be all “But I could just take Wolves of Orboros. They have the same abilities and a UA. Myeah.”

Oh yeah? Well do they have fins?

Jacob beats Clint

Andy vs Keith ? (I’ll follow up once I have my laptop)

Tyler beats Liam

A problem occurred during round 2 in the Tyler v Liam match. I don’t have templates created for zone control maps in Steamroller. As a stopgap, I use MKI merc tokens and give people the diameters of the control zones. I got away with this when I covered for Chris, but the token was moved during their match without their knowledge. When Liam placed Tiberius with radius of the token to contest the zone. When the token was bumped again and they had me place it back and low-and-behold Tiberius was well out of the zone causing Tyler to immediately win by control points as the only ruling I could come up with at the time was to play it as it was. We will never know how the next turn would have ended. It was only later, after talking with tabnti, that he pointed I could have ruled that Tiberius be placed within range on the token as both players knew the model was within range.

So, I feel like my bad planning affected the outcome of the tournament. To prevent that from happening again, I’m breaking a previous New Year’s Resolution to not make any more resolutions and for 2013, I well have semi permanent templates for Steamroller.

The Final round resulted in a triple win for Tyler earning him the coveted golden can award. Liam won second and Andy took third. Best painted unit was chosen by Crystal Blanton and it also went to Tyler for his Greylord Ternions.

We collected 451 canned goods with donations not only from the players but visits by Bjorkgnu and Kill4koin as well as the Blantons.

Liam Piver had the highest donation count with 150 cans, follwed closely by Clint with 125.

Just posting an update for our Foodmachine event. We have 6 players: Liam (Skorne), Andy (Legion), Jacob (Khador), Keith (Khador), Tyler (Skorne) and Clint (Cygnar and 1 Deathjack).

We’ve collected 358 cans so far and the players are now setting up.