2018 A Year In Review

So I have to say I am a horrible blogger. I think the last post I made was in March? So if it seems like I've had a hard time putting words to paper, I have. Whether it just be life getting in the way or the intimidation of writing something out, I've just been having my struggles. Also a big hindrance to me being able to write out posts is the fact that Wix did not have a mobile option to write posts, and I'll be damned if I have time to sit behind a computer sometimes between work and kids. If I have that much time to sit down I am painting! Haha

The great guys of the Kings of Warlando (and more) at Armada Games. One of the reasons I always return each month is for these folks.

(Of course as I say this I go to post this article and Wix Blogging on Mobile is god awful! So I guess I'm stuck to the computer for awhile)

But here is to 2019 and hopes that it is a better year for me and this blog! I hope those of you who do read here enjoy what I put out. I always love hearing from you all and what you thought about my content, it's very motivating so please reach out!

So since I went damn near a full year without writing much of anything, I guess aside from a small hobby update I will just give you all the full shebang about what I have been doing. White I have not been writing out full blog posts I have been pretty active in the miniature gaming and hobby world, perhaps my most active year yet! So i'm excited to give you all a run down of a great year.

The Club

The Kings Of Warlando, the club of which I am apart of, had a fantastic year. Nearly every month (aside from the ones GTs got in the way) we had our Armada Games Tournament in which we kept an average of 10 folks coming out to play, sometimes even in the range of 16 when we had our friends from Georgia come down. The Armada tournaments have to be one of my favorite things about this year, just the one thing a month that I always looked forward to, a chance to meet up with a group of guys which have quickly grown to be my friends, and roll some dice.

Over the course of the year we took the South-East region by storm, having representatives at nearly all the major GTs to fly the Florida flag. We were hauling around 12 folks to events like Siege of Augusta, TNT, and Discover for Kings Of War. Despite some considering us nothing but fodder to mow through on their way to the top, the Kings Of Warlando actually did pretty well, consistently having multiple players in the top 5-10 of these GTs. Discover GT in fact we held all top 5 spots with our very own Chris James taking the win.

Speaking of Chris James, he has taken on the role of our Masters player, going to be representing the Kings Of Warlando at 2018 Masters in Texas. Well deserved as Chris has always been one of the top dogs of our club, though I'm sure in the years to come as we all sharpen ourselves against eachother he will have plenty to contend with.

As far as me in the club I didn't get to join them at as many GTs as I would have liked this year, just Discover and Crucible (more on those later). But I did make it every month to Armada to try and get some break from a hectic schedule, again those monthly events are what kept me sane this year so they were a god send each time.

One of the few times I've ever walked way from the table against Chris James and it not have been a loss. But it was only a draw.

I also went above and beyond at the behest of the other Club leaders to write a sort of Standard Operating Procedure for our club. Just a living document for club members to reference with standards of conduct, how we do things like club entry and t-shirts, and so on an so fourth. It's a handy little pamphlet when we want to show people what we are about so I encourage all organized groups to have something of the sort. Sadly I can't share it as it's super top secret, but I'd be happy to answer any questions on it if you want to make one of your own!

Varangur

I think the army itself came together nicely after all that work. My best display yet.

From looking back at older blog posts I have pretty much outlined the redesign and repaint of my Brotherhood army with its fancy new paint job and fancy new bases this year. love looking back at those models as they charge across their meadow. But as fast as I got them painted is as fast as I put them down in favor of my new Varangur army which I started consistently playing around June of last year. It was a bit of a learning curve taking on a new army, but did they look awesome during that curve.

It took me about 4 months to get my first build of Varangur painted up. At first I went for a triple Fallen hordes, but soon realized that they just didn't have the oohph I was looking for, and sadly took me until I brought Varangur to Discover GT to learn my lesson. One of my club mates Jacob Datta actually mentioned it to me a bunch at our Armada events, but of course I always learned the hard way. I ended up dropping the third Fallen horde in favor of a second regiment of the Mounted Sons, of which honestly fits my style more coming from Brotherhood. I also benefited from the jump in points between Discover at 2000 points and preparing for Crucible at 2250.

When I learned I needed a second Mounted Sons Regiment.

Funnily enough I also picked up Magnilde of the Fallen in my list to give myself a tool to hold up dragons, take our war engines, or cancel out Basusu who is almost always running around the table. So when CoK19 dropped and the two Fallen Horde/Magnilde formation was in it I laughed, but In my defense I was playing that formation before it was cool so you can't call me on it. B-)

I have indeed already seen some success with Varangur, taking home the top prize at one of our Armada tournaments just before Crucible. Though I will have to say that some luck was involved since I managed to one-hit kill a Naiad Ensnarer horde while hindered with two Mounted Son regiments. That has to be the play of the year or something.

I plan to keep playing Varangur throughout 2019, promised myself I needed to keep with one army and learn it. So maybe this will be a good year for me?

Crucible and Discover

I wanted to make it out to 3 GTs in 2016 but it seemed like the ability to do so would elude me with all of the little ones running around the house. But instead I did manage to make it to Discover GT in August up near Atlanta Georgia at Discover Games. It was actually quite a fantastic time as our club Kings Of Warlando sent about 12 folks to the event, making us ⅓ of the whole GT.

One of my few wings at Discover, against Mike B's Ratkin.

Had a great time meeting the locals and the TO Bryan Tucker who put on a great show. We spent our time the night before getting great food in the small town we stayed in, Fayetteville, GA, and then some practice games at Discover Games which turned out to be a great sized store. I was actually quite surprised at how much that store had because it carries such a variety I'm not used to seeing.

The tournament itself was lots of fun. I didn't do all too well (15th of 28) but like I said I was still fine tuning my Varangur list at the time which consisted of too much shooting such as Magus Conclaves and Horse Raiders that ate up too many points imo. I went 3-3 overall, I submarined quite well in the first 2 games before rising back up in the next 3 and getting knocked down by Austin Carrigan and his Nightstalkers in round 6. Typical of my performance, always flying too close to the sun after doing well at the lower tables.

Few months later was our home event Crucible GT ran by Kings Of Warlando's very own Cody Smith. Fantastic event if you have not been yet, I encourage you to greatly when you can. It's so different than some of the stand alone GTs out there because it's in the midst of this huge gaming convention going on at the same time. It's full of gamers and games and plenty of opportunity to meet new folks that it's hard not to just have a blast. Its centered right in the tourist district of Orlando Florida and thus has plenty to go do in the evenings. But of course after grabbing grub each night we only game back to the main hall for drinks and games. Myself and Eddie actually got allot of Middle Earth SBG in during the evenings teaching a few folks the ropes and getting them interested in the game.

The main event we had 20 players come down from around the South East and Mid-Atlantic. For my first round I actually participated in my first “challenge” against Joey Greek and his Salamanders from the Mid-Atlantic. Joey definitely was a tough opponent but I was able to push just a bit harder with my more optimized Varangur list and squeak by with a win that round. From there I proceeded to do well all the way up until I played 3 of the top 5 players for the event: Patrick Justice, Bryan Tucker, and our own Heriberto “Eddie” Gonzalez. So sadly I ended at 2-3 with being somewhere near the bottom, but I was pretty proud I played such good players and held my own during the event.

There of course to smack me down to the lower ranks where I belong was friend and clubmate Eddie.

TOing

One new thing that I have taken up is allowing our TO, Cody Smith, to smack everyone around on the tabletop free of his duties as TO.... Ok to put it mildly I've taken up TOing some of our monthly Armada Games Tournaments to both learn the ropes as I was curious, and also allow our great TO a moment to have fun and actually play. Funnily enough as soon as I did let him play he ran his orcs and then kept running until he got 1st place, leaving everyone in his wake. WhathaveIdone.gif

I got to TO a 1250 pt, 4 round event we held in December and also will be TOing our January 2250 pt event. So it's cool to slowly ease myself into it, we aren't doing Black Jack or anything crazy like dot deployment, just enough so I can get some confidence doing it. Honestly the hardest thing was learning Warscore, and that was not even that bad. Plus for now Cody is right there at the event so I can easily pull him aside for questions.

As far as my thoughts on TOing I find it quite relaxing, then again the group I am doing it for have a pretty good handle on the rules and I did not have to play ringer. But so long as both of those things go well it seems like you are free to walk around, watch, and chat. We'll see if I get lucky this coming month, maybe someone will give me a hard time so I get a trial by fire.

“TO come solve this dispute about backing up 1-inch after a charge.”

Yeeessh

CoK19 Changes

Me handing the keys to the Kingdom over to Cody as he shows everyone why they are lucky he is TO and claims 1st Place in December.

So Clash Of Kings 2019 has dropped, and I won't go into much detail but I will sort of share my likes and dislikes. As you all know I am a petty big Brotherhood player so the nerf to the Undaunted Crusaders formation is absolutely beyond my understanding as to why that is necessary. But since I'm sure those who know me and are reading this have heard my bitching on that subject enough I won't belabor the point. Instead I’ll go over other things.

Firstly the Legendary Spells, I have been saying for a long time they need to have a “tiered” approach to spells so I'm glad to see they have gone this direction. However I don't think we have come to the point that spell spamming ultra-powerful spells is not going to be the way to go. Sure I can't bring 3 wizards with Alchemist Curse in my army, but I sure as well can just roll AC(10), Bloodboil, and Spell Syphon in the same list. Whether that turns out to be ineffective we shall see. But in a recent Cok19 game I had against Jamie Ward, his dwarves sure smacked the crap out of my King On Chimera with Bloodboil, amongst a battery of war engines. But the jury is out.

Needless to say as a Varangur player I got the gift that keeps on giving with that formation. Though even I will admit it's hella OP, but I guess since I'm always playing neglected armies I won't complain, yet it makes me laugh when I see people who play Elves or Goblin complain…. Yeaaa come to my new Meta or die in your old one. D-:<

I fully expect that formation to be gone next year so I won't get too attached to that. What I did hear however was rumors Varangur are being folded into Northern Alliance. Such a rumor piques my interest because it grows a concern some of my models will be unusable in a Northern Alliance list as the Dwarf, Elf, or Nertican units being inserted into that faction would surely overlap the roles of say Warband or Reavers as examples. As someone in my club pointed out, Mantic is usually good about not invalidating people's armies, so I guess I have to rest my faith in them for now.

I like a lot of the items that were added this year. The Orc Pole and Mournful Blade being my favorites. Magnilde of the fallen already got a good taste of the Mournful blade by a Dwarf Slayer so ouch, but a welcome ouch.

Middle Earth SBG

So anyone who follows me on Twitter would have noticed a huge shift in focus of tweeting about Kings Of War to tweeting about Lord of the Rings. This is due to partial burn out over having attended so many great events this year, but also the nostalgia of LOTR SBG and how it started this hobby for me. I was 13 when I first found the Minas Tirith Starter Set with paints in a discount bin at Barnes and Nobles. After that and seeing there was more models out there I was super hooked, making a whole collection of the tinny buggers (to my parent's dismay).

Flash forward through highschool and college when I didn't have time or money for it, I started back in the hobby with Kings Of War, and on the announcement of Middle Earth Strategy Battle Games’ revival I was more than stoked. It also helped that my friend Eddie was interested in playing which gave me someone to go up against. Thus I dusted off the rather large and poorly painted collection I had sitting around, and began to assemble an army. After getting a large ebay lot of Minas Tirith Warriors (80 dudes overall) I wasted no time getting them painted. I had the whole army done just in time for Crucible and had lots of fun showing people the game with fully painted models.

But of course you can't stop there, I ended up splitting the new starter box with Eddie and getting a nice batch of Orcs and a Ringwraith on Fell Beast. So adding on to the collection I already had, I am now in the midst of painting a full Mordor army which I'm sure you all have seen many pictures of recently

Games for now are mostly in my garage as I do not anticipate a huge competitive scene for it sprouting up. But nevertheless it's been a blast to change up the rules and delve into Middle Earth for a change. But of course my affinity for Kings Of War is not going way, just a short break.