Guild Ball is the game of medieval fantasy football from Steamforged Games. The Century War has wracked the land, and all that forges the fractious nations of the new Empire together is the blood-sport of Guild Ball, brought together by the scheming Guilds. Will you play the slippery Fishermen, the arcane Alchemists, or the suspicious Union? Read some articles, listen to some podcasts, watch some videos, and maybe you’ll find out which is best for you!
MoM’s Podcast #36 – A Warmachine and Hordes Podcast
MoM’s Podcast #36 — A Warmachine and Hordes Podcast Topics: Time Stamps: 0:04:40 – News and Announcements 0:23:30 – Year In Review 1:07:30 – Goals for 2013 1:25:40 – Muse on Mail 1:39:10 – Dojo 1:47:25 – Hobbit Review 1:56:25 – IKRPG update Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:11:54 — 60.4MB)Subscribe: Android |...
read moreGeneral Knowledge
[message_box title=”MESSAGE TITLE” color=”red”]ADD_CONTENT_HERE[/message_box] A quick note: I continue to use a LOT of footnotes (seppos). If you are interested in reading them, it’s been suggested that the easiest way is to open a second tab of the article and scroll that tab down to the bottom of page. Then you can just alternate between them. Please do so, I’ve also been told how to do the technical linking between them, but I probably wont get around to it.9 Recently someone asked me how I felt about the game and whether I felt like I was getting the hang of it. There was a small part of me that was offended, it wanted to say something along the lines of “Hey look, I’ve placed in tournaments8, I’m kind of a big deal you know. I write articles.”1&10 Thankfully the larger part of me tends to take peoples questions in a logical fashion2 so after I gave my actual response (along the lines of “I feel like I’m getting there, just need more games) I kept thinking on the question. The truth is that I’ve started (in the last few months) to think of myself as relatively knowledgeable, I’ve developed an unhealthy sense of security that, when I started to seriously think about it, is not justified by my actual game time or my actual game results. So I figured it was time to bring myself down a peg. I figured the best way to do that was in a public article…. so please pay attention, there will be a quiz at the end.6 Considering the situation So I sat down and started to look at how many games I’d actually played in my first 8 months playing and how many different casters I’d actually fielded, then I cut out all the games that I didn’t think really ‘counted’ (so all of the speedmachine/mangled metal games and such), then I removed all the non-50 point games…and I discovered two things: Firstly, I havent played that many games compared to the numbers people throw around in statements like “be prepared to lose your first 20 games” and “You have to play 10 games with a list to even have a real idea about how it works”, by contrast, I think I’ve probably played about 50 games total in 8 months at 50 points in a ‘relatively competitive’ environment. Secondly, I “feel” like I know a lot more about casters than my actual game-time suggests. To come to these conclusions, since I had a bit11 of time at work and I’m that kind of person, I decided to throw together a spreadsheet looking at every circle caster and all their possible matchups (faction-wise) and tried to rank them against each matchup. Gratuitous? Yes, but it was interesting.3 For example, prior to doing this exercise, stupid as it sounds, I had happily commented on strategies and ideas for casters such as Cassius, Mohsar, pKaya, Grayle, eBaldur and Morvhana….when I had not put ANY of those on the table. Not once.26 As a result of that I have made two resolutions (since it’s the new year and all): First, to play all of the damn casters – I started that straight away and now it’s just morvhana and cassius left to proxy in order...
read moreRoad to War Episode 20 – A Warmachine & Hordes podcast
Road to War This week we have a special guest: Jake VanMeter. We talk about Legion in the colossals meta, some challenges are thrown and then the episode ends abruptly because we veered wildly off topic. Enjoy! Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:09:20 — 31.7MB)Subscribe: Android |...
read moreMy Seven Deadly Sins of Con Matches
Sometimes I’m a fun guy to play against. Other times I’m not. Here are seven generalized statements I’m going to try and avoid deploying after/during a game during the new year. #1: Woe is me, my dice hate me. I’ve often noticed that my dice are failing me. Yet I never remark on how well they are doing when they are hot. Whining about dice is essentially a monologue, the other play doesn’t really have a role beyond nodding sagely at the cruelty of chance. The flip side of this is complaining about the other guy’s dice. Making 3 tough checks in a row should provoke happy feelings, not a wince as I deploy the scowl and mumble about better lucky than good. Dice are going to be dice. #2: I demand a rules change! When Satyxis run 9 miles and engage everything and are def twelve thousand, or the Avatar aces 3 enemy heavies I often feel compelled to add my thoughts on PP’s game balancing skills. Its not my opponent’s fault that whoever wrote the Covenant’s entry hates my guts, and there’s no reason I couldn’t play the list he did. I’m not telling him anything he doesn’t know, and he didn’t do anything wrong. #3: My strategy was perfect! Everyone’s had the experience of making the right play and having it fail. I often respond by telling my opponent (as he beats me), that I played properly. Like he should be expected to commiserate or whatever. The flip side of this is announcing my mistakes to him as he takes advantage of them. “I can’t believe I threw this game away by forgetting that when you rampager my wold watcher he loses stone form!” This was memorably lampooned in Penny Arcade’s famous quote (“You didn’t win, I lost. A squirrel could have beaten me!”) The other player shouldn’t be polled on my performance. He’ll volunteer anything I need to know. #4: [insert your strategy here] is lame! If I’m not having fun due to you spamming arm 25 clamjacks, or running a pHaley gunline or what have you, that’s my problem. Your list choice, so long as you aren’t cheating, is nothing I should make a negative comment about. You bought the models, painted them and brought them here. You can play for time, scenario, whatever. #5: Who cares about toy soldiers anyway? This is a bit of an EVE-ism (an MMO where, socially speaking, no one can admit that the past time we spend hundreds of hours on matters to us), but its funny how whatever I’m bad at I probably wasn’t trying at. In fact, caring about things isn’t cool. I certainly am not so lame as to care who wins. This is a bit like calling someone up to let them know you are over them. #6: Look at my nonoptimal list/tactics! Aren’t I cool? LOOK AT ME!! Its great. If I take a totally bonkers list then if I win I’m double awesome for winning, and if I lose its whatever cuz what would you expect. Only problem is that this is pretty much a solo act. You aren’t, strictly speaking, necessary. You wanted a game and instead I plop a host of helldivers down, lose and demand you praise me for...
read moreEpisode 4: Happy Holidays!
Episode 4 is now up Intros new year stuff Katies Korner: Timers and stuff Recommendation stuff Hosts: Andy and Nathan Guests: Katie, Jeremy and Brian Honorable mention: history and how its bad for gaming. Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:22:35 — 56.7MB)Subscribe: Android |...
read moreMeta crunch 02 – AAW 2012 Tournament recap
In my last article (http://museonminis.com/meta-crunch-01-prepping-for-aaw-2012/) I described my list building and prep work for Agram Arena Winter 2012, so today I will present the battle reports of my games at my first foreign SR tournament since the start of Mk2 (warning: it is a pretty long article). The morning of the event: We arrived at the venue roughly one hour before the Steam roller started, so we had time to meet with the other players and get up to date with some changes from the rules pack and schedule posted on their forums… For starters the Serbs didn’t show up, dropping us to 8 players (the tourney was kept to 4 rounds though), three of which were Khadorans, one Cryx, Retribution and Circle generals, plus my Cygnar and Legion buddies. When we started unpacking our models, we noticed none of the locals had their armies painted and found out it has been decided not to enforce fully painting requirements (although they were in the rules pack for the event); too bad we didn’t know that beforehand, since in that case one of our local Troll players would have come along. Lastly we discovered that the fourth round scenario (Bunkers) would not actually use reinforcements, which changed the dynamic of the flank deployment and scenario quite a bit. Anyway they told us we could modify our lists if we wanted to move in models used in the reinforcements, but my ‘corrected lists’ stayed pretty much the same: Vlad, the Dark prince (-5) – Conquest (19) Gun carriage (9) Battle mechanics – min unit (2) Lady Ayanna & master Holt (4) – Koldun captain Vlachev (2) Widowmakers (4) Kommander Sorscha (-5) – Behemoth (13) – Sylyss Wishnalyrr, the Seeker (2) Gun carriage (9) Gun carriage (9) Widowmakers (4) Eyryss, Angel of Retribution (3) Anyway, the pairings for the first round came out and I already had reason to feel down… Round 1 (Restoration): Vs. Ivan Knezovič (Cryx) Out of the 7 possible opponents I got the match up I least wanted to see: two Cryx infantry swarms (satyxys raiders, mech thralls and banes) with pDenny and pSkarre at the helm. Wonderful! Anyway looking at the lists I expected my opponent to pick pDenny, so I went with the list I had more experience with: pVlad. The list he picked was: Warwitch Deneghra (-5) – Nightmare (10) – Deathripper (4) – Defiler (5) – Skarlock thrall (2) Mechani thralls – max unit (5) Necrosurgeon and Stitch thralls (2) Satyxis raiders – max unit + UA (10) Warwitch siren (2) I won the roll and opted to go first. In the picture you can see roughly how we deployed and what the board looked like. Turn 1: With Signs & portents and widowmakers I managed to kill 3 satyxis before they got to activate, while rushing the rest of my army forward. He on the other hand ran his raiders to engage my snipers and repositioned his forces to threaten my huge bases. Turn 2: Ok, I had to get rid of the satyxis before they started causing real problems. I first freed my widowmakers with Valachev’s magical spray and concentrated my remaining small arms fire at the sea witch (Holt and widowmakers), then used the gun carriage to charge, knock down...
read moreMoM’s Podcast #35 – A Warmachine and Hordes Podcast
MoM’s Podcast #35 — A Warmachine and Hordes Podcast Topics: Time Stamps: 0:02:00 – News and Announcements 0:27:10 – Dojo 1:37:40 – Building a Hardcore List 1:57:35 – Muse on Mail Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:28:55 — 68.2MB)Subscribe: Android |...
read moreThe Key to Next Leveling: LOTG
This article is a mid/high level article on the concept of “Next Leveling” and how to incorporate the concept into your view of Warmachine and Hordes effectively. Next Leveling is a term that I first heard from the MoM gents, but the notion is something that I’ve been familiar with for years. Next leveling means that you’re trying to stay one step ahead of the trends in the national meta-game. The example given on a recent podcast was that MoM predicts Steamroller 2013 rules will cause the national meta-game to shift toward more durable and mid-line casters. The “next level” insight would be to go into the assassination casters, based on that prediction. People try to “next level” in various industries as well. Professional “next leveling” can make you a fortune. I’ve talked about the value of preempting your opponent in a few prior articles, but this time I want to break into some modeling. Finance is probably the most notable field where people can “next level”. Here, you’re predicting where the market (essentially a financial meta-game) is moving. One way to try and set up predictions to the market is to base your guess on linked variables (indicators). By example; droughts are hard on crop yield. If the United States has a huge drought, the price of crops like corn is likely to go up. This makes presence of drought a leading variable to corn prices. So why don’t people make tons of money doing that? Because everyone keeps an eye out for things like this and the market self-corrects almost instantaneously. A few dry days instant impact the futures market for corn and as a result, public information like this is rarely profitable. The friction of investing/divesting is only overcome in large trades on an incredible short time-scale. Thankfully, that’s the sign of a good efficient capital market. You can’t cheat the market with public knowledge. Good. The opposite of a leading variable is a lagging variable. I’m sure you can guess how that works. Another more subtle example of a leading variable is the likes of teenage girls (LOTG). I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s a pretty well established phenomena. I want you to go searching around in your head for things that ONLY teenage girls liked for a year or two that are now everywhere you look. Examples of LOTG at work; Twitter (I think Ashton helped this one along Justin Bieber Vampire TV/Movies/Books Facebook Instagram I’ve got some very big news for you gamers out there. Privateer Press is riding the LOTG wave as well. I’ve pulled up a few numbers and you wouldn’t believe what I’ve found. The graph below shows that PhatAsian’s LOTG score almost perfectly correlates to Privateer Press revenues as a 2-3 month leading variable. As a result, the more and more popular PhatAsian gets, the bigger and bigger the Warmachine casual community will become. I was shocked at first by the accuracy of the results. Then, as I thought about it a little more, it all started to make this strange kind of sense. How long ago was WMW? Didn’t PhatAsian experience a burst in LOTG as a result of his signing booth? How long ago was MoM talking about the increase in causal players? Are they linked? ...
read moreCrippled System Episode 3
Episode 3 Introz Why we chose to play.. How to Deal: Colossals New models discussions Katies Korner Recommendations Hosts: Nathan and Andy Guests: Brian G, Jeremy S and Katie S Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:42:28 — 70.4MB)Subscribe: Android |...
read moreSecrets of the True Law – Unleash the Fire of Salvation
I’ve said a lot about the Protectorate’s stable of shooting warjacks, but occasionally the best way to serve the Creator isn’t versatility, it’s raw melee hitting power. The Protectorate’s arsenal of melee warjacks is no less impressive than the shooting gallery – featuring the resilience of the Templar, the efficiency of the Sanctifier, the economy of the Crusader, or simply the incredible hitting power offered by the Avatar of Menoth. I feel that there’s one warjack in particular that often goes overlooked when considering a melee heavy – Fire of Salvation. Eternally relegated to Grand Exemplar Kreoss’s theme forces and never given a second glance, he is the hidden gem in the Protectorate’s arsenal. His hitting power is second only to the Avatar, his accuracy is unmatched, and under the right circumstances, his threat range is absolutely unparalleled. Sounds like a great deal, right? Let’s break him down, part by part, and see how we can use him to our advantage. Base Stats Our star of the day starts with the basic stats of a Crusader – including the Inferno Mace and Open Fist, with a couple of exceptions. His MAT is increased by 1, resulting in a healthy MAT9 when buffed by the Choir. His SPD is also higher by a point, which is key to getting up the field quickly. At a run, he will outpace a Crusader by 2″ per turn. His Mace, “Absolver,” absolves whatever it hits of being not on fire. This is rarely relevant, as most things that eat a P+S20 mace are usually in too many pieces to care about being on fire, but it’s a nice bonus if you fail to kill a Warcaster or Warlock, or fall short on a heavy by a point or two. The bottom line is that what Fire gets to, he will kill. With a standing threat range of 8.5″, getting him there would be an issue, if not for… Righteous Vengeance This ability comes first and foremost because it’s what makes Fire the best at what he does. You’ll rarely be able to make the bonus attack, but the 5″ move – in any direction you want – bumps Fire’s potential threat range up to 13.5″ – one of the longest in the game without outside assistance. It’s by far the longest in the Protectorate, beating out the 10″ of the Reckoner and Avatar. Start bumping this up, and things can become quite ridiculous fast. Feora’s Escort and Amon’s Mobility can increase it to 15.5″ with no effort. Intercessor Kreoss bumps it to 16.5″ if you can set off Warpath. Reznik, perhaps Fire’s best friend in the world, can hurtle Fire of Salvation a ludicrous 18.5″ thanks to Perdition. As we established before, what Fire gets to, he kills. With Righteous Vengeance, he gets what he wants. Of course, it’s a bit disingenuous to say that he can do all this without outside help, as he does need a bit of help from an extremely fickle source – the heathen across the table. However, with an “anger” range of 5″, it’s fairly easy to keep the majority of a unit inside his bubble. Given the choice between eating an entire unit worth of attacks and potentially pissing off Fire, most opponents will (wisely) choose to attack the Infantry. You...
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