Lords of Ruin, in Wellington taught me not to second guess myself and play the lists that I am enjoying at the time. I had planned on taking my pSkarre Incorporeal spam list to Wellington, but ended up second guessing myself and taking a "special snowflake" pDenny list instead. I managed just 2 practice games with the Denny list before the event and even though I won both of them I went into the event with zero confidence in that list. As a result, I ended up playing eLich for all 7 games and probably not having as much fun as I could have. Looking back, there was probably at least 1 game where I should have dropped the Denny list, but didn't, due to the lack of confidence.
Choptember on the other hand, taught me that sometimes you should just pull the trigger if you get the chance. Having started the day 2-0, I went into the third round against Runes of War with a pDenny + Banes + shooting list that was designed to both attrition and play for the Scourge 'Pop-n-drop'. I had a shot at a Turn 2 assassination but was a little iffy on whether one of the two Pistol Wraiths had range to Doomshaper. After umming and ahhing for far to long I decided to play the long game and ended up clocking out.
In hindsight I should have gone for it, recognising two key points:
1) Against Runeshapers the Pistol Wraiths were never going to last very long anyway and throwing them foward for a possible assassination early was not going to cost me much.
2) If I moved the iffy Pistol Wraith first and found he was out of range, I still could have redirected the second one somewhere else to do some good (like killing that trollop Jannissa). In the end they both just dithered around, did nothing particularly useful and then got killed.
On the Xwing front, I took part in both the Auckland Regional event and the National event, both of which taught me two very separate lessons.
Auckland Regionals taught me that no plan survives contact with the enemy and complex Rube Goldberg machines tend to fall apart when your opponent starts to deny you the actions you require to fuel said machine. Nationals on the other hand taught me that spreading your firepower over multiple smaller ships is generally better than concentrating all your points into a pair of hefty ships. Having said that, the Xwing meta is constantly changing and I am not particularly good at the game so it may just be my bad read of the metastate combined with being generally bad that is my problem.
I also managed to paint a bunch of stuff so lets take a look at some awful photos shall we....
Wraith Engine: Painted it in time for Lords of Ruin, but ended up not taking it. Good chance it could make its debut at Ides of March 2015.
Bane Riders: these did make it to Lords of Ruin. Did some work, but will take some practice to get the most out of them.
Aiakos: Also made it to Wellington as part of the pDenny jank list, never saw tabletime. Greivous Wounds Kraken was some fun in practice though..
Also made a start on my fledgling Trollblood army with Fennblades....
as well as Grim1 and everyones favourite troll solo, Jannissa Stonetide, AKA that bitch with the wall..
I have also managed to paint a couple of Legion models, a Strider Deathstalker and a Shepherd, but thier photo was even worse than the ones above so will have to wait until next time.
All in all, a productive few months to end the year. What am I looking at for next year? I really want to start playing some Legion or Trolls next year and I am targeting the Auckland Open for my first competitive Hordes outing. Unfortunately, this is a 3 list event, which will require a lot of painting for me to be ready by April, so we shall see how it goes.
Hope everyone has a safe and game filled holiday season, and until next year...
Get off my lawn.
