Marcus Goes for a Spin

Yesterday I got my first game in with Marcus. Dan pulled out Ramos so we'd both be trying out something new. The matchup was...

Marcus
- Razorspine
- Cerebus
- 2x Waldgeist
7 Stones

Ramos
- Johan
- Joss
- Brass Arachnid
- Spider x2
6 Stones

He pulled Assassinate and I pulled Slaughter.

Being my first match with Marcus and having never seen him before, I started out the game trying to see just how fast I could make the army. I had heard that they were a speed-centric faction and I wanted to see how well that would do. So while Ramos kept popping out spiders and making swarms, I managed to get Marcus and the Razorspine near the center of the board, one of my Waldgeists along one flank near a forest, and the other Waldgeist and Cerebus along the other flank near another forest.

Turn two I made a pretty big mistake when I activated Marcus first to try to pull out an improbable strike against Joss. I failed to turn Joss into a beast with my first (0) action and instead of using my second to Companion my Razorspine and go for a kill that way, I tooled up Marcus and sent him in to fight one of the spider swarms. I did very little damage to it, and by the time I got my second activation, Joss had killed off my Razorspine and armored up. Damn!

I sent Cerebus charging over into Johan, but failed to kill the jerk and he turned around and pasted my Cerebus. My Waldgeists moved both forests closer to the center of the board, one of them getting a hit on Ramos and giving him Slow and trapping him to the forest, while the other one managed to get a hit on Johan and kill him. Unfortunately his other spider swarm got to my Waldgeist who was holding Ramos in place and paralyzed him.

The next turn, Joss killed the Waldgeist who trapped Ramos but was in turn killed by a massively-beefed up Marcus. My other Waldgeist was able to put his second spider swarm down to 2 or 3 life left, but died from that and the (0) action heals for the spider swarm had it back near full in a couple more turns.

Still, with Johan and Joss out of the way, and a clear line to Ramos, I thought I might have a shot. For two turns I was able to get +2 damage and +2 Defense (and sometimes an additional attack) against Ramos, while also giving him a (-) to all flips against me, but it just wasn't enough. I had Ramos down to 2 life left at one point, but he kept healing and reactivating and Marcus finally fell to the spider swarms.

I learned a lot about how to use my faction then. Waldgeists were awesome - just as I hoped they'd be. A solid choice for six stones. Marcus has a lot of cool tricks, but some of them are very action-intensive and he doesn't have that many actions to go with, so it's usually better to pick either control or attack for the turn and go with it. He's very, VERY fast, being able to get a WK of 8 and then a free charge if he plays right, giving him a nice 24" move if he needs it. Overall, looking forward to Marcus again. Next time I'll have a better idea of what to do.

Dan played a really solid game, mostly focusing around getting additional activations (which he managed four or five times in the game!) and on summoning spiders and spider swarms. With how brutal those swarms can be, I need to find a good way to get rid of them quickly. Devour seems like a solid plan...

New Painted Models

Over the weekend, I got a few more models painted up. I painted up my two Waldgeists, Chris painted up a Mature and Younger Nephilim and Lilith, and Laura painted up Baby Kade and Zoraida. I forgot to take pictures of Baby Kade and the stuff Chris painted up, so I'll have to get them posted up later on down the line, but here are the other three.





I think these guys came out pretty well. They're fairly similar to how Bad Juju was, so I already knew what I wanted to do. I think I did better this time around than I did with Juju.

And here's that ugly Old Hag. I am very impressed with how she came out.

A Few More Things Done

Last night I was going to start working on my Waldgeists when I got home, but it was raining pretty hard, so I couldn't really do much. Instead I went up to my Firestorm Armada stuff and pulled down my dozen fighters. They're pretty small, so they weren't very hard to get painted up. I decided that I'd paint one wing up to be grey like my Dindrenzi and paint one up a bit blue like Brian's Aquans.




After that, I just sat around for a while. Did a little work on Rembaldi, played some computer games, watched some West Wing, and then finally it was dry enough outside that I could start looking around for twigs and stuff for my Waldgeists. I ended up finding what I wanted and based both Waldgeists. They're ready to be based-coated and painted up now.



Looking forward to seeing how they perform on the table. They're as much as a Younger Nephilim, so they've got a lot to stand up to. But they're a bit more survivable. Armor 2 and a (-) flip to all charges and ranged attacks against them while they're completely in the woods. Good deal. Just need to start using forests, I guess.

Some Zombies from Walking Dead

AMC has put up a few pictures of extras in zombie make-up for their upcoming Walking Dead television show. I'm stoked!

Finished Off the Marcus Box

Last night while watching a few episodes of the Wire (awesome show!), I managed to finish off the three-headed tiger-thing. It was a bit of an odd model to paint, and while I was going through it, I was getting more and more frustrated by how it was coming out, but at the end, I dropped the wash over it, and it came out looking decent. Who knew!



So with him finished, I now have the entire Marcus box finished up. Here's the whole gang posing for a group shot.



They're not too bad, I don't think. I mean, they won't win any painting contests, but they still will look decent out on the table.

I went by the Parlor on the way home from work last night (which actually means I went far away from home to go to the Parlor, then turned around and went home) and picked up my Waldgeists. They finally arrived. Also picked up a green and a blue wash. The green one came in handy last night, and I wish I had the blue one for the snake instead of the black wash I used. But now I have it for the next time I need it.

My next project, I think, is to work on the two Waldgeists and my second Teddy. After reading over the Waldgeist rules, I'm pretty excited about giving them a try. They're great with forests, which means I now have two models that excel with certain types of terrain that we rarely use (Waldgeists with forests and Silurids with water), but one day...

Oh, and Chris just finished up the last of my Nephilim earlier this week too (thanks Chris!). So soon I'll have another Mature, Younger and Lilith back in the case.

Snakes On My Painting Table!

Actually, I don't have a painting table. I just use my coffee table. And a couple of circular pieces of wood that I put on my lap. They're pretty easy to work with that way.



Anywho, over the weekend, I painted up my snake for my Marcus box. Not too shabby. Now I've got the three-headed tiger left. Maybe if I get inspired, I'll finish him off tonight too. Then I just need to play a few games with Marcus and figure out what I want to do with him. I figure I just need to get one or two more models (if even that many - I'll have Waldgeists and Silurids already) to fill out a 30 stone list for him. I guess I may need another three-headed cat if I want Myranda to ever shape-shift into one.

Dragon Age: Awakening - Complete

WARNING: Some spoilers about the plot below, I guess. If you don't want to know about it, don't read this post.

On Friday night after I got home from work, I decided that I should try to finish off the Dragon Age: Awakening game. It's been on hold for a couple months as I've been involved with other things. The game wasn't holding up as well as the original one, but it was decent enough and I wanted to see what would happen next.

I picked up where I left off, in the haunted harbor town. I had already conquered the elven forest and the dwarven mines. All three of the locations were pretty interesting - more so than most of the ones from the original Dragon Age, but the characters and their interactions really lacked a lot.

I was able to defeat the last stage and found perhaps the most interesting of all of the new characters: Justice. I ended up in the Fade again, though it was much less annoying than the first game. While there, I found a spirit called Justice who was trying to help a bunch of people from the haunted village who had been trapped. I joined with him and tried to defeat the evil baroness, but she cast a spell sucking everyone out of the Fade and back to the real world, herself included. Justice found himself inhabiting the body of a dead mortal near where we had been sucked into the Fade. He spent a lot of time trying to rectify his situation as "undead" with the fact that he still had longings and wishes from the dead man's memories. I liked him a lot.

There were two dragons to be defeated this time around. I had to turn the game down a notch against the second one (that's the guy at the top of the screen) in order to defeat him. That's okay - I'm not ashamed.

Soon after the haunted village, though, I found myself in the last couple stages. I had to choose whether the city or the keep would fall, and I chose to defend the city, letting my keep collapse under a two-pronged Darkspawn attack. Then we got word of where the Mother (main bad guy) was and went after her. The stage itself took me about 45 minutes to clear, and I was able to beat Mother on the third try. Then the game ended.



Overall, I enjoyed playing, but the game felt very short. It may have been that I took a break between the beginning and the end, but I was able to, after picking it back up, defeat the game in probably 4-5 hours more of playing. I'm interested to see what their next game is going to be, though. I did like the way the story shaped up.