Dirge of Mists vs Heroic Call

I’ve been playing since black and white prime (I was playing Protectorate as my only faction back in those days) and as soon as Escalation hit, I added Rupert to my regular group of solos in my lists.  The Piper has followed me from Protectorate, to Cygnar, and now to Mercs, and honestly, I sorely missed him when playing my Trolls.

Of the 3 tunes that the Piper can play, I find that March is obvious when it is needed.  Between Heroic Call and Dirge of Mists I find that many people tend to blanketly recommend Heroic Call, even though there are situations where the +1 Def and Terror are superior.

First, we need to analyze how much effectiveness we gain with Dirge of Mists when compared to the enemy’s ability to hit the buffed troops.  Heroic Call always yields a 33.3% increase in survivability, so really we are interested in scenarios where adding +1 def pays off more than tough.  Let’s assume attacks that hit auto kill, as that way we don’t have to factor in attacks that fail to exceed armor at this time.

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Tags: Dirge of Mists, Heroic Call, Mercenaries, Rhupert Carvolo, Warmachine

Now that Gen Con 2011 is finished, it’s time for me to decide what I’m going to play for the following Gen Con (I work on yearly cycles based on Gen Con). Having just finished my Master Track series for the Cygnar casters considered reject by the Cygar forums, (http://handcannononline.com/blog/cat…/master-track/)

I’m going to focus Master Track 2012 on winning with Mercs. That means I’m going to need to pick casters that I think I can win with, and just as importantly casters I want to play, since I tend to have the best success with casters I enjoy. I’m going to start with 6 casters and narrow it down to 4 over time, since my guess is Gen Con 2012 will again be 3 list, characters restricted and I want to focus an additional caster on Hardcore.

Given that I’m planning on a character restriction, I’m going to start out by calling this the worst case scenario — 6 lists with characters restricted. Since no event over the next year will likely have characters restricted across this many lists or more, if I start here, I should be able to find character leeway on events that only require 3 or 4 lists and it should help me build my final masters list when I start culling casters (and thus freeing up characters as well).

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Tags: Convention, Lock and Load, Master Track, Masters, Mercenaries, Privateer Press, Strategy, Tournaments, Warcaster, Warmachine

Master Track Lock And Load Part 1: Arrival, Iron Area, and Masters 2.

Before Departure

Event Planning
For Lock and Load I signed up for Masters 2 (night games), and Hardcore 2 (morning games). This event isn’t quite like Gen Con where there is a lot of overlap and continuous events so I just registered for what was still open. For bigger events, sometimes the night games can give you an advantage since everyone is playing tired, but I don’t think I really picked up an advantage this time around.

Packing
Prior to departure you should already know what events you are playing in and you should know what lists you.re using in those events. Since I knew I was playing in Masters 2 and Hardcore 2, I knew I needed at least 3 lists (I was reusing the same Darius list between hardcore and masters). I packed 4 lists to cover myself in case, by some stroke of luck, I qualified for finals. I will say, beware of overpacking! You don.t really need to bring along everything you own since you likely won’t use more than your tournament lists plus a fun / casual list and you won’t really get to stash your army case anywhere for the duration of the event, so over packing means you.re dragging around a lot of heavy stuff you don’t need. My recommendation is 5 lists — 4 tournament lists and 1 casual list that you enjoy playing that doesn’t go for the turn 2 win every game (casual games seem to lose their appeal when they are done turn 2 ala eCaine assassination lists). To be sure I didn’t forget anything, I packed in the following way.

1) I printed list for each of the lists I’m using, and double checked them to make sure the points were correct and all the models I wanted were in there.
2) I filled my binder sheets with the cards from step 1.
3) I then placed the models on the matching cards (1 model from a unit is fine as long as you have verified the other models are available)
4) Next, I picked a bag appropriate to model count and pack models . (I went with the Battlefoam case, mainly because I had never traveled with it before)
5) Finally, I packed my dice, markers, cards, tape measurer, and tokens in the bag.

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Tags: Convention, Cygnar, Lock and Load, Master Track, Masters, Privateer Press, Strategy, Tournaments, Warcaster, Warmachine

Master’s Track Overview

Let’s start off by covering what Master’s Track is. It’s an article series designed at following a player attending a Masters or Hardcore tournament at, at least one Major Con during the tournament season. Each Series will begin with an article detailing faction and caster selection as well as initial list thoughts for the targeted events. Following faction and caster selection, there will be a spotlight on each caster selected to show the development of the lists used with that caster, successful strategies implemented, ideas gone wrong and general play notes. Finally, there will be the tournament reports for the events the Master’s track article was aimed at.

Masters Track Spotlight: Commander Stryker (Mr. Buff)
Stryker is my second go to caster this tournament season. If an event only calls for 2 lists, you better believe that Commander Stryker is the Peanut Butter to Darius’s Jelly. Since Stryker is (as far as I can tell) the second worst caster in Cygnar, he is my second most frequently used caster.

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Tags: Army building, Convention, Cygnar, Hardcore, Master Track, Masters, Privateer Press, Strategy, Stryker, Tournaments, Warcaster, Warmachine

Masters Track : Of Challenges and Lists

Master’s Track Overview

Master’s Track is an article series designed at following a player attending a Masters or Hardcore tournament in at least one Major Con during the tournament season. Each series begins with an article detailing faction and caster selection as well as initial list thoughts for the targeted events. Following faction and caster selection, there will be a spotlight on each caster selected to show the development of the lists used with that caster, successful strategies implemented, ideas gone wrong and general play notes. Finally, there will be the tournament reports for the events the Master.s track article was aimed at.

I was debating exactly what caster I should use in place of pNemo in my list selection when I saw that PG_Bulldog placed in the Adepticon Hardcore with Zerkova. This result is much like what I’m trying to accomplish with Darius, and it made me think of a challenge I could throw out there.

The Challenge:
I name a faction I will be playing, and Bulldog names a faction he will be playing. Bulldog will pick a model or unit from my faction that I must play at full FA. If the model does not have a FA, I must use at least 3 copies of it. Likewise, I will pick a model or unit from Bulldog.s faction that he must use at Max FA, or at least 3 copies of in case of FA:U.

I named Cygnar, Bulldog picked Sword Knights!

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Tags: Army building, Convention, Cygnar, Darius, Haley, Hardcore, Kara sloan, Kraye, Master Track, Masters, Nemo, Privateer Press, Strategy, Tournaments, Warcaster, Warmachine

Master’s Track Overview
Master’s Track is an article series designed at following a player attending a Masters or Hardcore tournament in at least one Major Con during the tournament season. Each series begins with an article detailing faction and caster selection as well as initial thoughts for a list at the targeted events. Following faction and caster selection, there will be a spotlight on each caster selected to show the development of the lists used with that caster, successful strategies implemented, ideas gone wrong and general play notes. Finally, there will be the tournament reports for the events the Master’s Track article was aimed at.

Masters Track Tournament Report: The Clash for Colorado
Event Details
The Clash for Colorado is a qualification based event which has the best players in the state showing up to compete for the Colorado Cup. I have found in the past that if I can place well in the Clash, I’ll do well at Masters, if I place poorly, I need to re-evaluate my lists and play test again. In 2009 I used the lessons learned at the Clash to place in the finals at the Gen Con Masters.

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Tags: Army building, Convention, Cygnar, Darius, Haley, Hardcore, Kara sloan, Kraye, Master Track, Masters, Nemo, Privateer Press, Strategy, Tournaments, Warcaster, Warmachine

Masters Track Spotlight, Darius (List Evolution)

Let’s start off with a reminder of what Master’s Track is – it’s an article series designed at following a player attending a Masters or Hardcore tournament at, at least one Major Con during the tournament season. Each Series will begin with an article detailing faction and caster selection as well as initial list thoughts for the targeted events. Following faction and caster selection, there will be a spotlight on each caster selected to show the development of the lists used with that caster, successful strategies implemented, ideas gone wrong and general play notes. Finally, there will be the tournament reports for the events the Master’s track article was aimed at.

This Master’s season I’m running Darius as my hardcore caster AND as one of the casters in my general purpose master’s lists. If all goes well and I manage to qualify for finals, I’ll be using Darius in the finals, though that will have to be at 35 points instead of 50 points. Why am I running Darius so much? Simple because he is declared the worst Cygnar caster on the Privateer forums, no other reason than that.

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Tags: Army building, Convention, Cygnar, Darius, Hardcore, Master Track, Masters, Privateer Press, Strategy, Tournaments, Warcaster, Warmachine

Masters Track Spotlight, Darius (The Man in the Can)

Let’s start off with a reminder of what Master’s Track is – it’s an article series designed at following a player attending a Masters or Hardcore tournament at, at least one Major Con during the tournament season. Each Series will begin with an article detailing faction and caster selection as well as initial list thoughts for the targeted events. Following faction and caster selection, there will be a spotlight on each caster selected to show the development of the lists used with that caster, successful strategies implemented, ideas gone wrong and general play notes. Finally, there will be the tournament reports for the events the Master’s track article was aimed at.

Masters Track Spotlight, Darius (The Man in the Can).

Let’s recap of what I’m using Darius for this Master’s season. I’m running him as my hardcore caster AND as one of the casters in my general purpose master’s lists. If all goes well and I manage to qualify for finals, I’ll be using Darius in the finals, though that will have to be at 35 points instead of 50 points. Why am I running Darius so much? Simple because he is declared the worst Cygnar caster on the Privateer forums, no other reason than that.

In this two part article, I’ll cover Darius, his spells, play style, the overall game plan and list evolution. In this first article, I’ll be covering Darius himself.

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Tags: Army building, Convention, Cygnar, Darius, Hardcore, Master Track, Masters, Privateer Press, Strategy, Tournaments, Warcaster, Warmachine

Master’s Track Overview

Let’s start off by covering what Master’s Track is. Master’s Track is an article series designed at following a player attending a Masters or Hardcore tournament before during and after competition at one or more Major Conventions during the tournament season. Each Series will begin with an author detailing faction and caster selection as well as initial list thoughts for the targeted events. Following faction and caster selection, there will be a spotlight on each caster selected to show the development of the lists used with that caster, successful strategies implemented, ideas gone wrong and general play notes. Finally, there will be the tournament reports for the events the Master’s track article was aimed at.

Master’s Track 1, Cygnar’s Irregulars, by Endgame
Having just completed my Gen Con 2010 Hardcore tournament with Trolls, I was looking for what I was going to run for the next year. Prior to my year of Trolls, I had run Cygnar at the end of Mark I for Masters 2009. Considering that I still had all the Cygnar models and liked painting them vastly more than I liked painting Trolls, I decided to move back to Cygnar for the 2011 Tournament season. This season I plan on attending Adepticon and Gen Con if all goes well, and perhaps Lock and Load if everything goes perfectly in my world. Having picked a faction, the next task was to pick casters to run, and in the end my decision was essentially made for me by the PP Cygnar forums. There is no end of discussion about how awesome Siege, eHaley, eStryker, and eCaine are, and as such I immediately struck all four casters from my list of options. I’m firmly of the belief that WM is balanced enough that if you play well, you can win with any caster against any competition. So I sought out the least popular Cygnar casters! The first was the Cygnar Forum’s (least) favorite caster – Darius. The number of threads calling him out as the worst Cygnar caster put him well above the rest of the competition, which made him my number one choice.  Since Darius was number one on the worst list, I decided that not only would I run him as one of my 4 casters for Masters, I’d also be running him as my caster for Hardcore.

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Tags: Army building, Convention, Cygnar, Hardcore, Master Track, Masters, Privateer Press, Strategy, Tournaments, Warcaster, Warmachine