The Quest for Mediocrity: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

     Greetings all, and welcome to the newest installment of the Quest for Mediocrity.  I’ve got some interesting (I hope) things to share with you today, so let’s get started!

THE GOOD

  Here’s a few pictures of my Paladins of the Order of the Wall.  I really like how they turned out.  They were my test models for the paint scheme for my Protectorate forces.  The red cloaks, black tabards and white armour make a really great contrast that I feel carries over well across all of the menite sculpts.

 

And lastly, Vilmon himself

THE BAD

     I’ve been doing a lot of work on the Reznik, Wrath of Ages model.  It’s quite an amazing sculpt.  To help anyone working on it and I’ve got a few pointers I hope some of you will find helpful.  Firstly, read this article and the PP Insider linked further down all the way through before starting.  Secondly, be sure to wash all parts in mild dish detergent and let it dry.  Once dry clean the sculpt of all mold lines and flash.  I highly recommend this post from the Privateer Press Insider to help you out.  I used the PP article when I assembled my epic Reznik, and it’s a good companion to this article.  Once clean, feel free to assemble the horses first as they’ll likely need some gap filling with sculpting putty.  Additionally, you can assemble the base of the chariot and yoke along with the wheels and incendiary spokes.  If you like, you can attach the chariot to the base at this point, or leave it separate for painting.  Finally assemble Reznik but leave the hand holding the chain attached to the chariot.   Once complete you should have something that looks like this.

SPECIAL NOTE: To make your life hella-easier later do not attach the horses until AFTER you’ve painted them.

I’m a model, you know what I mean?

Lastly, I recommend pinning the various metal components of the chariot (the walls & pennants), along with Reznik to the base of the chariot.  Do not attach them before painting but prepare the model to be pinned after painting.  Your paint job will look much better and getting the model ready ahead of time will help you to avoid any “frosting” that may occur from super glue.  Be sure to test fit all of the components to ensure that all of the pieces will fit snugly together once assembled.   In the component picture above, you can see that I’ve got pins sticking out of the various elements of Reznik’s chariot.  The chariot base itself should have a pattern of holes to accept the pins that looks something like this:

     Once you’ve made it this far, make sure the glue is dry and you’re ready to prime your huge based caster and get painting!  I’ll post updates related to my progress on eReznik in future articles.

THE UGLY

     So as some of you may or may not know Marc, recently became a Press Ganger (congrats!) and ran his first Steamroller tournament here in London, Ontario.  The Game Chamber played host to the event and it had a great turn out.  Marc did a great job his first time out and  I think that all of the players would agree that we’re looking forward to his next event.  The tournament was a 50 point 2014 Steamroller, 2 lists, Divide & Conquer.  There will be some video and posts related to it from other Combo Smite members I’m sure.  None of what I’ve just stated belongs under the “ugly” heading though.  What does was my performance.  I came in dead last, performed sucktacularly, failed to win, won at failing, etc.  Quite the fall from winning the last Steamroller at the same venue with nearly the same turnout.  The lists I used were the same from the previous Quest for Mediocrity post.  I have to say that I’ve never performed so poorly in a Warmahordes tournament – ever.  The issue wasn’t my opponents, my lists, or even my dice (well, there are a couple of exceptions to that).  It was me.  I didn’t play competitively and I lacked enough experience with the lists.  I’d only played three games previous to the tournament with the eReznik list and only one with the 3Kreoss list.  Obviously I wasn’t ready.  My opponents, great chaps all around, brought their “A game” and I failed to rise to the challenge.  However, the only way I feel that I can improve at the game is to learn from this mistake; so I’d like to share what I’ve learned with you in the hopes that you don’t have the same abysmal showing I did.

1. Practice your lists.  Make sure you’ve had at least 5-10 games against varied opponents with each list you plan on bringing to the event.  This ensures you’ve got a breadth of experience against varied situations, know which match-ups are the best/worst for each list and have had a chance to refine your lists to their best iteration.  As well, you’ll have a better handle on potential order of activation issues in your lists and subtle rules interactions.  More experience with your tournament lists benefits both you and your opponents.
2. Read your opponents cards.  Seriously, RTFC.  I wasted focus every turn upkeeping Lamentation versus a Convergence player using Syntherion.  If I’d bothered to read his card I’d have known that 5 of his 6 spells are upkeeps and he upkeeps for free.  Spending some free time outside of the tournament taking a look at the cards of different factions is something that could help as well (War Room is great for this).  I don’t mean that you should spend your spare time studying all of the available models in the Warmahordes lines but having a basic idea of what most of the popular choices in the various factions is helpful when it comes time for a tournament.
3. Learn from your mistakes.  Mistakes happen during games and good opponents will take advantage of them.  Whether they do or not, as players we should learn from the mistakes we make.  If you need to, make notes during the game to remind yourself.  It’ll pay off in the long run.  Take the time to talk with your opponent after the game to discuss what you both thought of the game, what each of you did well and what each of  you could improve on.  It’ll help both of you improve as players.

Hopefully my (epic) failure will prevent you from doing the same!  On a more positive side I did win a gift certificate that I can put towards some future purchases.  As well the tournament helped me to identify some particular weaknesses in my two lists.  I’ll go over the changes in detail in a future post, but for now I’ve more painting and practice to do!

As always, thanks for reading and comments and constructive criticism are welcome below.

Darrell