Gencon Follow-up: My First Time in the Iron Arena!

If you were following a bit of my run up to Gencon posts, you might have noticed that within the last year I've really gotten back into Warmachine with my brother. Luckily for me, I had pretty much hung on to almost all of my minis from the Mark I version of the rules, including Cygnar, Trollbloods, and Mercs (mostly dwarves). Of course that didn't stop me from picking up a small force of Retribution (elves) as well, but that's more of a digression at this point.

We decided that we were going to try to play in the Iron Arena this year at Gencon. We had spent the last year playing between a half and full dozen games against each other trying to brush up on the rules, and we were having a TON of fun with it. Lots and lots.

Let me go over the format real quick, but Iron Arena is a unique way to play the game. Basically you purchase a ticket for the entire day (or days - 2 in our case). You report to the Privateer Press area and register yourself and what state/country your from. This part is important and you'll see in a bit why.

Then you play pick up games pretty much the whole day with other Iron Arena contenders! You can play any faction, any size game, any number of players, whatever your heart's desire.

For each game you play, for every hour, you can report the results, and you end up gaining skulls. You can earn skulls for playing 50 point games (the tournament standard), a fully-painted army, for playing on a scenario table, for playing someone from a different state or country from you, for playing an army composed of forces specifically designed for your warcaster/warlock (known as a "tier list" which basically grants special rules for your army on the condition that you limit the units you can build your army with), and several more things.

You can then spend your skulls on items like art prints, dice, measuring templates, and in the most skull-intensive items, "extreme" alternate sculpts of big models. It's a pretty great selection.

So the strategy here is two-fold. Obviously you want to play a fun list because all these games are for-fun. The other half though is to figure out how to maximize your skull income. That leads into the prep work for the con!

Preparing for War! Basic Miniature Basing.

Hey fellow hopeless readers! Long-time no see. I realized I've been doing a lot of gaming stuff and not talking about it, which is of course a waste of perfectly good blogging material.

I haven't been doing nearly as much role playing in recent times simply because I've been away from my group since moving and don't have a bunch of possibilities locally. That being said, I've rerouted my gaming fuel into design and have been working on a few different games for a while. Maybe one day I'll finish one. Maybe.

In other news, I've gotten back into Warmachine big time, which was a game that I basically grew into a gamer with when I was younger. I've always loved the lore of the game and thought it would be great to play a Role Playing game in. Recently I ran the intro adventure from the Iron Kingdoms Unleashed Adventure Kit. I highly recommend it as everyone had a good time regardless of their familiarity with the setting.

I've also always wanted to be a good player. I've been doing a lot of research and following on general strategies nowadays. I'm not good, but I'm learning, and having a lot of fun doing it.

One thing I've always been terrible at and generally assumed I just had no skills in was painting miniatures. Lately the Hopeless Wife has given me some tips and tricks, and I've really taken to painting. Like to the point where I actually have some pieces I'm proud of and paint a bit each day. It's actually quite addicting.

One of my favorite parts of painting miniatures is getting the bases complete at the end. Each time I've done it it feels like it really ties the thing together. In Warmachine, every model generally has a front and back arc, so as you see the photos below you'll notice the bases are all colored.

I thought it might be useful for those of you who want to get into this part of the hobby to see just how crazy easy it is to do a simple, good-looking (in my opinion) base.

Step 1: Getting your materials together.

I go for a basic gravel/grass kind of terrain for my bases at the moment, and for that, you don't need much in the ways of materials.

Here's what you need:

• Mod Podge - basically Elmer's glue that you can pour out, available anywhere hobby stuff is.
• A Small Paper Plate - or something you don't mind glue drying on. You're going to pour a little bit of the Mod Podge onto this as your pallet, so to speak. 
• A wide bowl - you're going to pour your basing material in there, so it helps to have enough room to maneuver the miniature.
• An old paint brush - one you can have some control with but don't mind ruining.
• Basing Material - for my stuff, I use Woodland Scenics Blended Turf (the green stuff) and Medium Ballast (the brown stuff) because I got it cheap from the Gencon Auction store. I believe this is actually a model train brand, so it shouldn't be too hard to find this stuff or something similar. There are tons of options out there for this ingredient. 

You'll of course need miniatures, which I have a picture of the four I did this morning at the top of this post! Pour a puddle of Hod Podge onto the plate, and you're ready for step 2!

Gencon 2014 Privateer Press Booth

So in my last post I talked a bit bout how Warmachine is synonymous for Gencon with me, and that it's been the focus of more cons than not in my life. I'm not a competitive player and can't see myself ever getting into that mindset, but I have a really great time reading the fiction, thinking about painting different color schemes, and playing casual games with my brother.

As always, the Privateer Press booth at Gencon is one of the busiest every year with a wave of pre-release items available for purchase. The lines are always crazy as people clamor to get the hot new figures, and lucky for us, this was a Hordes year of releases. We'll probably eventually wander back into playing some Hordes, at least me with a good 35 points+ of Trollbloods from years back, but for now we're sticking with Warmachine.

Below you can find some of the models that were on displays at Privateer's booth, both studio models and some models for the P3 painting competition.

Gencon Means War(machine)!

Wow has it been a while since I posted anything to The Hopeless Gamer, and for that I'm sorry. I decided enough was enough, and in anticipation of going to Gencon next week, it was time to get back into things.

I notoriously take a long time to get excited for Gencon every year. This will by my 14th Gencon in a row/ever, and finally, just a few days before setting off from Iowa to drive to Indy, the excitement is building up in my quite rapidly.

A big part of that is that my brother emailed me out of the blue the other day asking if I was interested in getting back into Warmachine for a bit. My first reaction was "absolutely" followed a few hours later, after flipping the house upside down to see what I still had of my Cygnar, Trollblood, and mercenary forces after three moves and years of absence from the game, was "hell yes!"

Since then, just last week, I have been in a whirlwind of getting myself acquainted with the Mark II rules, which was actually the last book I bought for the game, conveniently. I went to Privateer's site and ordered a bunch of updated character cards, and have been putting together some army lists.

My brother sold off his Protectorate and random Hordes stuff a few years ago, so he's diving back in fresh, but this time with Khador, and I'm absolutely stoked. I still have my templates, dice, focus markers, measuring tape, the whole deal, even down to my old army transports bag.

And all this is going to be packed up for Gencon, ironically, not to play in any official capacity, but just to get some gaming in with my brother. Sure we see each other several times of the year and play games, only living two hours apart, but there's just something special about Gencon for getting together with people and playing some good games.

For the first seven or eight Gencons I attended, it was synonymous with Warmachine and Privateer Press. I've been a loyal Cygnar player (when I was a player at all) the whole time, and I can't be more excited to get back into the game.

All this coming week I hope to be bringing you posts and lots of pictures from the convention, so be sure to check back from time to time. It's good to be blogging again!