More Dystopia

Tonight marks my third face off against my noble and erstwhile opponent/house lord Guppyshark, and my second loss for the Prussians. His damnable British and those cursed Torpedos hole me terribly in the late game when my Concussion Charges are nerfed by vessel damage, but admittedly last game was all about his tactics, and this was all about mine.






I used my Bombers poorly from early on, although Hansel and Gretel did put out most of my late game damage, being too afraid of the Ack-Ack to get stuck in. With DR4 they do seem to have good survivability against small groups of Cruisers and even larger squadrons of Frigates, and Bombs steady damage rate is certainly nice.







I do continue to be underwhelmed by my Cruisers, however. With awesome names like SMS Mörder, Pirschjäger, and Blut (Which hopefully translate as Killer, Stalker, and Blood respectively), they never really do a lot. With only HP4 and such short range Broadsides and port/starboard Tesla they get whittled down easily and don't end up throwing enough AD to do more than scratch a Frigate or two. That assumes they make it at all, which so far only one or two have, so I need to do a better job screrning them with the little guys.







Speaking of, my Teutoburg Neun (as I call my Frigates, each with his own relevant name) are doing quite well. I continue to be jealous of the British Attacker class Frigate with it's side Torpedos and both fore and aft turrets, but the little Arminius class Prussians do have quite the engine power, and at AD6 in range band 1 they're consistendly putting out hurt on both the British Cruisers and even the Battleship.







Speaking of Battleships, the SMS Ludwig Van was left drifting this evening, her marines having mostly died in an assault on her British counterpart. I believe it was the last Cruiser on the water to launch the fateful counterattack, my own defensive Ack-Ack failing to take down even one as they swarmed aboard.




Back to the actual hobby side, I've prepped four random islands made from Morrowguard Base cutoffs with a little sand. I'll see if I can bung some paint on them soon, as they really helped the look of the board - and certainly helped me tactically. Torpedos were blocked, vessels forced to stay inside RB1 by nearby islands, and I learned a good lesson that kept the SMS-LV afloat for it's key rounds tonight. You might also note some vague basing attempts on her and the Cruisers - I'm using spare clear card to give the ships something to mark damage and remaining AP on, and while the overlap base issue has come up, it's already saved me a lot of token related headaches. On the drawing board is a set of pre-printed clear sheets with Warmachine style hull/AP boxes along the sides or at the rear, with defensive stats facing up fore, along with the obligatory vessel designation and flag.

One last thing I've found, like others, is the unfortunate lack of scenario and/or set table size. We've played once on the kitchen table bare (3" across), and twice now on blank Warmachine boards (4"x4"), but we're considering getting a 5"x5" board for the lounge room. This will give us not only a comfier place to play, and an xbox to have a war movie playing on for good effect, but also a nice birds eye view of the table. It might turn out to be a pain to reach over though, so some board science might need to be done.

Speaking of science, expect a custom scenario from yours truly to go up on the Spartan forums in the next week. Titled for my favourite line from SteamPunk ever, by Agatha acting as Lucrezia in Girl Genius (well worth the read folks) - you'll do it, "For The Science!".