It's Been a While... Time the Change Gears

Hey all.  It has been a while.  I have neglected the blog mostly because I did not know what to write about.  I have been wholly into Infinity and really have only been playing one other game, Aristeia. I have finally figured out what I am going to write about.  I am going to write about event and tournament organization mostly.  I teach two classes at Adepticon on the subject along with Neil and George. So I figure since I am limited on time in the class I can expand on the misc subjects we talk about in depth.

I will also be posting battle reports from the Kurage Crisis Infinity global campaign while it is going on.  look for posts on Sundays from here on out.  It won't be every Sunday, but I am shooting for twice a month.  Once I figure out the video making program the YouTube channel will finally be up and running as well.

So forgive the hiatus again.

Look for a post Sunday

Until then...

Remember Dramos! and as always

FOR THE HYPERPOWER!!!

Origins 2016: After Report (Warning Pic Heavy!)

Greetings all! Telarion and I survived Origins.  We are back home and getting unpacked.  I have to say I spent way to much in the vendor hall this year.  I picked up a bunch of Infinity stuff and picked up some Guildball as well.  I had a demo and it was very fun.  Look for some future articles on Guildball as I play and explore the game with the Battle Creek and K-Zoo crews.  I also got tempted back into Warmachine.  The deal they had for the MK3 starter boxes was nice and I could not resist.

The events we ran at the convention also did very well.  We had well over 30 people participate in the Learn to Play Firestorm Armada classes.  The tournament turnout for the Columbus Incident and the Columbus Brawl I.T.S were not great, but both events fired.

I want to congratulate our winners and thank all the participants.  Blood in the sun being on the same weekend as Origins was a big factor me thinks.  I am really hoping that the events do not overlap next year so I can attend both and hopefully get some more players.  Lets look at our winners!

Operation Space Bunnies: ITS Tournament Report!

Greetings all! SeerK here once again.  This time I am here to talk about the I.T.S tournament I played in this past weekend.  I made my way over to the GR War Room in Grand Rapids for Operation Space Bunnies this past weekend.  The tournament was put on by Nate Schafer and Ryan Vogt.  Ryan could not be present sadly, but for good reasons.  He is now a proud papa of a baby girl.  Congrats from the whole team sir!

The tournament was a 300 point ITS with 12 point Spec Ops.  The missions were Safe Zone, Decapitation and everybodies favorite Biotechvore.  I brought a Vanilla PanOceania list that I have to admit was less than optimal.  The tournament had a painting requirement and I did not have a lot of time to paint anything due to the new job.  I had to use what I had painted and do a bare minimum 3 color treatment to 4 of my units.

This was the first tournament I have played in since the release of Human Sphere N3.  The Infinity community is developing here and we have a mix of seasoned veterans playing since N2 and new players.  I myself have been playing since N3 came out.  There were 8 people participating and a few onlookers coming into the gaming area to see what was going on. Lets take a look at the lists I was running first off.

Onward to Origins! FSA and Infinity!

Greetings all!  SeerK here.  Now that Adepticon 2016 is in the books, I am moving on to my next project.  I speak of course about Origins Game fair in Columbus Ohio.  Origins takes place June 15th through the 19th.  Badges are on sale now.  I generally like more lead time on events, but GAMA does not move as fast as our friends at Adepticon and The Michigan GT.  This is due in part to the size of the convention.

Update From The Front! Adepticon and More!

SeerK Here.  We ll its been quite a whirlwind of activity here.  Thanksgiving and Adepticon registration all in one week.  When the smoke cleared from Monday nights Adepticon pre registration we were happy to see that the Schaumberg Prime Offensive sold out in under 4 hours.  That is pretty impressive and we really appreciate all the support.  Players can look forward to a fun and professional event.

On the Subject of the tournament, we encourage people interested in playing to still sign up and get on the wait list.  We are currently working with the Adepticon staff to get more room.  If and when we get more space, being on the wait list gets you in.  It also gets you in if anybody cant make it or cancels their registration.  So cue up and be prepared to throw down.  Event rules will be posted very soon, both on the Adepticon website and here at the blog.  We also have an Event page up over on facebook.  The link to it and our Facebook page is in the side bar on the right hand side of this page.

The Battle At Omicron Theta Results!

SeerK here.  This past weekend The Waygate Staff invaded UCON in Ann Arbor Michigan.  The 2nd Annual Storm Zone Brawl: The Battle At Omicron Theta went down on Saturday the 15th.  We had 10 participants fighting for the great prizes provided by Spartan Games and Evolution Games of Lansing Michigan.  When the guns were finally powered down and the fleets scarred and battered the fate of Omicron Theta was decided.  Victory went to the Zenian League.  Omicron Theta was taken.

The Battles were brutal and we had a pretty decent mix of Kurak Alliance and Zenian League member fleets.  After 4 rounds of brutal combat we had a clear victor.  In fact our winner went undefeated and ended the tournament 47 points ahead of our 2nd place winner.  Just three points shy of a perfect score.  On that note lets take a look at our winners.

1st place  Dave Wangen  Works Raptor / OSO Corsairs

2nd Place  Matt Johnson  Sorylians / Veydreth

3rd Place Steve Krohn  Hawker Industries

Congratulations to our winners and our Battle Station Drawing Winners John Miles and Mike Aguilera.  UCON was fun this year.  The missions seemed to be very well received and our players got a taste of what we will be running at Adepticon in March.  Now that Omicron Theta has fallen the Zenian League Fleets will now press to Schaumberg Prime.

Adepticon has announced Pre Registration will begin on November 24th, which is a Monday, at 8 p.m. central time.  They have the web cart up now so you can preview events and plan your trip.  I encourage everybody to pre register as soon as possible as we expect the event to fill up quick and it is currently limited to 20 spots.  Spartan Games is supporting the event as well as the good folks at Adepticon.  So stay tuned for what we have in store for you!

Thats all for now, But I will leave you with some pictures of the event.

Works Raptor Making some new "Friends"

Hawker Battlship dealing with a Kedorian Battleship

An epic 20 inch battle shunt move

The Sorylians holding the line

Steve enjoying dinner after a bad loss

Until next time crush the Alliance and as always

REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!

Battle For Omicron Theta Missions!

Hi all SeerK here.  We are just over a week away from the 2nd annual Storm Zone Brawl: The Battle At Omicron Theta.  UCON pre registration has closed, but you can still register for the convention with the onsite prices in effect.

After much playtesting and formatting we have for you a mission pack.  The link HERE will open the document in Google drive so you can play through the missions and know what you are in for.  We went with a modified kind of Tiered mission.  You play as normal gaining and loosing battle log.  There are three objectives which are worth additional battle log. These are added at the end of the game if you complete the objective.  A winner is determined from here.

This is the format we will be doing at Adepticon.  Speaking of Adpeticon, if you listen to the Adepticon Talks podcast myself, Spellduckwrong and Dreadbeard will be on an upcoming episode talking about the Adepticon Events we have planned.


We are also delving into the realm of Pod Casting.  The group of us will be throwing some knowledge your way with the guys over at Firebase Delta in the next couple of episodes so head on over and check it our.  Phil, Robert and Bryan are a good bunch of guys and have a great podcast for all of your Firestorm Universe needs.


Well thats all for now.  Its proving to be a busy week.  Stay tuned for more stories and tactical articles.


Until next time crush the Alliance and as always


REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!!

Firestorm Armada Tournament Preparations

Dreadbeard, SeerK, and I have been working diligently on both the scenarios and tournament scoring system that will be utilized for U-Con and then further refined for use at our Firestorm Armada event at Adepticon 2015. I still love saying that.

We have hammered out four rounds worth of tactical material, drafted the logic and structure for the scoring, and have been whittling down more extraneous elements of the tournament day. Since we believe in community, when we have a fully loaded product, we will be submitting our methods and materials for broader input from the fine Admirals out in the far reaches of the Internet.

So far, some of the main sticking points have been how do we deal with players that would be accused of the dreaded "slow-play". For anyone that doesn't know, slow-play is traditionally used within the context of a timed, competitve event and refers to a player that is willfully playing slowly so as to gain advantage from this tactic. The advantage gained varies widely, but we see it across game systems, so there is indeed a temptation to do so. Unlike outright cheating, or using loaded dice, it is incredibly hard to pin an accusation of slow-play on a player. Our council has not come to a final solution for this problem at this time.

Also, it should be noted that some players are just slow players, either by nature or because they lack the table experience to have everthing memorized or lack the tournament experience to formulate moves quickly and in advance in order to get as far into a game as possible during a timed event.

This is just a quick update for anyone drifting by. Also, if anyone has any actual experience with events that handled slow-play in an original fashion, I would love to hear it. 

Remember Dramos.

The Battle At Cyrax Alpha Results!

Hi again SeerK here.  Well we had a small turn out yesterday for the Firestorm Armada tournament dubbed "The Battle At Cyrax Alpha".  Evolution Games once again played host to the tournament.  We had 8 Participants with yours truly doing my duty as a Vanguard and running the show.

We had an excellent mix of both Zenian League and Kurak Alliance fleets.  After the guns were silenced the Sorylians emerged as the victors.  SO here are our winners.


1st place  Matt Johnson playing Sorylians

2nd place Dave Wangen playing Directorate/OSO

3rd place  Aaron Ferrigan playing Veydreth.

Our Battle Station Raffle Winner was Tony Alfonso.  Congrats to all the winners!  Our next event will be on November 15th at UCON.  I hope to see you all there.  Especially since we have three Battle Stations to give away!

I thought I would post a few pictures of the event so enjoy!

Our Winning Fleet ready to hunt

Our Winner Matt aka the King Lizard

Until Next time Crush the Alliance and as always

REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!

Event Info: Come One, Come All!

Hi all! SeerK here. I just wanted to touch base about all the events we have going on over the next few months. We have some local tournaments and convention events that I wanted to lay down some more information about.

First off on October 11^th we have The Battle At Cyrax Prime Firestorm Armada tournament on October 11^th at Evolution Games in Lansing. I have a facebook Event page set up for it but I will repeat some of the information here. Registration will start at 10 A.M. And dice will roll around 11:00. The entry fee will be $10.00. All the entry fees are going towards Prize Support. This is a 900 point tournament and you are allowed 2 lists. The same core fleet must be used for both lists. No battle stations are allowed. We will play 3 rounds. First place will receive a Battle Station as well as the normal prize support. I want to thank Spartan Games for donating a clutch of Battle stations for this tournament and for our next two events. Evolution games is located at 6323 Saginaw hwy in Lansing Michigan.  Here is a link to their Facebook Page.

.

Marriott Ann Arbor Ypsilanti at Eagle Crest1275 South Huron Street, Ypsilanti Township, MI
(734) 487-0600

Our Next event is at Ucon gamesconvention which is November 14^th-16^th. Our Tournament will be on Saturday November 15^th with a start time tentatively of 10 A.M. The entry fee should be right around $16.00. This includes a day pass to the convention. Pre registration starts at the end of September. We have 20 spots available. First, second and third place will receive a battle station. We have other prizes as well courtesy of Spartan Games and Evolution Games of Lansing Michigan. These include Patrol fleets and Dreadnought groups. This tournament will be 4 rounds so it will go all day. You can still reserve a hotel room at the convention site, which is the gorgeous Marriott on Eaglecrest in Ann Arbor.   I will be running demos of Firestorm Armada for those not familiar with it and I will have Planetfall there as well to Demo and play. SO make it a weekend trip. There is lots of games to play and lots of pick up games of Firestorm and Planetfall to have before and after the tournament.

As I announced before we will also be running demos of Firestorm Armada and Planetfall at Adepticon 2015 as well and bringing you the first annual "Schaumberg Prime Offensive" Firestorm Armada Tournament. The details are still being developed, but the tournament format will be almost identical to the one we run at UCON. We will also have Battle Stations, Trophy Plaques, Patrol Fleets, Dreadnought Groups and More for prizes. Stay tuned to the Adepticon website for registration information. I would get your Hotel now. It is a new and bigger venue, but who knows how long they will have rooms available.

Well that is all for now. I just wanted to keep you all posted and make sure our first big events are good ones. Spread the word and sign up!

Until then crush the alliance and as always.......

REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!

The Battle At Cyrax Prime, UCON and Adepticon Oh MY!

Well the fall is upon us. The summer is drawing to a close. You know what that means? Its time for weekend tournaments and war game conventions! Summer is kind of a drag and outright killer of regular game nights. Yeah you still have people showing up and playing, but it seems like, at least in Michigan, once the fall hits more people end up showing up for regular nights and events.

With that in mind, and the Fact Spellduckwrong and I are now both Spartan Vanguards, we are kicking the season off with some events. In fact we have two big events that we are very excited about.

PG_Hick of our team will be running a Warmachine Weekend qualifier at the Michigan GT which is October 11^th and 12^th in Lansing’s south side at the best western. You can get information at the Michigan GT website. For those of you not into War Machine or 40k, I will be hosting a Firestorm Armada tournament on October 11^th.

The tournament will be at Evolution games on Saturday October 11^th. It is a 900 point 3 round tournament. You are allowed 2 lists. You must choose one base fleet and both lists must use that fleet as its base. For example, if you choose to run Dindrenzi both lists must use Dindrezi to satisfy the minimum tier requirements. Battle Stations will not be allowed. Registration will start at 10 A.M. and dice will roll a little after 11 A.M. The entry fee will be $10.00 and all entry will go towards prizes in the form of store credit. Evolution games is fully stocked with Firestorm products.

The big announcements are the two conventions we will be running tournaments and game demos at. Once again we will be returning to UCON at the Marriott on Eaglecrest in Ann Arbor. We will be bringing you the 2^nd annual Storm Zone Brawl: The Battle At Omicron Theta. Saturday November 15^th we will be throwing down with a 900 point 4 round tournament. I am encouraging all players to bring painted fleets as it will be a requirement for our other big convention event. You can pre register for the Storm Zone Brawl when registration for the convention goes live. You can get hotel and registration information at the Ucon Website. We will be posting more information as we get it and missions in the coming weeks. We have some cool prizes being cooked up for you and we once again Prize support will be provided by Spartan Games and Evolution Games of Lansing and The Waygate.

Finally we have a big surprise for you. We will be bringing you The “Schaumberg Prime Offensive” Firestorm Armada Tournament at Adpeticon! Thats right, we are at the big show in 2015. Game demos and the Tournament will be taking place at Adepticon this year in its new venue the Schaumberg Renaissance convention center. We are just in the beginning stages, but stay tuned for updates and posts about our road to Adepticon. The format will be finalized after UCON. I am very excited about this event. Dreadbeard, Spellduckwrong and myself are working hard to bring you the player the best experience we can. Hotel information and Registration information is at the Adepticon Website. I believe Registration opens in October. Stay tuned to the Adepticon site for the registration dates and times. We expect the Tournament to fill up quickly.

Well thats all for now. I wanted to start the fall off with some exciting news. As a note I am hoping the rumors of Planetfall being released in October are true. If that is the case Demonstrations will be run at both conventions at the minimum. Stay tuned.

Until next time crush the Alliance and as always....

REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!!!!

The Clash At Epsilon Indy: Sunday Tournament Results

This past Sunday at Evolution games The Clash At Epsilon Indy went down.  Spellduckwrong once again was our T.O. and Uber Vanguard. We had 10 players this time around and again we had a decent mix of Kurak Alliance and Zenian League fleets. If you are curious as to how the battle log went and any trends popping up I am pretty sure Spellduckwrong has the full statistical work up over at the Spartan Games Community, or will be putting it up soon if he has not posted it.  I am sure you are a bit curious as to who our top finishers are though.

So this time around the winners were....

1st. Dave Wangen aka "SMD_Vogrin", Directorate
2nd.  Austin  Proux aka "Demomaster", Sorylians
3rd Josh Linde aka "SeerK" , Rense System Navy

That is right I placed this time round.  Booya!  I played Demomaster in round three and it was rough.  We had hold the Waygate for a mission and he had almost maxed out his tier three choices.  I had so many small ships to deal with it was borderline ridiculous.  I ran two different lists, as is customary when tournaments take place in this particular area.  I ran the same list in round one and round three, both times against Sorylians.  I am still confused with why many on the interwebs hate on the Sorylians.  They are a solid faction with a lot of variety and killing power.  In fact, the frigates have earned my number 2 spot in most hated ship in the Kurak Alliance.  Right behind the Hawker light cruiser....I mean Frigate.

Those of you curious about what I ran , here you go.  The tournament, and me thinks our future ones, was 900 points.  you can bring two lists.  Both lists must use the same primary Fleet.  I, of course, ran RSN.

List 1

Spectre Battleship x1
-1 turn
Special Forces
+2AP


Cerberus Heavy Cruisers x3

Cerberus Heavy Cruisers x3

Bulwark Frigates x3

Bulwark Frigates x3

List 2

Banshee Dreadnought x1
-1 turn
+1 shield
Special Forces

Spook Cruisers x3

Spook Cruisers x3

Bulwark Frigates x3

Bulwark Frigates x3


I was trying to go for a balance between number of activation's and fire power.  This can prove difficult for RSN fleets.  Many Kurak Factions outnumber and our gun you .  The real weak points in both lists were the three ship squadrons of Bulwarks.  In groups of three they loose effectiveness for some reason.  I think I may do two minimal squadrons and use the tac card that allows you to combine like ships to make one uni then have a squadron of Works Raptor corvettes to add some scout to the list.

I am finding it is very handy to have scout to redeploy units.  You can use a valuable unit to bait your opponent into bringing his big guns into whatever location you want basically.  The real trick is not to make it to obvious that is what you are doing.

I am also finding it very annoying that Sorylian frigate squadrons can contain 5 frigates and have pack hunter as an option.  This seems a little unnecessary to me.  The dice pool is pretty big and not duplicated by any small ships in the Zenian League that I am aware of.  Makes the Frigate squadrons very deadly to cruiser sized vessels, in fact it makes them kind of deadly to larger vessels as well.

The one game I used the list two in was actually against another RSN player.  It was very informative match though.  I think from now on my spooks will be traveling in packs of 6.  Operating in concert, my two squadrons manged to inflict quite a bit of damage despite my lackluster rolls in the first two turns with the torpedoes.  I hammered a squadron of Cerberus Cruisers with the torpedoes until I reached beam range and then dropped the cloaks and went full bore.  One heavy did manage to survive until the bitter end though.  I always for get what its like to be on the receiving end of a Cerberus squadron.  Spooks on their own are not bad but lack the one two punch when you have just one squadron.  The two squadrons ganging up on one target really was effective, especially once I reached beam range.

I have to say I am never running my big ships without escorts of some kind ever again.  It really never occurred to me how much fire they actually draw.  The Siren is also pretty robust for an escort so that helps.  My big ships took a fair bit of fire being all by themselves.

I am still working with good ways of taking down point defense to really make my torpedo attacks count.  Since there is a lot of cloaking shield equipped ships out there.  I have not been using a lot of SRS craft for the same reason, at least when on the attack.  That will be the experiment for the coming weeks until the next tournament.  Well that does it for my current thoughts post tournament

Next time I will be continuing with the Ships Of The Rense.  The Argus is up as our first Tier 1 vessel.  I also plan on doing an unboxing of Rivet Wars.  Evolution games gave me their demo copy to open up and read up on so Farseer Re-rolls and I can give the game a whirl.  More on that next week.


Until then crush the alliance and as always



REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!!!!!

The End of Days: Aftermath

The guns have gone silent and the dust has cleared. The “End of Days” Tournament is over. All in all “Team Ramrod” did pretty good. We won our first two games. Game one saw us against a combined Eldar and Tau force being backed up by a Daemon Prince and a Space Marine Predator. The Tau were slain to the man With Eldrad making short work of the Daemon prince. The veterans of Dave's Imperial Guard force dealt with the Crisis suits and Commander while at the same time laying waste to the Eldar hanging back with his manticore. We held one objective and so did they, but we got the win from kill points.

Game two Saw us face down Captain Obvious and our resident Daemon player Jake. This game was a close one and saw one of the biggest and bloodiest combats I have ever been in. Now the Rules for the Tournament state that you can take one unit form a different HQ that cannot be from the main army your partner is fielding. I was using Sanguinary Priests with both my Seer Council and Howling Banshees. Dave was using one of my Ravagers with his 2 veteran Squads, 2 Psyker Battle squads, scout sentinels and manticore. Game two saw us meeting up against Failbaddon The Failspoiler with Brother Corbulo, The Emperors Champion and 10 Black Templar Initiates in a land raider crusader. We also had to contend with 12 Blood Crushers, a Blood Thirster and a unit of Pink Horrors. Eldrad and his coterie of Warlocks Along with the Banshees met with The Failspoiler and his big unit of Hurt. They came out with no casualties. All 10 initiates and Failbaddon died with the Emperors Champion taking a wound. The Blood Crusher Unit that was close, and down to 4, charged in and killed 9 banshees. Eldrad and his boys stood firm and killed one crusher. The combat ended the next turn with Eldrad and his warlocks finishing off the Blood Crushers. They then dealt with the Land raider which had been immobilized. The Guard were doing their best to defend our objective, this was a capture and control mission. The second Blood Crusher unit was reduced to two from the shooting onslaught. The Horrors eluded death on several occasions thanks to Dave's dice rebelling. The blood thirster was reduced to 1 wound though thanks to sentinel auto cannon fire and the dizzy's on the Ravager. The sentinels held the Blood Crushers in Combat, but sadly when the Blood Thirster added his attacks to the melee they were destroyed. The game was close as our objective was contested and they did not claim theirs. We tied on kill points, but thanks to Eldrad's Head Hunting of HQ's we won the game.

Game three did not go well. We had, shall we say, Deployment issues. I held Eldrad in Reserve when I should have put him on the table. The opposing force had just about every cheesy trick in the book on their side. Duel Lash Princes, Thunder Wolf Cavalry, Thousand sons and a blood thirster. We stalled and they got first turn. The guard was valiant but died to the man. They took a major toll though as they took down all that came against them and killed them. The Wolf Lord and one Thunder wolf cav guy were all that was left. When Eldrad decided to join the mix around turn three he and the boys killed both lash princes and all the Thousand sons including their Rhino. If I would have put him on the table turn one he would have been able to kill the obliterators and the Broadside suits on that side of the table. This team won the tournament. We ranked high though and walked away with some store credit at good old Evolution Games.

This was fun I want to thank Old School Terminator of Dark Future Games for running a very fun and smooth tournament.  I also want to thank my partner Dave and His Imperial Guardsman.  They did the Guard proud. Congrats to the winners. The Judge took home the Castellion Award for the most objectives taken. The Kill point winner Alex took home a nice plaque with a real Marine k-bar, a cool knife, on it. The Judge got a nice big box of MRE's. Austin took home the Head Hunter Award for most HQ kills.

Me thinks this means that I will be hosting a tournament in the next year. I am thinking a 2250 point Gladiator Tournament. Perhaps on the Year anniversary of the blog. Maybe sooner.

Until then

Blood Runs, Anger Rises, Death Wakes, War Calls!!!!!