2024 gaming is off to a great start after Sunday’s Warcry action. I had been planning this even with folks for a few months, trying to get adult’s schedules to align is quite the challenge afterall and Sunday, it happened. We met up over by Old Guard Games (Napoleon’s 2.0) and they had plenty of table space for a couple of Warcry boards. Two of the players had never played before so the first games were teaching games for the most part and I went through the rules quickly before getting stuck into battle. As I’ve played just under 20 times or so, I have the rules down pretty well overall, but there are always a few niggling edge cases to make rulings on in this type of game anyway. I get blamed a lot for overlooking rules when teaching but it’s ALWAYS some sort of edge case, yet I still get yelled at, but I digress.
The first game was the Untamed Beasts (the OG) vs the newish Black Talons mega hunters which felt like the Teen Titans going up against some Viltrumites. We had a “take out each other’s Daggers” mission and while I thought I would get blown to shit, it was a very close match where my Rocktusks took out the Black Talon elf really quick and nearly took out the crossbow gal as well before my dagger was beaten down by Naeve who is a ridiculous powerhouse (and looks like Anissa the Viltrumite as well…). Great game. I was running double Rock Prowler and had a good time with that list.
uunpainted Neave and the leader of the Untamed Beasts duking it out
Meanwhile the Royal Beastflayers and Rotmire Creed duked it out on a second board. I just got one snap of this one and didn’t get much info except they had some fun and also had nearly the same twist and the same mission as we did.
The third game was a 4 player Tower capture scenario where I busted out my Wildecorps Hunters. Even with 800 points, I was able to field a good force and 4 dogs! This was my first time playing them and strategically I was going to use the dogs to hold down the enemies and then knock the shit out of anyone on the tower with the Arbalester. I had some good rolls there to pop off some enemies but my dogs could not handle the melee meatgrinder near the tower well enough to get the (death grip) grabs. My sweepers that were going to come in and take the tower were wiped out by the boss man of the Royal Beastflayers. In the end, the Beastflayers and the Rotmire Creed decimated each other and the Black Talons tried some of their tricks to teleport to the top of the tower which, despite the fact that Neave Blacktalon was taken out of the game by a TRIPLE 6 ROLL from the Rotmires, one of their meaties climbed to the top of the tower and won them the game. They are really tough to take out and Neave’s move 7 makes them challenging to deal with on missions where the rest get outmaneuvered by chaffffffff.
Painting
I painted pretty furiously in the last week to get my last 6 models done for the Untamed Beasts. This included a few models that I really didn’t need (2 extra plainsrunners) that I had put together to make a silly mostly plainsrunners list at one point. I think the Untamed Beasts have a lot of solid options but my superstars are the Rocktusk prowlers, which I procrastinated a long time to paint as I’m traditionally not good at horses/animals. When I finally did, they turned out great except that when I varnished them they got frosted IN WINTER. I have no idea at first how this happened except that my brush might have been too wet with water to start the process, and when I mixed the batch up of varnish to paint on, the water got trapped in the recesses. Later I realized that I had used Lamia Medium rather than Contrast Medium by mistake, so that frosting was the medium and NOT trapped water. I tried olive oil and gloss coating them again, and neither worked, so I had to reshade various areas and it worked out OK, not perfect, but what is?
All in all, a great day of Warcry, one of GW’s best games and it made the work of putting together and painting all that terrain worth while. Now that I’ve finished my Beasts, it’s time to get back to the terrain painting… ugh.