Not Just Tactics
Not Just Tactics is a Warmachine podcast featuring fresh perspectives on the game and its community. This will be done through product review, game play mechanics, tactics, lore, and various other content.
Not Just Tactics
Big News and Building A Warmachine Community
Enjoy A 20% discount on all purchase from:
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A thriving miniatures community doesn’t appear out of thin air instead it’s built by people who share tools, swap armies, teach kids, and keep the table welcoming. That’s the heartbeat of this conversation, where we announce a new partnership with Torsten & Harvester, share listener discount codes, and unpack how a small Indiana group turned casual game nights into a supportive Warmachine hub. We dive into favorite factions and talk about what Kithguard’s trapdoors and ambush rules could mean for balance, counterplay, and the health of your local meta.
If you love the hobby side, you’ll find plenty here: FDM and resin printers, speed paints with layered highlights, and a standout kitbash that turns a Gravedigger field gun into a mobile platform without breaking rules. We explore terrain that elevates strategy with forests and rough ground as a base, then thematic features like trenches, moving trains, and hazards that force smarter movement. We also share practical guardrails: avoid complex elevation until rules comfort is high, run Steamroller scenarios casually to learn scoring, and keep table state clear for newer players.
Rules talk matters too. Removing the spell rack brings back distinctive casters and better list diversity, while January’s update might curb auto-picks and give underplayed options room to breathe. Most of all, we celebrate family-friendly play with kids leveling up from 30 to 50 points, painting their warjacks, and discovering the joy of a good plan executed well. Grab the codes, share a photo of your latest game, and tell us how your group is growing. If this episode helped, follow, share with a friend, and leave a quick review so more players can find the table.
Enjoy A 10% discount on all purchases from:
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Music made by Y. Will
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Email us at: NotJustTactics@gmail.com
Hey there listeners, and JT here, bringing you fresh perspectives on all things war machine and building the community we surround ourselves with. Remember, we're not just tactics. So today I have Jim PyroMonkey and Torsten here joining me on this episode. What's going on, Jim? Hey, Tony.
SPEAKER_02:Not much over here.
SPEAKER_03:Alright. Torsten, how are you, sir? I'm doing pretty good. Torsten, since I have a little bit of background knowledge here, what is uh something you got going on in the background that I should say gonna be pulled into the foreground? So I alluded to printing stuff.
SPEAKER_02:So I over the last few years I've turned that into a business that I do mostly on the side right now. Uh but I'm looking to make it full-time. And in that business it kind of grew to other partnerships that uh throughout the game industry. And the one that I'm most excited for is the partnership that I have with Steamforged as a stockist or war store, I I guess that they're calling them.
SPEAKER_03:So you're actively selling Steam Forged models, so war machine models? Primarily war machine.
SPEAKER_02:Uh epic encounters and stuff, but war machine is is the one that I specifically have a war store for and carry product regularly on hand.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. I know I have a ton of epic encounter stuff. As a DD enthusiast, I have a lot of their stuff, and I didn't even realize that it was their stuff until I started looking into who Steamforge was. I was like, oh my gosh, this is their stuff. This is awesome. It got me really excited because I actually bought all of like a whole bunch of their encounters, and I just got it for the models. I didn't even realize for a little bit that it had all the stories and everything else in it, and I was like, oh, cool. This could be useful. So what is your store called?
SPEAKER_02:It is Torsten and Harvester. It's the namesake from me and my wife. As my name is, as you said earlier, is Dustin, and its origins come from the Norse is Torsten. And hers means Harvester, so we just kind of we run it together. But we mostly operate it online uh at Torstenharvester.com. And we do have, if you're local to Central Indiana, we do have a couple partnership stores that we have at as pickup location.
SPEAKER_03:Awesome. Well, I'll definitely have that put into the show notes. And in some previous episodes, I had mentioned and alluded to some exciting news coming up, and that's gonna be because Dustin and I are gonna be partnering up here. We're gonna be able to offer our listeners a discount code so they can pick up some war machine and some other things from inside the store. Uh, what is the code that they can use? The code that is uh always active is not just tactics ten. I have already gone ahead. I've already verified the code does work. It is also not case sensitive, so not just tactics ten, and that'll get you ten percent off of your order, correct?
SPEAKER_02:Correct, and that is not exclusive to any specific item. So there's anything from our 3D printing services to various board games to War Machine, and it'll take 10% off the entire order.
SPEAKER_03:There you go. That's definitely gonna help out, especially with some new stuff coming. Especially KithGuard. Super excited about KithGuard. Yep, definitely. Uh so we will be going ahead. We're going to be I'll be having links into the show notes for all of our listeners. Go ahead, look at the show notes, go down there, I'll have a link to his website. Also, there'll be the code input there as well. All right, Dustin. Is there anything else you want to add about your website or anything else you want to promote?
SPEAKER_02:Well, we are actually going to be doing a Black Friday sale from Friday to Monday. So it'll be 12.01 Friday to midnight on Monday. And you to get 20% off, you can use the code NOT Just Tactics Holiday20, not case sensitive, and it's 20% off of whatever you order on the website during those dates for Black Friday.
SPEAKER_03:So even better. So you guys can go ahead and use that code when it comes to Black Friday, and then you can get that started, get a nice little discount, and then get yourselves moving and starting collecting even more. Super exciting for us on our end here at Not Just Tactics to be partnering up with Torsten and Harvester. Today we're going to be talking a little bit about your guys' local meta, your guys' local hobby, and a little bit behind what got you guys into this hobby and how you guys are going to be building it up and what your plans for the local area is. So let's start with a little bit of direct war machine questions here. Uh let's go, Torsten. What is your favorite army?
SPEAKER_02:Uh back when I first saw it, uh, first time probably about almost two decades ago, I love the the aesthetic of Protectorate of Minaw. That is the first army that I got into when we actually started playing. Um, that is the army that sets a special place in on my shelf. So I'd have to say probably Protectorate of Minaw.
SPEAKER_03:Awesome. So you gotta be really excited about the announcement that they just made on this keynote.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah. I told my wife uh I'm definitely going to Adepticon because I want to see that in person.
SPEAKER_03:Well, then we will absolutely have to meet up at some point because I am going to be taking that week as vacation to make sure that not just I am there, but I want to have NJT out there as well.
SPEAKER_02:Definitely look forward to that.
SPEAKER_03:Awesome. Me as well. What about you, Jim? Uh, my starting army was Circle of Orborce.
SPEAKER_02:Um, it's always had a special place in my heart. It's the druid aesthetic and all the shenanigans we used to play with shifting stones and whatnot. Like that's that's always been my go-to faction.
SPEAKER_03:As a former circle player, uh well, I shouldn't say circle, or former, I am still a circle player. I just haven't used them in Mark IV yet. I was real big into the uh the earth constructs and having all the shifting stones.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Mark IV's not been as kind to them as previous editions, so I've not fielded them as often.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I started looking at the rules and realized very quickly that I was like, I don't know how much of these guys I'm actually going to sit down and put on the field. I have lists for them. They just haven't seen it yet.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think I did. I had one or two small baths, just wasn't feeling it this time around.
SPEAKER_03:Well, let's jump back a little bit. How did you guys get into tabletop war gaming? What was the initial wave? What got you into this?
SPEAKER_02:Uh for me it was some friends of my wife, significant others, and they were like, hey, you should come play with this. This is a really cool game. And second they started showing me the minis, I'm like, I've always wanted to do that. Kind of expensive. And they kind of did a slow roll, brought me into it as a league. Before you know it, I had two armies under my belt.
SPEAKER_03:It's always that slippery slope. About how long ago was that?
SPEAKER_02:About 14 years ago is when I started War Machine.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Did you do any other gaming other than that?
SPEAKER_02:Uh just Magic the Gathering here and there. I've gone from that game three or four times.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I definitely can feel that. As I've mentioned before, I sit here and I look at all my magic cards just sitting in boxes and I'm like, well, that's where you'll stay. Uh Torsten, what about you?
SPEAKER_02:So uh tabletop gaming in general. I grew up playing a lot of card games. And then Mage Knight had come out and it appealed to me because of the well, for one, miniatures and then the whole booster pack uh aspect of it. And then kind of took a hiatus from tabletop games up until I wanna say about six or so years ago, when a friend uh invited me out to play Monster Apocalypse. And then that's just kind of reignited all of the tabletop gaming, and then from there Jim got me back in or get got me into War Machine, which kind of started a lot.
SPEAKER_03:I will definitely tell you, as a hobby, tabletop war gaming is a slippery slope. And usually I found that people start as far as like the hobby goes, and we'll just say nerd dumb in general. I've noticed that a lot of people start as like DD. Or they start with like a card game, then they go into D D, and then they start drifting into tabletop war gaming, and this is the peak. Because once you hit tabletop wargaming, it's it's all I don't want to say downhill, but it's all uphill from here. Right. Because it doesn't get easier, but it's still definitely a trek. But it's all one that everyone I've conversed with has enjoyed and loves.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah, because during all of that time period, I was also, you know, building up kind of uh library Dungeons and Dragons groups and everything, so it kind of exploded there and then got my printers and it didn't get any better from there.
SPEAKER_03:I can definitely relate. I currently have four 3D printers, two FDM and two resin, which by the way, two I got from Angus, and one I got from another friend in our group. I started off big because I was looking at it and I was toying around with it. This was right before COVID. And my wife was looking at some of them with me, and I was like, I think I want to get this one, but this one's bigger, I don't know. So I ended up with the uh Ender 5 Plus, so the big FDM printer at the time, and did amazing work with it. Now I'm looking at some of the stuff, I'm like, how do they print so fast? And I I just I get lost because all my stuff is still super slow. I've got it fine-tuned when it wants to behave. It does really well, but uh I just haven't gotten it to work properly for the last, oh geez, probably three or four months. So usually what happens is I gotta put it in timeout and let it take a break, and then we'll jump back in. So with the favorite armies that you guys did have, what is the armies that you're currently playing? What is the armies that have captured your eye and that you've been putting on the table?
SPEAKER_02:So for me, it's been uh dude. Storm Legend first, then Dusk, then Brian Bloods, and now Old Umbre. Uh and I just jump around from time.
SPEAKER_03:I love me some Brian Bloods. That's been my uh my whole claim, but now all of a sudden I've started expanding out, I've been building up, and we're looking at a bunch of different things, and I'm just sitting here looking at my collection growing. I'm like, by the time I'm done, I think I'm gonna be well, I can't even say done. I've got nine, eight or nine armies by the time everything I get arrives, and then I've got Kith Guard coming, so that's gonna be another problem. I'm gonna have to flesh out everything else.
SPEAKER_02:So now it's gonna be How many armies do you have, Destin, and how many of them are my old armies? Um, so like what? There's like 36 armies or something total in the game, and I think I own like 30 of them, with like eight of them being Jim's old armies that he was getting rid of.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, in our local gaming group, we have the same thing. A lot of as you guys have heard in the last few episodes, I've got Chris and Angus, and we've talked about it and how we've known each other for over 20 years at this point, and we legitimately will be like, oh, you know, I want to play we'll say Skyra. I'm like, man, I want to play Skyra. Well, I have an entire Skyra army, I'm not even using it. Here, have it. And then I'll be playing something and I'll move on, and they'll be like, you know, I want to play Circle. Well, here's an entire circle army, and we just go back and forth, swapping all these armies. There was actually at one of the last games, I don't know if I posted the pictures, maybe Chris did, I'm not sure. But there was actual Skyrim models out there, and that was all right. It went from Chris to me back to Chris. So I just I hold on to all this stuff because I'm like, well, I'll play it eventually, or it'll come back around, and it always has. Which has always been extremely great. And that's another thing that I really like about this hobby and that uh Jim had brought up was the fact that you guys have this community, they got you into the community, they foster that relationship for you to build, grow into it. And that's one thing that I definitely have noticed about War Machine versus other ones. Some of the other ones not as friendly. But tabletop wargaming as a whole is definitely that. And I've found in our local groups up here, and even branching down into southern Illinois, same thing. A lot of people have been very supportive, very accepting, very embracing of all the new people, and they're definitely pushing this hobby out.
SPEAKER_02:War Machines come a long way too. Like earlier editions were definitely not nearly as friendly. It'll used to be a lot more aggressive. I know the the page five rule used to be a big joke, but coming into the game and those early ones were rough.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I definitely remember I was starting with Angus. We did an intro game with one of the local gaming stores here, and we had a great time with it. I started buying and collecting and getting ready to come in, and then I was watching some of the games and I was like, holy cow, these guys are crazy mean. Like, how and as I've said before, I don't do well in that level of toxicity. I will just excuse myself, step away, and that's why I always come back. I check other places and it I saw that it was kind of bad. So step away, come back, new edition. But seeing how Mark IV has really changed and driven the community, and I will definitely say early Mark IV wasn't super great. I definitely feel that Steamforged has done a lot to help grow this community, to help push it up, and are really doing a good job, in my opinion. Now, it might have been that way towards the end of Privateer Press, but when I was looking at some of the stuff, there was a lot of we'll say issues in the community, but I think over the last year and a half, pushing to two years, I feel like it's definitely come a long way.
SPEAKER_02:The end of March Bay was a little scary. We were not expecting that change. Luckily with us having a smart gaming group, it didn't affect us too much. Community definitely got a little dark there for a while.
SPEAKER_03:Speaking of scary, I want to run this by you guys, and I have kind of our logic on what it's gonna be, but Boomhowler. The narrative campaign, I have not seen any results yet. What are your thoughts?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I've not seen any results either. Definitely keeping it hush hus for good purpose, I'm assuming. Scared because I like my boomhowler. I don't want to lose her, and I'm afraid that uh maybe something nefarious mind if they lost. What about you, Torsten? So I had completely skipped over the the whole narrative part of it. So I honestly have no idea. I was too excited about the other stuff that was announced and going on at during Lock and Load.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so at Loch and Load, they did the the narrative games that they were running had a direct impact because Admiral Boomhowler is right now under Crick's, I don't want to say control, but influence, and she is fighting for her life to escape. And that's what the battles that they were doing was going to impact the decision. When you read the language that they put out there, it says, your decisions in the battle may influence what happens. I was like, oh, this m this might have already been decided. It might be like a 95% chance she's gonna die, or it's going to be something else. But since Crix doesn't have a sub-faction yet, and it being one of the older ones, if they kill her off, this is an easy way for her to become to come back and start the Black Fleet for the Crix.
SPEAKER_02:I was just about to say it sounds like the start of a Black Fleet to me.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'm and now as a Crix player, I'm like, ah, this is okay. I can accept both of these things, but I still prefer my Admiral as a Brian Blood. But that's why I was saying, everybody, you better do well at Lockin' Load. We need you to survive. Do well. And the worst part is, is for me, I was super close to Lock and Load, and I had family in from out of town, and my mom, she lives out of state, so she came in and we spoke, and I told her, I was like, Well, I could have gone down there. And she's like, Well, why didn't you? I'm like, you're here. I'm like, I can't just leave. You just drove like seven hours to come here. I'm not gonna turn around and drive down to St. Louis, because that's five hours away. Uh five, six. You could have taken her with you. Uh she actually said, She's like, Well, maybe we could have gone out. I'm like, no, you're not gonna want to go hang out with with that. I'm like, she okay, to be fair. Uh I at one point when she was in town, I was actually going to record with her and have her give her side of things as a parent who's been who fostered this hobby, bought me Warhammer for, oh God, I don't even know how many years. And coming through it, seeing how it's grown, and now I'm sharing it with my children to get her perspective. We didn't do that because I did set up everything. We sat down, we kind of farted around with it, and she was just super uncomfortable. So I was like, it's all right, don't worry about it, it'll be fine. Even though I didn't uh tell her that I did start recording, but yeah, a little fun for me.
SPEAKER_02:My son Henry said that thank you for the uh episode you did for him not too long ago on the Crix.
SPEAKER_03:No, absolutely. It is always my pleasure. I was gonna say, is he nearby?
SPEAKER_02:Uh he made a comment earlier about when will he get to be on the podcast, and I told him uh it wouldn't be tonight.
SPEAKER_03:Well, uh I as you guys have heard, I've had my two kids on, Chris, his son. You've seen he's been posting photos, his son has asked about coming on. It's something that I'm looking into because these are different age demographics that I do want to get into and to get these great perspectives from because my older two that play, they enjoy the game quite a bit. They like the competitiveness, they like how it's more mentally stimulating. And his son is in middle school, Chris's son is in middle school. My youngest is in fifth grade, and I brought him out to our last Sunday game, and he's like, all right, so you can teach me how to play. I'm like, you need to read the rules first, and he reads very quickly. So I'm like, all right, here, read, read from my phone. I'm dad's sitting out of this game because I'm gonna be watching and basically playing overseer and you know, answering questions as we go. And uh so he reads, he's like, Alright, I'm done. I was like, all right, so you read Warcaster Guide. Yes. Okay, cool. Now you get to read this part. And so it now he had to read the warlock section. And he looked at me and he's like, You've gotta be. I'm like, no, no, no, just read these two parts here. That's it. Everything else is exactly the same. He's like, okay, fine. He reads it. I'm like, all right, which two did you like? He's like, I like the warlock better. I was like, good, so does dad. Perfect. All right, so now we're gonna watch the game a little bit. And he's like, I don't really want to watch or play. I was like, okay, fair enough. That's fine. This is gonna take a little bit more than what you've got right now. We'll touch on this a little bit later.
SPEAKER_02:Henry was 11, I think, when I started getting him to play, but it was a very slow progress just to absorb all the information.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, see, my my youngest is really good at grasping this cum uh like this kind of information, and he's real he's really smart. The problem is that he's too smart and very he's very much like dad, so he's very ADD driven. And then he just is like, alright, cool, and there was something else, and then he runs off. Okay, cool. Alright, well, eventually we'll bring that attention span in and we'll be able to get you going. But yeah, he he really does, he likes the models, he likes the concept. It's just getting him to sit still long enough for a game.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's definitely a big struggle over here. Uh I had him start painting models years ago, and now he's finally like, oh, I can do something with them. Gotta learn the rules and and play with those.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:He saw the new Death Jack the other day, and now he's like, we need to get higher point count so we can play that.
SPEAKER_03:I was gonna say, I'm like, you can throw those down pretty much what, at fifty?
SPEAKER_02:I think so, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I mean, you have the command starter, drop down the super heavy, now you're at fifty.
SPEAKER_02:Realistically, you could even drop it in a 30-point game. It would not be fun going into that with 30 points. I don't think there's very many armies outside of other another super heavy that would have an option uh to to deal with it.
SPEAKER_03:That was another thing that I was actually gonna say, is I'm like, I've looked at those new Death Jack rules and I've I was I'm blown away. Losing the extra two focus, but gaining the ability to constantly heal yourself, I'll take that deal.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I wish they would get the Thunderhead rules out and get an ANSI for it. I don't want to see Behemoth.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I I would like to see I would like to see some more. Granted, I the only one I have is from my old circle. And I want to expand on that. Uh the new Gorger looks fantastic. Uh looking at those rules, that that definitely wants old Umbre to come out.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'm pretty excited for the Gorger. I can't wait to see it on the table. I'm not so much looking forward to going up against it though.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that would definitely be another issue of mine is actually seeing the actual starting rules for it, how it's got those two claws, and it knocks everything down with an attack. This is gonna be really bad really fast. But I'm here for it. Definitely just need to get the drop on it and hope for the best.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that doesn't usually go well for me. I tend to focus too hard on big models. I can't ignore them for some reason.
SPEAKER_03:And that has been one of the other things is that I've noticed when in our last game we had actually two behemoths on one side and the other side had none. I want to say both of the behemoths were still left standing and they still lost the game. They just didn't have the appropriate damage output that they needed. It was the old Legion, uh, was it the Archangel? And what was the the old Codor one? That was the um The Victor. Yes, the Victor, thank you. That one, they just didn't get the damage output that they needed to seal the deal, and then there was an assassinate, then there was another assassinate on the table, and then it was basically down to the the Codor player, which was Angus, and he was left against essentially three armies. No. Yeah, and then at that point it was like, well, cool, good game, guys, wrap it up. Because we were at right now, with our little local, we're not gonna be going above 50 points. It's just how many people we have playing at one time on a table, and that's even on a four by six, we might be able to get two hundred points per side, and then it's just gonna be way too congested.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, nobody's trying to keep to a lane, you don't merge too much between armies.
SPEAKER_03:And that was another issue that we were talking about. There's too much going on, it takes too long for each side to go, and it's not like you go player one, player two, player three. It's everybody's moving simultaneously, and as you're going to attack, all of a sudden the unit that you were going after gets pulled off the board because now all of a sudden the player was assassinated, and you're like, Well, I'm out of position for anything now, then you just start moving again.
SPEAKER_02:We actually started working on a four-player variant, and we would start each army in the corner in like a fan formation. To do that when we had multiple players. It made a difference in the game. I don't know if it's a good difference, but it's different gameplay for sure. I'm trying to think of how to determine because you had the objective in the middle of the table, and then we all deployed in each corner. And we basically had to go to the middle and then was it back to our corner to score? And then it kind of just kept back going back and forth. Yeah, it's like captured the flag, basically.
SPEAKER_03:I was just about to say it sounds kind of like a capture the flag.
SPEAKER_02:It got brutal.
SPEAKER_03:I believe that. So where are you guys out of?
SPEAKER_02:Uh central Indiana, just about an hour north of Indianapolis.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. I'm assuming Torsten's also from the same area. Yeah. Yep. So what's your local group like? What's your local medal like?
SPEAKER_02:It started with just uh Torsten and I getting together at his house or my house, and then we've slowly grown over the years. With all of our friends that we've brought into the game and our own kids, we're up to seven of us now. Potentially a few more joining in locally.
SPEAKER_03:And that's amazing. As uh we were talking about a little bit earlier, before we started recording, I believe our group is at nine, and that's at the one gaming store, and we're also looking at there's I just found out from Angus that there is actually a couple, there's a new store that opened. I'm probably gonna make my way down that way to go to the new store, introduce myself, see what their kind of hobbies like out there, see what their war machine community is like, from what I understand. It's non-existent, which means I'm gonna have to go out there and do a little work. With your gaming group that you guys do have, are you guys playing more casually? Are you guys playing more tournament driven? What is your scene like?
SPEAKER_02:So we we do a lot of steamroller scenarios, primarily those, and then we just it's a lot more of a casual approach to them. We typically only get one or two games in when we meet up, usually because there's a lot of conversation and back and forth. But yeah, it's just super casual when in in regards to that. We're just looking to play the game with friends and have a good time.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, absolutely. That is definitely how we start off, and even when we record, it's very casual. We joke around. Usually I would set, okay, we're gonna start recording at six o'clock. I have everything set up, and we don't start recording till probably seven o'clock. Because it's just, you know, it's guys that I've been friends with for so long, even with Joe, and even with him living next door, we'll still sit down, we'll chit-chat for 45 minutes before we even get started. I'm like, man, we gotta figure out how to narrow this in. And that's exactly how it goes when we start setting up on our every other Sunday game. We sit down, we're chit-chatting, we pull our all of our models out, and then it's not even rolling for sides, it's where everybody pretty much set their stuff down.
SPEAKER_02:We do do a lot more uh casual, but Dustin and I tend to be a little bit more uh the uh being the veteran players, we have the higher skill set as far as just bigger armies, more points valued. Most of the other guys are just now breaking in the hundred area. We drop down to thirty and fifty, depending on the players, set out games so that everybody else can play instead of us. But when he and I play, we tend to play the game out and and grow our skills more. Say I get an assassination off early, keep the game going as if it didn't happen, and try to check it if we can get scenario wins or whatnot, just to continue gaining more experience as much as we can.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I definitely again can relate to that, except for I have not played a hundred point game in Mark IV. My circle army's over a hundred points, and the retribution army I had was over a hundred points.
SPEAKER_02:You should do it.
SPEAKER_03:It it is On the to-do list. And I with just our gaming group, we're gonna have to take up more tables. And I just got uh my first actual war machine mat. My intention is that we'll go ahead and get some games going at the house. Chris has been posting with Games with his son a lot in the Facebook group, which I really appreciate because it's like that's the kind of stuff I want to see. That's the kind of community that we're working on fostering. And if you guys actually play games and stuff like that, feel free, post it up in there. I know, Jim, you did post some painting stuff, which, by the way, absolutely awesome. And I even posted mine. I was like, uh, here's mine. It's just, it's rough. I fully own that and acknowledge that that it's my painting is not the greatest, but for as much, I'll say, trimmering as I do, I'm happy with it. It looks good. I'm still farting around and playing around with some stuff because I'm learning how speed paints work, and it's been really good. I've really liked your brine blood models, and it's been really nice to see those.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. Uh yeah, each of my army just painted a little different, and brine bloods is definitely the one I challenge myself most on. I mean, I've I've been an art student since in the middle school, so I've got two more years involved than I should be probably far than I am. I've uh 14 years of painting minis, I'm finally starting to get a handle on different techniques and tank blades starting to show on my brine bloods, but my desk is I feet paint quick and on the table, so it depends on where I want to put my time to.
SPEAKER_03:So, Torsten, what is your hobby look like as far as painting goes?
SPEAKER_02:Um, I tend to jump around from faction to faction just because I I I can't stay focused on on a single faction long enough to actually paint the entire army. So y'all look over at my my shelves and be like, there's a 50-point list of winter core that's painted. Oh, and I have one and a half hellrakers painted, and then there's a small group of protectorists, and I have a single model of Crucible Guard that's painted. So it's just all over, very sporadic. Uh, when I do paint, I tend to go with the seed paint route because I try to make as much progress as possible. And I I feel like I've come a long way with the seed paint techniques that are there. Um, I have a few armies that I am doing specific, like more regular techniques with. Um like the graveggers I'm going through there and trying to go and actually do like the highlights and shadows and everything. And so far, it's turning out well. I tend to focus less on the painting part of it just because of timing. And I my hobby is spent more on the kit bashing and conversion side of things.
SPEAKER_03:That is one area that I used to do a lot of and now I've really fallen away from is the kit bashing and converting. It's it used to be so much fun for me, like cutting hands and swept swapping weapons and getting everything to line up the way I wanted them to. But yeah, I used to love doing all sorts of converting work and doing a lot of different pinning and like I I used to challenge myself on what was the largest bit I could use for pinning and not destroy the model. Uh I might even bring that up in one of the other episodes I'll I'll record later.
SPEAKER_02:Dustin single-handedly fixed the graveyard cannon issues or his mobility, kit bashing. Oh yeah. Yep. So I saw the the field gun. And like I I get that it's supposed to be like airdropped down into the field and it's immobile, but like, how's it supposed to get back on the airship without like a jack coming up and like picking it up and putting it back on the airship, assuming it survived? Well, I decided that I took the lower half of Striders and just made it a mobile gun platform.
SPEAKER_03:Oh that I'm actually sitting there thinking of that. Oh, mobile gun platform. That does not sound fun for me. That sounds very crucible guard slash train model.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean I'll have to um I I posted a pic picture of it when I got it done on the War Machine Community page, and it I I I enjoy how it turned out. You know, even though it doesn't change the rules, it's still immobile. But like battle's over, it walks into the airship. So we can go to the next battle. Absolutely. Honestly, it looks like it fits the aesthetics much more than what the original field gun does. Like it looks like it's a part of that wave and artillery crew.
SPEAKER_03:With all the new hype that's going around about Kithguard, what do you guys think about the trapdoors?
SPEAKER_02:I think they're definitely gonna add an interesting playstyle. Seems like this generation of armies all have some way of bringing in models that were not in the original game part of the game. So now we have the shapeshifters, we have the airdrops, we have trapdoors. Makes me wonder if we're gonna keep in different generations of a mechanic, I guess, for lack of a better term, that's gonna be different flavors of that. This is just we had store and original troll bloods, and now we're just bringing out the next iteration of that.
SPEAKER_03:What about you, Torsten? What do you think?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so I tend to when I play an ambush model, um, two things can l generally happen. One, it never comes out. Uh the other part is it sits on the edge of the table, forgotten about, because I go through the models that are in the middle of the table and then completely ignore what's on the edge. So as I've already decided that I'm probably not probably, most definitely getting kick guard, um, because I don't actually have an active fury army and they seem to be a lot more of my playstyle. The the fact that it utilizes ambush in a way that I will actually be able to use, I'm actually really excited about seeing how that plays. I am curious to see where they take in the balance of that, because it's just getting a popping up a unit just in the middle of the table seems to be a a bit strong. Um, so I'm I'm really curious about to see where they balance that width.
SPEAKER_03:We've had a little bit of conversation talking about what we thought the trapdoors were going to do, besides giving you placement where you can go ahead and drop your models coming in and out of well coming out of, but there was uh questions of will you be able to go into a trapdoor to pop back up out somewhere else? Will the trapdoor give you the ability to move and attack the same round? Is it going to be there's a lot of these questions that we've had that we don't really know, and it's kind of fun to speculate.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And that was one of my things.
SPEAKER_02:With that newest model they talked about, I questioned that as well because it he can create doors. Made me wonder then too, if you enter them and then redeploy side of the board.
SPEAKER_03:That was one of my things, is I was like, you have a guy who's actually going to be running around creating trap doors. I'm wondering if you are gonna be able to hop around, and if that does, you get pulled off, and then you can come back the next turn. The other thing is with this new uh sergeant model, the caster that comes in the command starter, looking at that guy, you can deploy your units at any time during your round. It's no longer at the start of your turn, it's whenever you want. You can just deploy them. You activate them, they come in, and then uh with the character unit, they get a bonus for attacking on the turn that they arrive. And that's kind of one of my thoughts is are you gonna have to wait till they're that close to a trapdoor and then you pop them out? But then you're gonna be throwing stuff. I've got a lot of questions. That's the reason why I was wondering if they come out, can they move and attack? Because then they pop out, they charge and attack, or are they just hucking stuff at people? But then if you don't wipe out the unit that you pop out next to, you're gonna get wiped out because they're gonna charge you, or you're gonna pop out in a really weird spot. I don't know. I have a lot of questions, and I guess gotta kinda wait till the full rules come out. And that will be, I believe, in say two and a half months.
SPEAKER_02:I thought they had said that the rules for at least the uh the command starter and then the pre-orders for that as well should be dropping before too long. But I don't I mean, I still would imagine January, I guess.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that was my anticipation, because I know in the past they've they've come out like a week or two at least beforehand with the rules, but I know that there was I don't remember if it was the AMA or if it was just in the community page. But at some point there was some want maybe it was even Reddit. I'm all over the place right now. There was somebody talking about how they would like to see the rules come out beforehand. So that way it will kind of give people a better judgment on whether they want to invest into the army or not. And that was one of the things that I kind of looked at is with the Frozen and Forgotten box set, we were real close to launch, and then we got the actual rules for them. And when I covered them in the lore and discussing what was in the box, I can't even talk about the rules because we didn't we got the journeyman set. Which I understand they wanted to wait a little bit, get closer to the book release, get more information out, which I understand that, but it does make it a little bit harder for people to say, yeah, I do want to invest in these, or no, I don't, because you're seeing a nerfed down version of what they could be. But if you go back and you look at the rules and you look at, you know, Zahara and Kador, you can kind of see how she went from what she is in Kador down to old Umbre. You can kind of see where they took her. So you can kind of reverse engineer that and kind of figure out what they're gonna be like. And that's definitely what we saw with the newer release of their rules.
SPEAKER_02:The other thing with the gift card I wonder about is doors are physical models, so will we have the opportunity to destroy them before they're active?
SPEAKER_03:I would safely assume and say yes. Because you've got shifting stones as the example. They're what armor twenty, defense five, you can destroy 'em. You got the witch totem or witchmark totem for old Umbre. There's a lot of these things that are I don't want to say stationary, but that provide these bonuses, but yet I mean if they're considered to be a terrain feature, maybe. I mean, you can destroy terrain too, or I should say you can destroy buildings.
SPEAKER_02:I think the other part is that potentially there's some of them that are deployed as defenses to have to use the command card. Not necessarily, yeah. I mean, it could be a situation where they have a command card like uh a special one that lets them deploy it, or just that they get to deploy as an army rule, you know, one or two trapdoors or something during deployment. Which at that point it does kind of like show your hand a little bit, but it then if you have a model that lets you dig new ones, then you do have that kind of backup feature of, you know, that trap door didn't really work out too well, so I need to get another one out over here.
SPEAKER_03:I want to say Sergeant Craghorn's feet allows him to throw these trap doors out there, which allow that and I don't know how many it might be, you know, D3, D3 plus one, who knows what it is. But being able to throw more trapdoors out there and then you throwing people out there whenever you want really makes things difficult to plan around, especially when you activate the feet. One of the things about the Kith Guard that was talking about with a coworker was that the nice thing about the Kith Guard is that they have a lot of models that ambush. The other problem is they have a lot of models that ambush, which means if you get an army that has longer range or something like that, and you're not in position or they're refusing to conform to the positions that you need them to be in, they could get you real easily, and you've got low model count on the table, so they're able to shoot and wipe out stuff, and they have high priority targets that they can eliminate pretty quick.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's similar to old umbre, where the shapeshifter rule is great, but you still have to pay points for those models. You have to be able to get them on the field, and there's always a chance for you're just gonna touch the field.
SPEAKER_03:I actually need to get some people that play Old Umbre and know Old Umbre really well, because my coworker, he's all about Old Umbre, and he's been asking me about them, and I started looking at some stuff. Like, I can kinda get what's going on with them, but I don't really know. I wanna I want to get a little bit more of somebody who's played them, has some more experience with them. I don't want to tell you the wrong stuff, but like I feel like Varone and Lord of the Hunt is gonna be a big problem.
SPEAKER_02:I think it's definitely one of those factions where you can list build all day long, but until you get on the field the correct balance is.
SPEAKER_03:I was looking at Bodan and he asked me, he's like, Why did why would you want to go base to base with somebody with your Warcaster? I'm like, you're gonna be diving in with him. You're going full send, this is your turn. You're either gonna get him or you're not.
SPEAKER_02:It's still a wonder I haven't put him on the field yet, because that's definitely my playstyle.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, he's got the crow, which allows him after once you hit that you can go base to base with it, and then you drop in, and then his jeweled dagger, I want to say that's what it's called. It's got life trade, so you can get an extra point or get an extra dice by spending a hit point, and then you could probably boost the attack on top of that. But it's an easy way to get many attacks doing lots of damage real fast at the cost of your own life points, but at that point you're just going for broke.
SPEAKER_02:It's you suffer one damage point to gain an additional die, so with the wording, you could still boost.
SPEAKER_03:Right. So you could be throwing four dice, and it's uh but his power's pretty low, isn't it? About ten. Oh, even worse.
SPEAKER_02:But as of right now, we still have carnage.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. Well he yeah. Uh which we've got uh two months. Yeah, we'll see how that plays out.
SPEAKER_02:He's also got insight, but you're running out of fury at that point.
SPEAKER_03:Right. And that's that's the other thing is that if you're going in for that you're gonna be spending on the boost and the uh the life trade.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and additional attacks.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And that's what you're hoping for. I mean, at that point, you could spend eight fury for all these attacks and trade eight life for boosted attacks essentially. There would be no reason that you should not be able to kill another caster with nine attacks.
SPEAKER_02:His feet also gives uh basically like a shield guard for melee models near him.
SPEAKER_03:Right. With an arc of eight and sixteen life. There's really no reason you shouldn't be able to put down nine attacks, plus well, I guess ten with your cursed staff to get that through.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I've heard great things about him. I just haven't fielded him yet.
SPEAKER_03:And it was one of the things that I sat there and I was talking about it. I'm like, he's good, but I I I gotta get him out there. I gotta see what he does.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, if I could do assassination runs with Mozart circle, this guy shouldn't be too bad.
SPEAKER_03:I I mean, let's put it this way. Chum has earned more assassinations in my group than I care to admit. And I've also had more assassinates with Alistair Kane, but that's kinda to be expected.
SPEAKER_02:I used to run a warhog, and every time I killed one of Dustin's casters, I put another knot on the cleaver. Yeah. What was the final count on that one before you moved from Pharaoh? I think it's six. I think so too.
SPEAKER_03:And I didn't even play him that long. Nope. See, I wish Chum had something like that that I could carve into to give that little tick nox to, but also at the same point, I don't want to cut into him because he's painted. So they were just painted scratches. I didn't actually carve it. Oh, I was I actually did that. I have an old dwarf model that when I was running a slayer army, I was cutting notches into for every hero or lord I killed with them. So this one axe is like completely serrated, it catches on all the foam that I put it into. What are some things that you guys are looking forward to with the hobby? As in what are you looking forward to with War Machine, what War Machine's doing in the future, and where you guys see the hobby going? Let's start with Torsten.
SPEAKER_02:So one thing that I probably was most excited about uh from the announcements on Saturday was their partnership with Galactic Armory. I have printed several costumes for other people. I had intended to print a Gravedigger's costume for Gen Con this year, but you know, time ran away from me. But the fact that they are taking the effort and licensing out armor and cosplay bits to another company who does that is I mean, my printers are going to be so busy printing that stuff. Either they're just gonna be lining my walls that I already don't have much space for. So that's probably one of the things that like besides the game being in a great space and loving playing the game, just the extra things that are going on outside of the game that like keeps me involved, which i is just phenomenal. I've not felt that for a lot of different games.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I did say that I really like that idea, and I even said I'm like, I don't know if I'm actually gonna do it because I know how long that can take with 3D printing and getting all that made up, but maybe I will. We'll see. We'll see how much all those files are gonna cost. Maybe see about trying to get some get a group together for Adepticon, if depending on when it all lines up and might be out afterwards, because I don't think they said when it was gonna drop.
SPEAKER_02:I think they did uh during the announcement. I believe if I remember correctly, that they had said that the prepare for the first drop at Adepticon when they make like when they reveal more information about it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, there were there was gonna be a bunch of stuff about at Adepticon, but I know I wasn't sure if they said that they were gonna have it ready for drop or if they were gonna talk more about it, and I know that they said they were gonna talk more about Mendoth at Adepticon, and that was kind of like their way of saying, don't talk to us about it until then. It's the nice polite way of doing it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I'm I'm not against any long prints. Um I there's been two big prints that I've done. Uh big Trask head for a library event for DD that took 10 days print time, and then I printed a giant bugger head uh that I've scaled up from the uh extreme model, and I took it to Gen Con last year. Just to show the Steam Forge staff. It was it was a lot of fun to put together.
SPEAKER_03:That's cool. I think I think my longest my longest print was like eight days.
SPEAKER_02:That's stressful.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, I know. I because the first two times I went to print it, it failed, and it was after like a day. I'm like, oh, so much filament. But I also print at a really low height. Because I usually print, oh geez, 0.08.
SPEAKER_02:Oh well.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And I I can actually uh 3D print models fairly well on my Ender 5. And I I want to say the lowest I went down to was 0.04. It's either 0.04 or 0.06 that I did some of my uh some of my old DD models with. They're pretty elaborate models and they came out really, really well. But I've since tried to duplicate it and it's hit or miss. Right. Jim Pyrromonkey, what about you? What are you excited for?
SPEAKER_02:Um I actually wasn't expecting it to be excited for this, but the more I thought about it, the spell wreck going away, really excited to go back to having unique casters. You learn to play with our kit, you don't get a switch in the the guaranteed spell that you need to fix every problem. It's good to feel like we're going back to a little bit of the old days. Other than that, the terrain being able to be printed that in theme has been great because we've been starting to adjust our boards to be a little bit more thematic, not just the same old, here's a forest, here's a hill. It's been interesting to see in some more specialized paths.
SPEAKER_03:That was actually another thing that we are looking at. I want to see about printing out some of the terrain and doing the spike traps and the explosive barrels and the fire pits. I want to kind of put those onto the table too, so that way when we start pushing and actually instead of just charging in, beating each other up, and then like leaving combat, actually putting more of a tactical sense into it. And in our group, a lot of us are still learning, we're all still coming back into this. It just takes the reps. As we all know, in this hobby, you if you want to be good, you want to play well, it just takes time, takes reps, you get through it, you move on.
SPEAKER_02:My biggest suggestion there is avoid elevations until you're absolutely updated in the rule sets because I have some cardboard terrain that adds stairs, walkways, and all that. Great. It's fun to play, but man, it makes a mess of the That is definitely something that we are avoiding.
SPEAKER_03:We legitimately play with forests typically, up until this last game that I didn't even play in. Forests, rough terrain, shallow water, then we'll have like impassable terrain, fences, hedges, that kind of stuff. And I want to say we had buildings at one point. Yeah, I want to say we've had buildings. But don't quote me.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I tend to get a little crazy with terrain. Anything from trenches spanning across the entire map to I put a train track on the on the map with the train moving each turn. Uh we've played in entire villages with I think there we had like nine buildings plus some forests and walls. Like I I tend to go heavy on terrain.
SPEAKER_03:So usually with a backstory behind it, like a an intention behind it, but we actually we have one of uh Chris will bring out a bunch of 2D terrain, and then he opens up the box, and then typically what we've been doing is we'll have Angus grab he just grabs them and just starts tossing them onto the table. And that's our terrain placement. It is just usually a mess. And then usually myself or maybe Angus or Paul, one of our guys, we'll grab it and shift things around a little bit because it's like, well, you can't have two uh two forests overlapping each other. Let's move it to an actual more strategic place. And then we just create it and then we just go from there. But the random placement like that is a lot of fun because then it gets a little chaotic and the angles are weird and creates a more dynamic gameplay, but then you also end up with legitimately tons of terrain. Well, since we were already talking about our kids a little bit ago, how has this hobby been with your kids? Do they play? What are their aspects of they like it? Well, I know Pyromonkey's kid does, our whole uh Crix episode, because we heard that uh his son was about the Crix, so we dove into that area. But how has your son been with a hobby, Torsten? Uh do you have kids? And if so, do they play as well? Let's go Pyro Monkey.
SPEAKER_02:Uh my son's twelve and he's been uh painting the old Crix minis for a couple years now. When the new Mark IV stuff came out, he was immediately wanting to know if he could start playing. Uh we've got him a few of the small boxes and he's only played 30 point games so far, but he thinks he's ready for the 50 point. He's got a birthday coming up in a couple weeks, and he may be getting a starter box for that. Explore more of that faction, because his ultimate goal is to be able to play the Death Jack 2 and Hellrakers. I told him he had to uh earn those. Of course.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'd definitely make them earn it, and uh happy early birthday, Henry. Torsten, what about you?
SPEAKER_02:Uh I have seven kids total. Uh my fifteen year old plays. He has picked up Kator, uh, Vilkold specifically, and picked her up really well. I don't think I've beaten him in the last three games that we've played. He's just moved on to 50 points recently and is looking to get to a hundred points before too long. And then my nine-year-old and six-year-old are constantly asking me to teach them how to play, which I've told them that you know you need to be able to watch an entire game so you know what's going on, and that so that I know that you have the attention span for it. But they seem to really enjoy the the dice mechanics of it, and I love the fact that it's pulling them away from the the consoles and the computers to do some you know good old fashioned problem solving. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03:I agree. That's been one of my bigger driving forces with my kids is get them off of the tablets, get them all get away from the TV, play actual games where you're actually actively engaging your brain. You gotta read, gotta do some math, gotta do measurements. It's an all-around better, in my opinion, a better experience. Now, again, I'm a gamer. I enjoy playing playing video games as well. But I really enjoy this more, and you know, maybe it's not for them. That's fine. I'm not gonna force them to do anything they don't want to do. But I've found that they really enjoy it when they start to sit down and they start to see the fun that it is, and it's just bringing the experience out to the youth.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I get text messages from my son when he's away at grandparents out, he's sitting on the war machine app, picking up different synergies, up to me, going, look what I found. This this together does this. And it's just cool watching him press through the level of understanding as divides deeper into that app.
SPEAKER_03:I love when my kids actively get involved. My oldest just asked me the other day, he's like, Hey dad, uh, can I start painting my Crix? Yeah. Yes, yes, you can. I would love for you to actually paint your Crix. He's like, Okay, I'm gonna do that. Like, not when you're not by yourself, even though you are almost 17. I saw what you did with my blood red speed paint, and you like emptied half the bottle onto the tray. I'm like, you can't do that. Little drops. You don't need a and then I watched him with the brush and I was like, we're gonna have to go through painting. Okay. And he actually picked up art for high school, starting to develop the knack for it with this hobby, which actually. I do have his first model he ever painted, which I I'm looking at the box it's in right now. There is a lot of red on that model. Yeah, there's probably a quarter of a bottle of paint on it. And I'm like, you didn't need to put that much on, but okay, it's fine.
SPEAKER_02:I frequently get models from my son asking me to until he realizes earlier paint jobs were very thick and very muddy and wants to go back and redo them.
SPEAKER_03:See, I I actually with the group of uh with Angus and Chris, when I started painting, and for them it was like, oh my god, Tony's actually painting. It's like, yeah, I I used to paint quite a bit, but now gotten re-inte painting. But with the shaking, it gets a little rough. But I brought some of my old for like practice, I reprimed and started painting my old dwarves. And one of the first models I had ever painted, I was like, hey guys, say goodbye. And they're like, no, he's a legend. You gotta leave him. I was like, uh no, this is bad. Like, really, really bad. I even tried to do conversion work. I must have I don't even know how old I was when I made that model. Older than I should have been to make it look like that. That's that's the problem there. It's the lack of hobby experience. But I kept him the way I left him, and that was like my benchmark. It cannot get worse than this.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I still remember trying to paint the old black 13th, and they were like a miniature scale compared to everything else. It was hard to get paint on those things.
SPEAKER_03:I have the old black 13th, and I was like, you know, I might just pull those out and use them as gun mages for for the gravediggers. Yep. I was like, I might just pull them out. I'm like, I think that'd be fun. I'm not gonna use them on a tournament level or anything. I think it would just be fun to have them out there.
SPEAKER_02:Sure.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I I don't know. I've been I've been toying around with it a little bit as far as kind of doing that kind of stuff, but we'll see.
SPEAKER_02:We've talked about using some of our old models and have random ambushing models come into the board that are like neutral but aggressive towards everyone. Oh just as like a just to spice up the game a bit and give our old models a do.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Like have like a retribution come out because that would thematically fit any sort of humanities a problem.
SPEAKER_02:I got a bunch of uh gators and circle that definitely spin, do some damage and sneak out. Yeah, between ambushing gators out of the water or a roaming crick pack that was scavenging for corpses and jackbits.
SPEAKER_03:I could only imagine what my group would have happen. Just all sudden random or just having some surfacing chimera. That would not be good.
SPEAKER_02:It gets a little tricky with the rules and figuring out how they attack and all that. Like talking about figuring system out for it. Oh what you could even thematically go for the dark operation. Yeah. And have the mind control random units or something.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, they just dropped the uh Orgoth models. When they released the Stormblades, I did say that it the next up was gonna be Cawdor, but I I was not expecting Orgoth as the third option.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'm it actually makes probably the most sense for what they've already done. But it's interesting that it's taken some I feel like the units that they have done almost better in dark up dark operations than they were in the original faction they were in.
SPEAKER_03:And that's one of the things that I haven't dove too far into it. We were talking about because they you got the was it the Winter Guard. That's the unit that they had converted over.
SPEAKER_02:Yep.
SPEAKER_03:And I I haven't looked at them or any of the rules, and I was speaking to Angus because he's like our like resident Cador player. But I don't know how if they've gotten stronger or if they're not, but you would think that they would be stronger because they've been mind controlled and now they're getting the benefits of the syphilis while still having all of their old gear and retaining the abilities that they did have.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the thing that I noticed is that like I've become a huge fan of CRAs and the fact that you have the benefits and the boosts from the the mind controller or the dominator, and then you have the CRA on top of that. It's it just with the other aspects of that army, it just it feels like it's for that specific unit is in a little better place than it is in the winter core itself, which I don't think I put the infantry on on the table more than once.
SPEAKER_03:From what I understand, that's not very surprising.
SPEAKER_02:For a few points more you can get either the I can't remember what they're called, but the slightly more armored ones to have the the double barrel shotgun spray, or for a little bit more points you get a man of lords. Well, hopefully in January we'll see that addressed. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:That is one thing that I do know. Oh god, I can't even pronounce his name. The flame tongue warrior caster from Brian Bloods. They definitely said is they said he was gonna be getting reworked. That he or the I want to say the exact quote was he's gonna get a lot of love that I saw on Reddit.
SPEAKER_02:He's getting a lot of he's getting a lot of attention and Huxley's gonna get a bit of a nerve.
SPEAKER_03:And who is? Huxley on Storm Legend. Oh yeah, she is like a requirement. And that's the other thing is I looking at the statistics from World, Ragemonger was ev like virtually everyone's list.
SPEAKER_02:And the other one crazy, because he's my my go-to in Brian Blood.
SPEAKER_03:Well, it I wouldn't say he was necessarily the backup, but he was most of the time he was in list two as compared to list one. But that doesn't necessarily mean that he wasn't the primary for them. But uh god, if I dough uh like dug out my notes, I'd be able to tell you exactly what it was, what the ratio was, but it was I want to say Shadow Tongue, Foul Blood, and Boom Howler were equal as far as picks go. But and then Ragemonger was much higher as far as total overall picks go, then the flametongue warrior caster was picked once, and so was um firequill, which I god I wish he would get better.
SPEAKER_02:And if I remember right, the same person took flametongue and firequill.
SPEAKER_03:But again, you wouldn't expect somebody to be out there playing it either.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think that's what the great thing in this game is if you put the time and the reps in, you could find no one's expecting to cross, and you can win with the underdog.
SPEAKER_03:Oh yeah. And what was it? One of the guys, it I was listen I forgot what podcast it was. I was listening to one of them, and they they were talking about how somebody was using Fire Quill and they had two of the Abyssal Kings. And I was like, oh my god, why why?
SPEAKER_00:I'm like, that's a lot.
SPEAKER_02:I know uh the host from the business, he lives and breathes Wolf from Storm Legion, and it's everybody considers him uh best gasper, but put so many reps into him that I'm not gonna stop playing them.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's the other thing, is that uh one of my friends that I've been teaching the game, him and I have been playing games when I have time off, and the kids are in school, he's a single parent, and we go and we'll play games while the kids are in school, and he's been learning, and he's he wants to buy in, he wants to get in on the game, and I'm like, well, hold on, don't don't do it just yet. Like, I get I have plenty of stuff, we can keep playing with my stuff, it's fine. Once the new rules drop in January, let's see what happens, and then we'll talk about it in like maybe February. I don't want you to start learning all these, and then when the rules go, the spell racks gone, all this other stuff, you might not know how your stuff is going to play in the future. So holding off, spending the time, get the reps in, play a little bit more, get the mechanics down, then we can kind of talk about it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it it could change the way the entire faction plays. I mean, look at Brian Blood after last January. Just a few small tweaks really changed how they played.
SPEAKER_03:And the funny thing is, is I wasn't even there for that. So this is how I came in. Was the current way that they play. Somebody did make a comment about how they like how they do the rule changes. Probably was on Reddit. And I I said something about how seeing Madame Moriarty, I could see getting changed as well, because she was in a hundred percent of everyone's lists. And and the guy's like, no, he's like, she's not gonna get, you know, this is why she's this is why she is, and this, this, and that. And I said, well, here's the thing. In all the other game systems that I've ever played, if you have an auto-pick that it must be played, that's a problem, and it's gonna get changed. Whether it's four points, whether it's ten points, a hundred points, it doesn't matter. When you see an auto pick, it's gonna get changed at some point. Because they want to create this diversity. They want to create this other angle. I'm like, I I she might not see any change, but traditionally, from any of the game systems I've ever played, historically, autopicks get changed to create diversity.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's what happened to Istrafil ask last year. It got hit pretty hard, and it's because it was in every list. Quartermasters and brine blood, the same way.
SPEAKER_03:And that's and that's kind of where I'm leaning, is that I think Madame Moriarty is really cool. I I like her model, I like everything about her. But again, I'm not gonna be surprised if come after January she gets changed. I can definitely see where that would upset some of the brine blood players, but also at the same point, when a hundred percent of all tournament level players are using her, that shows me a red flag. But again, good little things, especially as how the hobby progresses. This will really kind of start showing us more and more of where this game is going to turn and how it's gonna lie.
SPEAKER_02:Agreed. I'm just excited about about where Steven Forge has taken the game and uh planned to have ahead. There was a lot of concern when they took over. I feel like they've done an amazing job at keeping the game going at the state.
SPEAKER_03:And that's that's one of the things that I've talked about is when you see when you saw them at Adepticon, they're up there painting. That was, in my opinion, a huge thing. These guys are the boots on the ground. These are the ones that are actually making the hobby because they're in the hobby. It's not like there's some guy sitting up in a tower looking down at us. They're down here with us. I mean, Jamie, I just talked about this not too long ago. Jamie Perkins, he's out there, he's playing in these tournaments. That's awesome. I love seeing these people play, compete, be involved in the community that you're fostering, and that goes so much further.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we were lucky enough to meet Jamie at Gen Con. It's funny because he didn't know how much invested I was in the game, and he was trying to sell me on the game and help me pick up and but it was still great to just meet him and watch that.
SPEAKER_03:That's actually I I've talked about it before. I do want to eventually reach out to some of these people. I do want to try to get some of these people on and just talk with them. That's gonna be in the future.
SPEAKER_02:I think the tricky part there is just the uh the time difference from them.
SPEAKER_03:I will do what I need to do. If I could get if I could get you know Jamie on here, and if that means I'm well, but see, the other thing is I'm always up super early. I'm up every morning at 3 45, 3 30 in the morning. I can make anything work. Just staying up late? That that's the that's the harder part for me. It's staying up super late. But I'm very excited to see how and what they're doing in the future. The community as a whole has been very supportive. Everything I see, everything I'm reading, and I go through some of the comments and I actively look for potential naysayers and see what what's drumming up. It's kinda hard. There is there is some, but I mean, overall the whelming positivity of where we're going and where this is progressing is fantastic. Seeing the community respond to new players asking questions like, hey, I'm looking at what's the most beginner-friendly army, where do you think you we should go? And then you get 20 people giving advice, sharing experiences. That's huge. And that's kind of why I like reaching out to everybody, and I intend to continue to do this, is having, not all the time, but having little segments like this where I get people, real people, on here talking about things, sharing their hobby experiences, telling us about their local community, and seeing if it relates to other people's local hobbies, see if their community is similar or different. We might be having over here in my area this really great positive area, but then down by you guys, it could be extremely toxic. Then you could sit there and say, oh, well, maybe it's just around here, and then you can start looking elsewhere. This allows for better perspective and having more voices of reason. And also I don't want to have it be an echo chamber where you just hear me talk about, oh, everything's great, everything's positive. Not all the time. Trust me, it's not all the time. And that's where I like having these critical conversations and having some of those rough talks. And that's that's how you build is having those critical conversations.
SPEAKER_02:Agreed, and just finding more people, more players that are like-minded goes a long way, and the community seems to be full of the types that want to lift you up. And I feel like the change from Mark III to Mark IV brought out some of the worst of the community. I think that portion of the community left for other games, and we're all the better for it.
SPEAKER_03:And you know, I would agree. Sometimes it's not necessarily the size of the hobby, it's about the quality of the hobby. When you have a good quality, a good group, a good community that you surround yourselves with, that's all that matters. That's all that shapes everything. I mean, we get people all the time when we're sitting there playing, people are like, What are you doing? What is that? We have people come over and look at it. I stop. And I know sometimes the gaming group's like, oh my God, just shut up. And I'm sitting there talking to them. I'm getting them excited. I'm show here. And I grab a model off the table. It's my model, but still, and I know where it goes. So that's the reason why I mark it in my head where it's at. I'm like, here, look at this. This is what this does, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'll explain it and then put it back. Um, because it's that engagement. And I would say a good, I would say almost everybody in our gaming group knows that we're all out there to promote and grow this hobby and play games while we're doing it. And that's that's why I'm here. It's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and to you and all the other content creators, like that's what I love about the game is when I'm not able to play, able to listen in and hear the discussion, brainstorm and keep in touch with this game, even when I'm not able to put many words.
SPEAKER_03:And one of the other things that we definitely try to do with this channel is we're more beginner focused, more, I should say, uh, players returning, kind of getting back into it. There I know there's a bunch of other channels that do more of the meta style, more tournament level. And I looked at that and I was like, there's there's not a lot of people like us. And that was referring to me, Joe, a bunch of my other friends. I was like, I don't really see that kind of a that level of content. And after having a couple conversations, I was like, you know what? Yeah. Let's do it. We talked about doing DD podcasts for more than a couple years, and I was like, you know what? There's tons of those. Like, let's do War Machine. And that's where it settled.
SPEAKER_02:And here we are. Yeah, and you you guys have been doing a great job. Um, like I said, I've even brought the kid in, let him follow along, so it's great having that family focused channel as well.
SPEAKER_03:That's the other thing, is that we definitely one of my big things that I with all the podcasts I listen to and everything else, there's not really a whole lot of family-friendly content that I've been able to find. And that was a goal of mine. As, you know, as a father of three, I I made it a thing that when we set out to do this, I was like, I want this to be able to be listened to, to be fun, to be engaging, to be enlightening, and I want it to be able to be something that my children can listen to and sit down at a friend of theirs' house in front of their parents, press play, and they can listen to. They might not understand it, but it's not going to be something that they're like, oh, what did they just say? That. I I didn't want that. And I do believe that you can have, you know, these kinds of the fun and engaging situations, and we have been, and will continue to do so. And it's always wonderful to sit down with a bunch of people in the local community and metas talking about the game that we also love and enjoy. As I like to say to wrap everything up, guys, you got anything for me?
SPEAKER_02:Appreciate you having us on.
SPEAKER_03:My pleasure. I definitely enjoyed the time and and look forward to to future casts that we can be a part of. Absolutely. Uh my intention is is if I can get a press pass out to Adepticon, which we'll see, or if I can find some connections out there as well. See about getting in there, maybe even doing uh I'll bring out some of my equipment and doing something there. If I can get like a little bit of space or get a little bit away into a corner, I would love to be able to sit down and do something live. But the audio is going to be a little bit challenging. And that's something that we do like working on and we definitely do test out. And this is uh for uh the listeners here, this is our first attempt at utilizing multiple different types of inputs. We've got one running through Discord, and we've also got one running through a phone. All the other recordings have been done live and in person. So this has been uh a fun, nifty little challenge, and I appreciate both of you guys for being the first ones to help me test this out and to spend uh some good time out here.
SPEAKER_02:No problem. Always enjoy being a guinea pig.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. I I definitely appreciate it, and I know our listeners do as well. And since I think there's nothing else I got, all right, guys. Have a wonderful night.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks you too.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Take care.com.
