Legion of Everblight - Progress Report #2

Well hello there!  Sorry for the radio silence of late, but shortly after I wrote the last LoE progress report, a job interview cropped up and I am currently waiting to see how much, if any, my life is about to change.  Plus, the Skyrim train finally pulled into my station.  It's certainly not 'Skyrim Widow' bad, but between that, gaming, painting and a general sense of anxiety torpedoing my ability to focus on any one thing, let alone all the thing, it's been a bit hard to blog.

I've still been getting games in with the 'new' system and I've actually managed to win a few games in addition to learning the shit out some stuff.  


I'm still rocking with PLylyth and the Carnivean from ye battle box, but those 4 shredders haven't hit the table in a few weeks.  A single shredder is a great thing as tenacity is rad as heck, but having three more at that small a level... or outside of an eThagrosh list... It feels a whole hell of a lot like pissing up a rope rather than positively contributing towards a win.  Reinforcing this experience is the whole host of roflstomps the battlebox + 2 points lists have received as well as the sage wisdom of the local gaming crowd.


So, for the last handful of games, I've swapped out ALL of the shredders for a Seraph and added a forsaken.  Things are working much better.  That list is roughly 50/50 on wins and is much, much more fun to play.  The Seraph + Carnivean gives me a credible assassination threat and the forsaken gives me some much needed fury management on a FURY 5 caster.

So lets, see..

Some highlights and lowlights (all mixed together):
 - My fully charged Forsaken managed to cack 8 members of a 10 man unit of Mechnaithralls - turning what was looking to be a sound beating into a mere close win for my opponent.
 - My Carnivean still isn't contributing much past being a Spiny Growthed roadblock, but he did manage to hold off a Deathjack for a turn and one time he killed a Mauler.
 - Had my first experience with feating and then having it be a complete waste when my Seraph ended up being a quarter of an inch out of range of one of the Doomshapers.  I came pretty close to bailing out of that game like a huge man-baby.  Not proud of that, but the gents at the store are consistently much better people than I can conceptualize.
 - Ended up eating a LOT of shit in two games when it turned out that my opponent's plan to only play fully painted models involved a Pyre Troll much to our mutual chagrin.  I won one of those but only because of a play mistake so crucial it felt like he gave me the game.
 - I'm really feeling the love for my Seraph between Slipstream and the fact that he managed to wreck all three of one of my Cyrxian opponent's 'jacks (with a little help from the aforementioned Carnivean shaped speedbump).
 - Lylyth has bow blades and if you end up having to use them, things are going pretty poorly.  Even if I did use them to finish off Scaverous in what turned out to be an epic slap fight.

So like I said, the game is a whole hell of a lot more fun now that I'm past using the battlebox straight up.

Along the way, I've also managed to learn a few things.
 - It's really nice that HoMachine works at 15 points, but holy hell is it unforgiving.
 - The Carnivean is a great beasty on paper, but I'm just not getting the mileage out of him that I need at this point level for his cost.
 - But, then again, the fact that he's so widely dangerous left to his own devices is probably why my Seraph has been able to shine.
 - I need to really read my own stat cards better - Lylyth's feat has it's crucial limit of one turn, but what really put it's dick in my mashed potatoes was the targeting rules for the collateral damage on eruption of spines.   Luckily, I was able play the 'new at this dang game card'. Though I'm probably at my limit on that before I start to feel like a heel for doing so.
 - Turn 2 is still the turn where I need the most work on wrapping my head around the game - I'm getting better at setting up favorable trades and such, but I'm still suffering from analysis paralysis.  Though not acutely.  It's no big deal or anything.  It's not like turn 2 is the most important one of the game or anything.


Other than all that, the extended return of semi-regular gaming in my life has been a huge boon.  Especially since I managed to convert a good chunk of my unfinished deamon army into cash to pay for it.

More momentously, I also managed to sell off all my painted Cryx stuff for a tidy sum of store credit and now have almost everything I'll ever need to play Legion.  It's a quite a bit more models in boxes than I wanted on hand, but given the fact that it was store credit combined with the kind of open ended question the geographical stability of my life has become, I thought it prudent to spend it now on EXACTLY what I want to avoid being forced to just spend it if things shake out my way with my latest job interview.