Paint them and they will preform

I figured out why I lost with Feora! It was because I hadn't painted her. I don't now how many people have this superstition also but it was one that was prevalent in my first gaming group many moons ago. Models always preform better once they are painted. The other one was that a newly painted model always died in its first game... Interestingly this has generally proved to be true! The best one we ever had was in a Blood Bowl League. One of my friends was playing Wood Elves and despite having lost badly for most of the league he would not buy any more players to replace his losses. Why not? Well because he wanted to hire a treeman. So eventually he got the gold together and hired the treeman. That weekend a newly purchased and painted model was placed on the board in front of my Orcs. By the second half the treeman had been killed despite the best efforts of the apothecary. The guy promptly quit the league.

This weekend I had two games. It was nice to play on the tabletop rather than on my desktop. I met up with the nice guys at Miniwar Hamburg suprisingly close to my house. The venue is a small place but adequate for a good few tables. I lined up against Lars first with his Cryxian forces. I wasn't looking forward to this game in truth. Its pretty hard to play in another language. Its even worse when the game is interactive and complex like Warmachine. On top of that I haven't played Warmachine on a table in over two years. Also I have no clue about Cryx. My Warmachine games have been sheltered and I have generally only had one opponent who almost exclusively uses Khador. I have played Cryx maybe twice before I think. So when the army was laid out before me I didn't have a clue what everything could do, this generally means you are going to lose. Lars was nice and friendly however and with some limited banter (I haven't progressed to true banter level yet!) we played and had a great time. I lost through making far too many mistakes and having a clever opponent spot them. Epic Asphixious was pretty good but next time I think I can handle him!

Unexpectedly I got in a second game against another great opponent, Jan. He was using Cygnar and Kara Sloan. I have never faced Cygnar before so again this was going to be a learning curve. I had no idea what Sloan could do but I suspected that with her big gun she was likely to shoot me. They Cygnarians were not really out in force. Ten trenchers with four 'jacks and a journeyman were all that faced off against my Menite horde. I outnumbered them almost four to one. In the ned my numbers paid off as I was able to sacrifice a lot and get Feora safely close enough to burn everything to cinders. Fire even managed to kill Kara. I was a little lucky this game but I guess that balanced out from the previous one.

So in Feora's first game she died as predicted. However much fun was had. Getting a game on a table was a novelty, rolling dice not quite as much! The best thing was that all the armies there were painted. The terrain was decent too and it made for a nice spectacle. So I hope to head back in two or so weeks for some more action!