Changer

So my lunchtime game finished in a 7-7 draw. I would have finished 10-7 up but my opponent played a last minute distraction to push Tefk into no mans land. Turned out I was one power card away from a sidestep, which is a shame. Anyway, lets see what happens tonight. I felt a little better about my new deck today, but I think that's more the fact I was able to draw ploys rather than just upgrades for my first hand. I'll report back with my deck and the results after the casual event tonight - I know I'll be up against more than just Orruks, which will make a nice change.

I've changed my deck about a little again for today. I've got another game against my regular Orruk opponent at lunchtime, and then a casual event this evening. If I'm still not feeling the Fyreslayers by the end of the day, they'll be relegated to the cabinet and I'll play another warband instead.

How is everyone doing with their Fyreslayers? I'm two games in (a 5-5 tie, and an 8-1 loss, both against a punchy Orruk warband) and I'm just not 'feeling' the fyreslayers in the same way I've felt the other warbands. It's a real shame, as they're newly painted, but I really don't see how to proceed with them. It doesn't help that in both games I never really seemed to pull any ploys; but either way I'm not sure how to play with them. Fyreslayers are slow - if you stack your deck with ploys that help with movement you miss out on other things, such as stacking rerolls etc... I don't feel you can play for objectives either, as they're just too slow to get any objectives that might be sitting on the other side of the board. They'll get kited by Skaven and Khorne (not that Khorne want to run away of course!), and just don't have the staying power of a heavy hitting warband. I'm not one to shirk from a challenge, but I do feel a bit lost with the Fyreslayers.

It's my one criticism of the Fyreslayers - they've all got toes sculpted to the base. I really don't understand the reasoning either.

Finished Tefk last night. With him done, the warband is complete!

How did your games go last weekend?

I believe the main reason for not doing organised play events in GW stores in mainly due to the lack of continuous spending Shadespire generates. Even now, once you've bought the main set and all four expanion warbands you're still only looking at £110. Ok, you can buy some dice and card sleeves etc, but that's still not an awful lot of money, and with the speed warbands are being released you're not likely to bring in the repeat custom GW thrive on. Instead if a GW store focuses on AoS or 40k, their customers are (generally) continuously buying more and more products to expand their armies, start new forces etc... This type of revenue just isn't brought in by Shadespire.

I was in two mind so how to do it too. Opted for lava in the end just for a bit of colour. I’ve been told my bases may be a little dark on the fyreslayers, so I might add a brighter drybrush once they’re all done. I finished Mad Maegrim tonight. Just Tefk to do tomorrow.

It’s Retributer Armour, washed with reikland, then retributer again, liberator as a area highlight and stormhost silver edged. I then went back and pin washed some recesses with the purple GW wash. Finished Vol Orrukbane this afternoon, so halfway there.

Not a full warband, but I finished Fjul last night.

Apparently we’ve bought more shadespire in the UK than in the US, but GW are doing more events etc in the US and not over here. It’s a shame really. Shadespire is set to be mail order only from GW and GW managers have been told not to run shadespire events in store and to leave it to other places to do the organised play etc. It’s just funny that it took them ages to get the organised play stuff to stores, as locally we seem to have lost loads of competitive players as they’ve had nothing to win over the past few months.

It's difficult to say without playing a game I suppose. I've just never liked the idea of sitting on objectives all game - if you win the first roll you're only placing 2 objectives, and a canny player will make it extremely unlikely you'll be getting anywhere near the other three. I've got a number of objectives that reward me for getting the entire warband in the opponents territory; which even with a bad draw of ploys I should be able to do by the third turn. If someone wants to sit at the back of the board then I'll do this by turn 2, and if they come forward for a scrap I should be able to hold my own and score from kills and the other objectives. It's not going to be perfect, but we'll see what happens in the coming weeks.

So I got my boxes last night, and immediately put the Fyreslayers together. If I'm being perfectly honest, I'm a little disappointed that each one of them has toes sculpted to the base. I normally like the paint the model separate from the base, but now I've had to attach them in order to greenstuff the tiny gap (I don't like any gaps, especially on flesh!). Still, I'm looking forward to painting them. I wanted my Fyreslayers to not be tied to objectives - yes, I want to try to sit on an objective to get inspired, but by not tying my deck to objectives, it's not a massive issue if someone plays Earthquake on me. With that in mind, my objectives are all about upgrades, punching people, and slowly but surely ending up in my opponents half. Escalation Master of War The Bigger They Are Precise Use of Force Ploymaster Unstoppable Advance Scion of Grimnir No Remorse Ferocious Charge Swift Advance Brawl Conquest I then laid out all of the ploys I wanted - which came to 25!!!! There are so many good ploys available nowadays. Anyway, I've managed to whittle my list down to a 24 card deck. Defiant Strike Grimnir's Speed Grimnir's Blessing Grimnir's Fortitude Great Strength Shadeglass Axe Soultrap Awakened Weapon Activated Runes Great Fortitude Helpful Whispers Great Swing Duel of Wits Mighty Swing Healing Potion The Earth Shakes Ur-gold Boon Living Wall Indomitable Oathsworn Ready for Action Piercing Stare Distration Sidestep As you can see, I'm focused on movement and damage prevention. Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to try this out until next Wednesday; but I'll report back once I've had a game.

Do you think that they'll be able to create a deck that doesn't consist of holding the objectives? I know they'll need to sit on them at least one turn in order to be inspired, but if you don't hold that card in your hand it'd be wasted anyway. I'm going to take a look through the card library to see if I can come up with a 'punchy' deck.

Don't forget you'd be able to use Curious Inversion in your action phase before your opponents turn - it's (IMO) a better version of Blood Rain, but that can be used by all.

All of these were shown of on the stream last night. Some very interesting stuff here.

Some images (not mine) from the new White Dwarf. Releases on the 17th Feb. Skaven inspire when a ploy is played on them. Fyreslayers inspire when they hold an objective at the end of the turn. Looks like the key axe is only range 1 though, which is a shame.

Not sure how this one could be misinterpreted to be honest. You choose to make this attack action. If it fails and the target was a leader, then you can make the attack again. I’m pretty sure there can only be one reaction per event. Plus the enemy gets the choice to react first. If you attacked steelheart and he had fatal reposte for example, he could react with the hat, thus preventing the reaction on this card from even occurring.

It’s an upgrade that grants a reaction after an attack that has failed against steelheart.

That’s how we played it on Friday. Steelheart killing the opponent before he swings against his allies was also cinematic.

Here’s one that popped up last night. An attack action that targets each enemy within 1 hits steelheart first. This attack fails and steelheart performs the fatal reposte reaction, killing the attacker. Does this reaction (and death of the attacker) prevent the attacker from finishing his combat and hitting the rest of the opponents within 1 hex?

Very nice looking Deathrattle. I'm looking forward to painting models from each faction with Shadespire!