Michigan Cup Thoughts from a Player

Michigan Cup has come and gone and it couldn't have run any better. Cliff H., our PG, did a great job keeping everything running and the matchups going. Geneguard did a great job organizing and keeping people focused. It was a lot of work to set up all the terrain and tables... so tired!




I have to say I had high hopes going into this event. I hoped to win two games and go 2-3 at least. I have been practicing a TON lately and thought I had my lists down pat. That flew out the window first round as I had to face down JVM, lol. The guy who has won numerous events, has his own netlist, and has an 80+ page thread devoted to him answering every question under the sun. Raargh.

Needless to say I went down pretty quick in round one. I threw down my Xerxis / Mammoth list to attempt to stack armor and hopefully keep my dudes alive and score some scenario points. Jake's list was so damn fast and the Saeryn feat meant I basically didn't move up far enough. It was tough.

My second round had me face off with the only other Skorne player there, Jon. He brought Makeda3 and Hexeris. I had Xerxis and Makeda3. We were playing Divide and Conquer 1, which means you have to use each caster at least once. I chose to bring Makeda3 because I felt like Mammoth would go down quickly to heavy Skorne beasts.

He chose Makeda3 as well and it was a dance of "don't assassinate me bro". Jon managed to initiate the piece trade and do a great job of it so I lost my heavies first. He used Incendiarii... so annoying! He pulled out a tough win.

My third game had me going up against Cryx and Brian from RIW. I haven't had a ton of chances to play Cryx lately so I don't know a whole lot about their units or casters... just that they're annoying. He chose eDenny with bile thralls, Deathjack, and ghost pirates. I chose Xerxis and mammy. I felt like the immortals would help against the ghost pirates because they have magic weapons.

I believe I won the roll to go first but he may have won it. Either way he got to deploy second and put his ghost pirates on the total other side from my immortals, and the immortals are too slow to re-deploy to take them on. I was stuck sending one-wound immortals up against bile thralls; even with Defenders Ward at armor 19 they weren't going to survive =/.

My Skorne army on the my new Mechanika Studios tray.

I still managed to have a chance, but failed three frenzy checks on one fury on each beast, losing a whole turn and the game right there. Just couldn't pull it out after that. Brian did everything he had to to bring me down.

I felt like I could probably have taken the previous two games, or made them better games, if I had changed a few things. My first game I could have done better at the piece trade. My second game I should have brought Makeda3 with the infantry. eDenny's feat and the bile thralls just shut down all my high arm stuff. Makeda3 could have walked through all those bile thralls.

Game four I went up against Mike from Saginaw and his pigs. I had played him a few weeks ago with his Lord Carver list and it was tough. He has a lot of girded dudes who don't suffer blast damage and he can put out a ton of damage quickly.

I managed to get up the board and into the zone fast enough to set the line of battle. I also had fate walker going with the Tycom bonus so at the end of the turn Makeda could advance backwards 8". Insane! Makes it really nice for her to go up, do damage, then retreat.

In one turn I managed to get Makeda up to get Carver down to 2 boxes (and she had Takedown up too from the reptile hound... so he couldn't tough). I retreated back and put things in front of her so she would't die. I had fortunately knocked out some parts of the beasts so they couldn't do as much damage to me.

Again I advanced up with Makeda and Vortex of Destruction absolutely wrecked the Batten Down the Hatches'd especially with P+S 17 Makeda at the helm. It went to dice down and I won. I probably would have killed his caster with a little more time.

Near the start.

Near the end.

My final game was against Damian from GS. He has been bugging me to play and we haven't played yet. Damian has played for a while but has really been getting into it deep in the last few weeks. He played a TON of practice games. He used Rahn, Hyperion, two units of mittens, an extra heavy, vengeance sword guys? and one unit of stormfall archers.

My Xerxis armor brick is a pretty dang good Ret hard counter, even though a lot of their guys are no blast damage. I moved up with my Cetrati and shield walled the flag. On the left my Immortals moved up and beat up his mittens. He got a charge off with his Hyperion vs my Mammoth (after stopping it up with his extra jack) but didn't kill mammoth. Mammoth has a ton of HP and arm even without Defenders Ward. Then the Mammoth wrecked Hyperion pretty quickly and mopped up.

It was a tough game for Damian as he hasn't played this type of list before. We'll play again for sure.

Overall, I had a ton of fun. I was a bit disheartened after my first three games because I thought I could have done better, but the turnout, all the dudes from all over, seeing all the sweet armies... it was a great time. MICUP couldn't have been done better.

I had thought I could have been towards the middle of the pack, but some great play from opponents, poor dice, and weird decisions put me in the bottom third. I am going to try to practice even more for Warmachine Weekend and do myself and my club proud.

I really think this game has taken over my hobby mind and time. I used to be primarily a 40k gamer with some WMH, Flames of War, WHFB, etc on the side. Now I'm primarily a WMH gamer with the other games (minus FoW) on the side including Infinity. The game is so damn good and the company supporting it does almost everything they can to get your support. It is an awesome time to be a gamer.