Guest Article: Billy Nichols "Nirvanawn" on Fatherhood and Warmachine

Well it has been about two years since I have written an article about Warmachine/Hordes. I miss the mental exercise, and it's good to be back.

They main reason I haven’t had a chance to write is due to one of the best things to ever happen, fatherhood.

 

Picture of my son Hunter May 2017.

Now one may assume that you have to give up Warmachine once you become a parent and this does not have to be the case!

Let me explain.

Of course gaming and hobbying time has been harder to come by, but what I have found is that you might just have to change your habits if you want to fit it in to “Life”.

Personally, I needed Warmachine to be a release away from the seriousness of life. So I have done a few things to make sure I can still play, and play at a higher level.

1. Pared down my factions. I now only own Minions and Circle, though recently I did purchase a small lot of Cryx (I got it for cheap, who knows what I was thinking or if I will play it). I used to own Mercs, Trolls, and Khador as well at one time. I may have had a problem.
2. Played a single faction for a long period of time (minimum of 6 months) with no switching.
3. Concentrate on a handful of casters at a time instead of the whole faction for practice and tournament play.
4. Paint or have painted the models I am actually going to put on the table.

So let’s highlight my points:

Pared Down Factions

I am lucky enough that after the birth of my son I was not wanting for money, but I realistically knew that my time would be crunched - especially when the school semester was in session (I teach college biology).

My goal was to continue being competitive at tournaments, as I had normally been, but in doing so I needed to be a little more focused. I figured the best way to do this was by limiting my chances of faction ADD, so by having fewer models/factions in house it helped keep my focus on a specific faction and set of casters to play. Speaking of which....

Play a Faction for a Long Period

This one is obvious. The longer you play a faction the better you get with it. You start to find all the small nuances in the models, and basic things such as instant recall of your models' stats becomes second nature.

Once you are to this point it is easier to figure out what your opponents will do against you and you become faster on clock, and for this reason I chose to make sure that I played a single faction for a long stretch.

Up until recently, outside of a game or two, I played minions in all of the competitive tourneys I had gone to in mark 3. Before that, even before my son was born, I played Circle for over a year. I got so comfortable with them that even coming back in a new edition for the last month has felt great. Yes, the tactics are different, but re-learning all of the stats was easy.

Concentrate on a Few Casters

Along with my last point when you find yourself playing similar pieces over and over you figure out their weaknesses, strengths, and minor nuances that will make you a stronger player.

Nothing is more important to do this with then a caster. I used to find myself, even though I was not switching factions, changing up the casters I played very often. In mark 2, I made Krueger 2 my main and my second caster kept alternating. This led to me being relatively confident in both lists.

Now, I play the same three casters and learn them in and out, until I am comfortable into their matches. With mark 3 so far this was Rask, Barnabus, and Doctor Arkadius. Now that I have changed back to Circle it has been Baldur 2, Una 2, and Mohsar (Gasp no Wurmwood!). Baldur 2 with at least 1 Woldwrath being at the core of my pairing.

Paint What I am Playing

More and more events seem to be fully painted or have painting awards, so I like to try to keep up on my painted models. This can be extremely hard as often times it feels like you spend game time painting. The way I get around this, since it is hard to come up with large chunks of time to paint, is to paint for an hour or more after the little dude goes to bed.

I find it helps relax me before bed, especially when the alternative is to grade papers. It took me awhile to realize that this was my only real choice if I wanted painted material and not get everything commissioned.

Commission painted models are always an alternative choice though if you can find someone affordable. I used to paint 3-4 hours at a time and complete models in that time. Now, I just do what I can and if I am consistent at 2-3 nights a week then projects will be completed. A little bit at a time really adds up fast.

Conclusion

I love the game and I am still glad it is part of my life. With all these points about playing and hobbying there is a couple things to the equation when it comes to playing Warmachine and fatherhood for me.

I could not keep this up if my wife and my gaming friends did not support me. My wife understands my Thursday night gaming habits, plus the occasional tournament, and never has a problem with it. My friends are always supportive if I have to run upstairs to help my wife with the little dude or need to pick him up from daycare before we play. Without them I could not do it.

Feel free to reach out to me if you want to discuss anything about the article or have your own stories of being a Warmachine playing parent.

-Nirvanawn (Billy Nichols)

Seattle Open Thoughts and Reflections

Prologue:

The Seattle Open was last weekend, and I had been prepping pretty hard for it. I'd dojo'd out some sweet tech for Wurmwood with a Moonhound Argus and Woldwyrds a-plenty, and I had also decided to bring a massive ARM skew with Baldur 2 and two Woldwraths.

I had all my tokens, my templates, and other knick-knacks all ready to go. I even had a water bottle, which doesn't always happen.

I ended up going 1-1 and dropping, and the games I played were both pretty emotionally wrenching and tilting, so I won't be doing full on battle reports for them.

I would first like to make a SERIOUS disclaimer - this is all from my perspective, and I am human, flawed, and deeply biased towards myself.

That being said, I am going to do my best to give an objective accounting of what happened. I'm not looking for pity, nor for condemnation, although I might deserve a little of both. The goal is, as usual, to be informative, helpful, and honest.


Game 1:

Game 1 I was dropped into a Cygnar player who had Haley 2 and Caine 3. I dropped Baldur 2 and away we went.

The game went pretty much as expected. I slowly killed off his Shadowfire models and he killed off everything but my Woldwraths.

Caine's feat turn only did about 15 damage to one Woldwrath after completely taking out Megalith, and I healed the Wrath up to 5 boxes off full.

At this point my opponent proceeded to one round a Woldwrath with pow 12 shooting.

Needless to say, I was fairly frustrated after that turn, especially since over the course of the game my opponent had gotten minor rules on his models incorrect and I'd helped him remember. Examples include Ace having a Shadowfire gun, the Squire only being speed 6, etc.

The following turn, in order to keep my remaining Woldwrath away from Caine, he ran.

He measured 4 inches, placed Caine. Measured 4 more inches, placed Caine. Measured an additional four inches and placed Caine again. He then measured 4 more inches directly away from the Woldwrath and placed Caine once more.

Side note for those who don't play Cygnar - Caine is speed 7, so he can run 14 inches, not the 16 my opponent had attempted to.

At this point, I made a massive mistake. I informed my opponent that Caine was only speed 7, took my 2 inch widget, and bumped Caine back 2 inches from his ending position.

My opponent finished his turn, shoving everything he could in front of the Woldwrath, and at the end of the turn we realized that Baldur was now in charge distance of Caine, and indeed charged and killed him the next turn.

Now, this was massively not okay on my side, and I realize that. First of all, I should never be touching another person's models at a tournament unless I have their permission to. Secondly, I didn't call a judge.

That is the big one right there.

In this situation, I should have raised my hand, screamed "JUDGE" at the top of my lungs, and had the TO come over and resolve the situation. I am fairly certain that the TO would have ruled similarly to what I ended up doing, but this way it would have been legitimate and not given me a fairly illegitimate win.

I would like to say that I wasn't thinking clearly, that I was on tilt after an absolutely unreal turn of dice play by my opponent and after a game of constant corrections, and I was, but the truth of the matter is that NONE OF THAT MATTERS and what I did was WRONG.

I am not proud of that game, and I will remember it for the rest of my life. If my opponent from that round reads this, please know that I am incredibly sorry and that it will never happen again.

.........................

I nearly dropped after that game, and I almost wish I had.


Game 2:

I played Wurmwood into Zerkova 1. The details of the game don't really matter except for these few points:

1) My opponent had a lot of countercharging models, and at one point he forgot to clock back over to me after he did for an unspecified length of time. I feel that length of time was between a minute and a minute and a half, and my opponent felt that it was more in the 3-5 minute range.

2) I gave my opponent 1 minute of my clock.

3) At the final turn of the game, the clock was 29 seconds on my time, 3 seconds on my opponent, and the score was 3-3 tied.


.....................


On that turn, I quickly said that I wasn't doing anything with any of my models, and clocked over with 14 seconds of time remaining.

My opponent instantly clocked back to me, and I clocked right back, informing him that he had a 15 second minimum turn length.

While that happened, his clock ran out.

My opponent then tossed 3 dice twice, representing a mark 2 great bear swinging at the objective, and said that he killed it and scored to 5.

I called the judge over, but because there were no bystanders able to corroborate, and my opponent believed that he actually should have had more time left on his clock than he did, the judges were unable to give a legitimate ruling and were going to give both of us a game loss.

My opponent asked if he could have ten seconds of time to move 3 iron fang pikemen with ghost walk to charge the objective and see if they killed it.

Rather than have both of us take a game loss, I agreed, and my opponent killed the objective with exact dice.


....................


Heart-wrenching is how I would describe that experience. Certainly I haven't gotten so low on clock in nearly four years of playing, and that experience is stressful.

Lessons learned here - when the clock starts to get low, call the TO over to make sure that everything is done on the level. There should have been absolutely no confusion about who won that game, but instead there was bedlam and ultimately my opponent and I were forced into a really crummy roll off to see who would take the game. Don't let this happen to you.

Furthermore, check with your judge before the event and find out their clock policy. Most judges will say that each player is responsible for clocking back their time to their opponent. Establish this before the game.

Conclusion:

I am, to put it bluntly, extremely disappointed with myself and my performance at the Seattle Open. I still need to grow a lot as a player, especially as a competitive one.

I am glad that I have several months before the next large even I plan to play in. In that time, I will be focusing very hard on cleaning up my play, making my opponents and myself both accountable for our time, and in general just pushing myself to be a better player, opponent, and proponent of the game.

This won't be happening again.