So my goal, as stated last week, was to get my shiny new Deathbot Battle Box assembled, primed and painted in time to get some games at the battle box level in Thursday night at Heroes World.  After enlisting the help of a friend and mentor, as well as the dastardly enabler who got me into this whole tabletop miniatures fiasco in the first place, to help me paint my shiny new toys I managed over the course of the evenings Monday through Wednesday to get paint on models, and to succeed at my goal!

And yes, I know that the light Vectors have 360 LOS so no arc markings were required, however I wanted to put them on there for another reason altogether.  In honour of the guy who valiantly helped me paint my Vectors, and who worked slavishly upon these two specifically, I named the models for  him.

 

My goal here is to go back with a finer brush and put some white in the middle of the letters to imitate the power glow on these Vectors and make the names pop a bit more.  Either way, I owe my friend a large debt for this, and will be eternally grateful.

Let’s look at them some more, and you tell me what you think, shall we?

I am very pleased with how easily the No Quarter issue #48 painting article translated to finished models.  Often i wonder about the amounts or ratios of paint used when an article is given to us, however I found this one to be very forgiving and accurate, making it easy to follow the simple, and short, steps to getting these models table ready.  Now I know I won’t win any awards, and I have a lot to learn when it comes to painting, but I am enjoying how they turned out and can happily play these guys as fully painted and based for the foreseeable future.

 

 

So with models painted and based, a few opponents lined up and some new faction tokens and a bunch of dice in hand I converged upon the local gaming shop to get in as many games as I could while everyone basked in the glow of a shiny new faction book (I now know a new faction book is required to reduce table talk and distract gamers when I want to play a game…).  So let’s go over how I did briefly, and my thoughts on how the faction played, shall we?

Round 1:
Gorten Battle Box vs Deathbots

• Convergence are slow, and get hammered from range by Blasters. Powerful shot is a thing.
• Auto-Repair JM ability is good, but not as OMGAMAZEBALLS good as I thought. Rolling 1-2 still means you heal 1, and that may not be much on the bizarre damage grid of the Vectors.
• Mitigator and Cipher have ranged atacks on their cards, but this is far more deceiving than I thought. Range 7 is just very short, and doing 1 pt to a Warjack in MM/T&C just isn’t enough, even if you are knocking it down. Cipher with RNG 11 is better, but SPD 4 means his threat from range is 15″ but then you are limited to either POW 6 blast damage, rough terrain template or -2 DEF. Can either shoot for limited options or keep running to get him engaged.
• amusing that it took all three Blasters to leave the Mitigator at 1 box, opponent was very unhappy about this. My opponent made a mistake on Gorten’s feat, I let him take it back and do it properly and he got me with both barrels followed by powerful shot from the final Blaster. Cipher took out the Driller easily with 3 Focus on the Feat turn so that was fulfilling. C’est la vie.

Round 2:
Deathbots vs Broken Cryx (Lich3, Malice, Slayer and Stalker)

• Masterseck was going to give me a “ham n egger” list, but then read up on Syntherion and made this list. Not sure what he was thinking, but hoo-boy this was just unpleasant. Malice dragged the Cipher up and laid into him, Reconstruct allowed me to move him from the Slayer and block a lane, but he still removed it again and Syntherion ate a Lich3 charge.
• Nothing to learn here, I played 5 pts down, had no chance of taking his two heavies off the table and was continuously threatened by the Stalker on a Flank.

Round 3:
Losebots vs Blindwater (Rask, Wrassler, Swamp Horror and Bull Snapper)

• Still playing down 5pts, my locals must really dislike me.
• Rask has Eiryss2’s disruption bolt that strips upkeeps. Syntherion was not amused. Guess what happened to Reconstruct?
• Wrassler ate a Cipher, Rask was disrupting my Induction, and two lights with little damage output cannot stop two heavies and a light.
• Felt the impact of Disruption here, saved Syntherion by a canny use of Magnetic Hold spell, which is so good. Still died though, should have boosted the Galvanizer’s melee attack to try and get Crit Grievous Wounds to prevent Wrassler from healing and being able to kill Syntherion. Noted.

Round 4:
Lamebots vs Protectorate (Feora2, Vanquisher, Crusader, max Bastions)

• Playing down 5 pts, extra targets in infantry. My tears are delicious to my opponents. New player, and she is just playing what she likes, so wasn’t going to make an issue of it.
• Had to be a PG and coach her on how to play, which was a bit painful on top of learning my new faction. She was struggling to remember the order of operations, so I had to just slow the game down and help her out.
• Reconstructing Cipher behind the Vanquisher with a straight line and LOS to Feora2 was a good thing. Won by taking the time to get Feat, Synergy and do some work before sending in a repaired for 3pts Cipher at Feora. Feated shot of -2 DEF hit after initial charge attack hit, was at +3 to attack and damage rolls so MAT 9 and P+S 21. Got a WIN! Also didn’t lose a Vector aside from the reconstructing Cipher, so that was a plus. Still felt like a strange win, however being able to place within 3″ after Reconstructing is a pretty big deal, especially if someone doesn’t see the possibility and you do. Why hello Hail Mary play, I think I will try you, TYVM.

Round 5:
Sadbots vs. Khador (Butcher1, Decimator and Kodiak)

• Still playing down in pts I believe, as this is one of the published “alt” battle boxes, but I think it clocks in at more than 10 pts. (12 I think?)
• Hindsight being what it is, after facing the shooting onslaught in EVERY game played and losing all but one initiative rolls, I should have switched sides and taken the hill for some benefit rather than allowing opponents to park the shooty stuff on a hill and just proceed to pound away at my poor bots. This may have been the single biggest mistake I made after game 1, and continued to make the entire evening. I am the idiot of the evening.
• Bad allocation of Focus on Feat turn, moved Syntherion up to shoot the Decimator on a hill with Magnetic Hold, DEF 12 heavy so I need a 6, no Focus to boost and I roll a 4. Now do not have the range to charge the Cipher into it and get there, so tried to block a charge lane with the Cipher and his three FOC, shoot the rough terrain shot at it and hit. Butcher just runs by the rough terrain under his feat and kills Syntherion somewhat casually, as the Butcher does.

Overall thoughts on Convergence:

• Induction is awesome, one Focus to run a swarm of Vectors on the first few turns, or to boost a few shots and still get stuff done is as good as one would think. Disruption and proximity are exactly the limiting factors they should be, and it feels very fair and balanced though spectators continued to ooh and ahhh every time I would do any kind of Induction fun. Still some order of operations issues to nail down, but just being within 6″ of all other Vectors helps with that. Need to work on eye-balling the 6″ range.
• The Lights are really there for support, and not to do any of the heavy lifting. As cheap as they are, there wasn’t a game played where I felt they did enough work or earned back their points. Current thought is to change to an Inverter, Cipher and a Galvanizer at 14pts to make a much more solid battlegroup. Still slow, and victimized by range, but far greater output potential and likely to do more work.
• Syntherion was a ton of fun, and though I was unsure of it on paper, he is solid and able to get stuff done in melee. Being a weapon platform himself on his feat turn is cool, and gives lots of options in the game. He is a good way to start up the Synergy chain on his feat turn so long as there is something easy to hit within his charge range.
• Lack of Reach is huge in this faction, and I had to explain to every player that no, none of my stuff had reach. Galvanizer at the least should have it with his long nose-saw IMHO, but alas it was not to be. Inverter has reach, and that’s it for the faction in the current releases.
• Prime Axiom is a huge asset to this battlegroup as what I really wanted was to be able to drag something from range so my Cipher could kill it. I seemed to get Alpha’d a lot and the Vectors are nowhere near as durable as other faction’s options. Being able to drag something for my heavies to chew up would be huge, and seems like the way to go for Syntherion. PA and Double Ciphers seems to me to be a nasty but fun combo, and a Galvanizer or two to repair would be the sweet spot, on top of the DEF debuffs that are out there for Convergence.
• Being a Cygnar player hurt me here, because I really operated under the assumption that 2 lights do a fair bit of work, having been spoiled by a Charger and lancer backed up by an Ironclad. This BBox, had I spent the time to look at it in a proper light, is really a Cipher supported by a Warcaster and two lights. It needs a playstyle adjustment to function properly. I did not adjust appropriately.

Overall pleased with getting a single win. Some games were laughably skewed, but I said I didn’t want to be treated lightly so I got my robotic face pushed in a lot, and rightly so. It has helped me to see the hard truths of this BBox, and likely some of the truths to the faction.


Really looking forward to expanding my options and playing more games with the Convergence next week, all fully painted. Inverter is primed and ready for paint, bought an Army Painter Silver primer last night to see if that will go over a black primer and help with the early coverage of silver paint. Anything to help speed up the painting process.


Okay, that’s my update from game night.  More as soon as I play again!

 

May all your blades be sharp,

– NB