Now, don't fall over, I played a game of something!

That's right folks, on Tuesday night I played my first game of anything for far longer than I care to remember.

My Tuesday night apathy with regard to actually playing a game has become somewhat legendary, normally I end up taking work down there with me and do that whilst serving the rest of the club goers snacks and drinks (and no, before you ask, I don't dress up as a butler). All of that changed this week however!

We're starting a Journeyman league in January (hmm, JanuaryJourneyMan, or something more catchy...) and so  I dusted off the pirates (the 'starter' is Bart, Mariner, Buccaneer and Freebooter) and had a game against the equivalent Rhulic 'starter' (Gorten, three gunners and a driller).

It was a fun game and I had a reasonable chance of clinching it (needed to roll 9 on 3d6 to hit with Bart's big AOE, but rolled a ridiculous 5 or something) but in the end the Driller tore a new one for both my heavy jacks and those tough little gunners blew up my buccaneer.

Still, I made some silly mistakes. Forgot my feat twice (and by the time I remembered it, it was too late to be worth it) and got some of the sequencing wrong. Still, it was good fun and, well, C'est la vie!

Reflecting on the format of Journeyman I was left considering whether to stick with Bart and his crew (I have *lots* of pirates already) or to go with what I had thought would be my choice, Trollbloods (I have quite a few of them as well.) The one thing that bothers me about the Troll starter is its lack of a Heavy beast. Even in the jump to 15pts I won't be able to fit one in and it could really leave me struggling to take down the big stuff that the likes of Skorne, Rhulics, Khador and so forth have built into their starter. But (and because this is Trolls, it's a BIG but - ha ha ha!) this is Trolls and they are awesome and I have Mulg waiting in the wings...

As always, these events also bring out the debate of how fair Warmahordes is as a mixed gaming format. There seems to be a general feeling agreed in our club that Hordes players have it easier. They don't have to pre-judge their focus allocations and they can intentionally combine their feat with an 'over-amping' of fury to create a 'mega turn' if they really want to go for the win. Warmachine has neither of those options and it's certainly not clear to me that a beast raging out due to fury overload is that much of a penalty, especially if the reason they've gone nuts relates to a 'mega turn' in the previous round.

It should be a brilliant league, we have all of the patches and so on to play it all with and loads of people bought their starters at the Winter Open Day. Plenty of people planning to accumulate bonus points all over the place with painting, though I think some have neglected to read the bit about the models having to be from your chosen faction (i.e. allies/mercs/anything not in your chosen faction won't count), though it is nice that you don't have to use whatever you paint for your faction over that time.

I feel like I'm lacking a conclusion here... Er... Playing games is fun (even when you lose), the Journeyman league is going to be great and cheese is the best foodstuff in the universe. Sorted.

- rob