Terrain: Water, Open Graves, Lava

 A large amount of the terrain I've been building has been restricted. I've built a Cygnar Watchtower, a Rhulic bunker, and a gallows (all in forthcoming articles here) and they're all restricted. So this week, I'm going to look at a few terrain pieces that you can actually walk on or through.

 

First, something relative simple: a lake. For this, I began with a base of thin plywood. It's difficult to cut, but when I've used balsa I've found that it warps. 

 

Trimming the corners from the plywood with a box cutter was difficult, but doable. From there, I rolled modeling clay into a tube and wrapped the edged to form a rim which would hold in the water. After the clay dried, I painted it brown and the bottom of the lake blue.

 

Lastly, the key step: soft clear-drying acrylic gel gloss which I picked up at the local hobby store. I spread that on, let it dry overnight, and voila. This one was easy.

Next up, a piece specific to steamroller 2021: The open grave terrain. It's specified as a piece 2 inches by 3 inches, so I cut the plywood to the correct size, and began with the same rim I'd put on the lake, painted brown. But this time, I first glued down some grass flock, and then some coarse sand on top. Again, quite easy.

The final piece was a bit less easy. Similarly to how I'd wanted a piece that caused continual corrosion when I created the sludgehouse, I wanted a terrain piece here which would cause continuous fire damage. "Burning Earth" sounds so generic. What about lava?

My inspiration began when I found a hunk of asphalt outside which looked like it might be volcanic rock. Throwing it against the ground a couple times broke off a few perfect-sized chunks for terrain.

I began with an oddly-shaped piece of thin plywood as a base, and created a deeper clay rim along three sides of the edge, thinking that the lava would be flowing up from underground. This rim got painted black, and I super glued appropriately-sized pieces of asphalt to it. Then I painted the center yellow, and after it dried I glued down more asphalt right into the center, for models to hop across the lava if they were feeling brave or fire-immune.
 

 

 

You can see my work-in-progress piece above, and the complete terrain piece below.

Orange went atop the yellow, and red atop the orange, providing that glow effect. I even watered down some black paint and dripped it in for that cooling-lava effect. After it was done, I applied glaze to the lava to make it look shiny and wet.

It's one of my heavier terrain pieces, due to all the asphalt, but that just means it won't slide around on the table accidentally as easily as the lighter pieces.

Battle Report: Cygnar (Caine2) vs Cryx (Goreshade)

Cygnar (Sons of the Tempest)

• Captain Allistair Caine
• Squire
• Hurricane
• Arcane Tempest Rifleman
• Journeyman Warcaster
• Sentinel (Southwest)
• Lieutenant Bastian Falk
• Hermit of Henge Hold
• Gun Mage Captain Adept (Roger)
• Gun Mage Captain Adept (Buford)
• Captain Arlan Strangewayes
• Black 13th Strike Force
• Rangers
• Alexia & the Risen
• Arcane Tempest Gun Mages
• Arcane Tempest Gun Mages
• Field Mechanics (min)
• Field Mechanics (min)

---

Cryx (Black Industries)

• Goreshade, Lord of Ruin
• Kraken
• Necrotech
• Necrotech
• Necrotech
• Gorman Di Wolfe
• Bane Lord Tartarus
• Bane Riders
• Bane Knights (max)
• Bane Knight Officer
• Bane Warriors
• Bane Warrior Officer & Standard
• Bane Warriors
• Bane Warrior Officer & Standard

---

Deployment

In this game, both of us were playing somewhat unfamiliar armies. I was playing gun mages for the first time in years, and using the hermit for the first time. He was running Goreshade for the first time, and playing banes for the first time since Mk2. He started the game mistakenly thinking that banes still had stealth. Thankfully we figured it out before it caused too much trouble.

The scenario was Invasion. My opponent won the roll and chose the side with the two forests and the flat house, which I'd originally wanted because rangers and Black 13th get stealth with concealment, but in the end the kraken was his only model with ranged attacks, so it didn't matter. I got the side with a central wall and a burnt out L-shaped building. Also central lava to hide behind.

I chose the observatory objective and he chose wreckage.

---

Cygnar Turn 1

Cygnar runs forward. Taking a spot behind the objective, Cygnar realizes that getting past that objective with a huge base will be an issue. Caine gets heightened reflexes, Falk gets bullet dodger, a Gun Mage Captain Adept gets fire for effect, and the Hurricane gets arcane shield from the journeyman warcaster.

Given that the kraken has a 5 inch AoE, I'm very careful to space out models.

---

Cryx Turn 1

 

Banes flood forward. They've places two clouds touching the forests, which do an excellent job of blocking line of sight. The Bane Riders get occultation, and the kraken gets Infernal Machine. Gorman hides behind the objective.

---

Cygnar Turn 2

 

The arcane tempest rifleman aims and kills Gorman. Rangers run forward within five inches of the bane warriors, killing a few, and it's not until a few more activations that both of us realize that bane warriors no longer have stealth, only prowl. So gun mages kill a number of them, and a thrall warrior charges the two in the cloud, missing. The gun mages in the other zone can do nothing but spread out.

---

Cryx Turn 2

Bane riders charge and kill all but one gun mage in the closer unit, as well as Buford the gun mage captain adept. The kraken says YOLO and charges the sentinel, which astoundingly survives.

Banes in the far zone charge. And while they can't reach the gun mages, the rangers take some casualties. All in all, the zone is a mess.

(Cryx 0, Cygnar 0)

---

Cygnar Turn 3

Roger takes out a bane officer, and the unit of gun mages and the rangers kill a lot of banes before Alexia's risen charge in to block. The Black 13th shoot and they all either miss or do no damage.

The sentinel moves back to safety behind the wall and gets repaired, and the hurricane gets focus from Arlan and charges into the lava to attack the kraken, taking out one side entirely.

Bastian Falk sprays three bane riders with his shotgun, setting them on fire, and the journeyman warcaster boosts a shot into another. Together, they kill three, and a fourth ends the turn on fire, although it goes out immediately.

(Cryx 0, Cygnar 0)

---

Cryx Turn 3

The kraken forgoes melee attacks on the Hurricane to shoot at Caine. The hermit uses Mad Visions to eliminate the boosted hellblaster hit on Caine entirely, and Caine ends the turn in good shape.

Banes charge the gun mages but miss, although they do kill a number of Risen and one ranger. Other banes kill the Cygnar objective. Goreshade moves from behind the building up to a spot behind the forest, which Caine takes note of, and Caine decides right then that he'll prep for the assassination.

Cryx scores one point from killing the objective, and another for the circle zone.

(Cryx 2, Cygnar 0)

---

Cygnar Turn 4

 

The sentinel is out of the journeyman's control range because I wasn't paying attention.

Caine moves up to the wall and shoots out four banes. Also, critically, he decides he's in no real danger of knockdown, but since he's now moving forward he wants to steal bullet dodger from Falk, so he lets heightened reflexes expire and instead casts bullet dodger on himself.

The repair crew moves to the hurricane and fixes it up. Gun mages continue their assault on the banes, shooting out a few of them. The risen charge in with combined melee attacks, killing two banes.

Bastian Falk walks over and blasts the banes near the hurricane with a rune marked shot, also tagging the kraken. This gives the kraken +2 damage from any magical attack. Arlan then gives the hurricane magical weapons. Next, the hurricane punches the kraken to death, but rolls badly and misses two of his attacks entirely.

Next round should be a trivial assassination for Caine, unless Goreshade flat-out flees.

(Cryx 3, Cygnar 0)

---

Cryx Turn 4

Cryx looks at the board and sees that it only needs to score 2 points to win. But then my opponent realizes that he can walk a bane over, feat, and make Caine stationary. So he does. Then two necrotechs charge and do a lot of damage to Caine. One of them was unpainted, which added insult to injury. Goreshade walks up and finishes Caine off with a siphon bolt.

(Cryx win!)

---

Final Thoughts

• I really did take the perfect army for facing banes. Gun mages kill a ARM15 or ARM16 bane fairly easily, as do rangers. And they don't care about dark shroud because they die to any hit regardless.
• If I had realized that stationary was a danger and just not spent the two focus to get bullet dodger, I'd have probably won the game.

  

Terrain: Magnetized Forest

 Forests can be great terrain pieces, but you need to be able to move the trees out of the way if a model wants to move into the forest. I've seen a number of solutions to the problem, but my personal favorite is magnetized trees.

 

 When I started this terrain piece, I had the idea of putting down fallen leaves on the forest floor. So after I cut the base out of craft plywood and painted it brown, I started looking for a leaf-shaped hole punch or something. In the end, I couldn't find one. I cut the leaves out of construction paper individually. I overlapped multiple pieces of paper so that it wouldn't be so painful, but it did still take quite a while, and I threw out a lot of badly-shaped paper leaves.

White school glue works great for gluing these down, as it becomes transparent when it dries. I also glued down a bit of scrub brush/grass stuff that I'd picked up years ago from a craft store.

  

 Magnetizing the trees was the interesting part. I had used green stuff to stick down three small metal washers before I even painted on the brown beneath the leaves. Then I carved small holes into the bottom of each tree and shoved in a small magnet, which I super glued in and covered with green stuff to prevent the magnet from being pulled out by its magnetic hold to the washer.

I also painted a small red X on each spot that held a hidden washer so that you could tell where to place the trees. It works very well.

Battle Report: Cygnar (Stryker2) vs Retribution (Issyria)

This was a game we'd played at our FLGS, The Battle Standard. I met up with a guy I'd only played once before, and we had another great game.

Cygnar (Storm Division)

• Lord Commander Stryker
• Squire
• Lancer (Gremlin)
• Ol' Rowdy
• Firefly
• Lieutenant Gwen Keller
• Major Harrison Gibbs
• Stormsmith Stormcaller
• Storm Lances (max)
• Stormsmith Storm Tower

---

Retribution of Scyrah (Forges of War)

• Issyria, Sibyl of Dawn
• Hemera
• Manticore
• Aeternae
• Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios
• Arcanist Mechanik
• Arcanist Mechanik
• House Shyeel Arcanists
• House Shyeel Battle Mages
• Soulless Escort

---

The terrain on this winter map was all from the game shop. The centerpiece was the Gale Force Nine Khador Avalanche Cannon and its reloader. A small wall was on the opposite side of that zone, and across in the other zone was a massive forest. There was a small acid bath between the zones.

Deployment

My opponent won the roll again, and this time he chose sides. He decided to take the side with the Khador Avalanche Cannon, leaving me with the bottleneck between the forest and other terrain. I decided to go first.

---

Cygnar Turn 1

The stormlance cavalry has a lot of movement, and if they move straight forward, they get shot. So they break left and head around the forest, squeezing through the tiny gap between the forest and a crater at the table's back edge.

The lancer and Ol'Rowdy take positions near the objective, and Stryker moves up base to base with Rowdy. The storm tower takes cover behind a pillar, and Gibbs hides behind the forest.

---

Retribution of Scyrah Turn 1

 

The battle mages move forward, positioning in two lines to avoid being entirely destroyed by electroleaps. The Manticore puts down covering fire in front of them. Hemera advances to Retribution's objective, and Aeternae moves into the far zone.

---

Cygnar Turn 2

The firefly moves up and takes out four battle mages with a storm blaster shot. Storm lances run around the forest and position far enough back to avoid being pulled in by battle mages and charged by the manticore. The storm tower moves up and shoots at Aeternae, but misses. Rowdy and the lancer do basically nothing.

---

Retribution of Scyrah Turn 2

 

Eiryss moves up and shoots at Stryker, and while she misses, she makes him very nervous. Hemera and the manticore put shots into the firefly and Rowdy, damaging both. Aeternae moves up and shoots Rowdy with an armor piercing shot.

Scoring begins, and Retribution scores both zones.

(Retribution 2, Cygnar 0)

---

Cygnar Turn 3

 

The storm lances move up and take out the rest of the battle mages with lightning shots, and one runs to engage the manticore. The storm tower disrupts Aeternae.

The lancer moves up and says “Come get some”. Rowdy moves base to base with Stryker, preparing to countercharge.

(Retribution 2, Cygnar 0)

---

Retribution of Scyrah Turn 3

Aeternae charges Ol'Rowdy and destroys him. The manticore walks over and takes out two storm lances. Hemera moves forward and beats up on the lancer, losing two cortex boxes in the attempt.

(Retribution 2, Cygnar 0)

---

Cygnar Turn 4

 

The firefly moves up and shoots at an arcanist, the lightning leaping into Issyria and two more arcanists, frying them. The storm lances charge and destroy the manticore.

Then Stryker overloads for three dice, gaining eleven points of strength and bringing his POW up to 26. He feats, destroys Aeternae, velocities up to Hemera, and destroys her as well. Gibbs hands Stryker a hot meal, healing him. Then his feat allows everyone to reposition. The tables have turned: only Issyria and two mechaniks remain.

(Retribution 2, Cygnar 1)

---

Retribution of Scyrah Turn 4

(no image)

The only chance Ret has is an unlikely assassination. Issyria flies over the Avalanche Cannon and puts blinding light onto Stryker, lowering his defense. Then the two arcanists make force strikes at Stryker, but miss.

(Retribution 2, Cygnar 3)

---

Cygnar Turn 5

Stryker overloads for just two dice, so as to not risk cooking himself to death, and kills Issyria.

(Cygnar Win!)

---

Final Thoughts

• Having Stryker overload and kill two Retribution heavies the same turn that the stormlances took out the manticore was a huge swing.
• It's been a while since I've played stormlances, and I forgot how good they are.
• Retribution jacks are dangerous at range. They did some serious damage to my warjacks before anyone closed to melee.
• My opponent's dice were insane in this game, rolling near max on probably half of his rolls.

Terrain: Sludgehouse

This was one of my first terrain projects, earlier this year. I'd created custom terrain before, back in 2017, but this was my first in a while, and I hadn't previously used clay, acrylic, gesso, or a few other things I'm now using.

We had no acid bath terrain pieces; nothing with continual corrosion. I thought up a pumphouse type of building which was spewing out toxic waste, and this was the final result.

 

 

The building is simply four pieces of craft plywood, attached with tape on the interior. I then spread a thin layer of modeling clay over that, and cut a small rectangle out of the clay on the front for a door. I cut a small piece of balsa wood, painted that, and we had a door. 

 

The roof was a bit of a pain. After cutting out two roof pieces and the two triangles for the sides, I did my best to assemble them, which was a pain. Then clay went over that as well, and I used a toothpick to carve tile shapes, which worked... kind of.

The sludge was a separate piece. Three thin levels in all, with clay forming a tiny hill. I let green paint collect in the center, and glazed it to give it that shiny caustic look. The outside got painted brown, and then I put down white glue to stick down the craft sand.

I painted a section of bendy straw black, shoved it into the clay at the back of the house, and got a bit of the green sludge into the pipe, dripping out its bottom.

All in all, it's not my favorite terrain piece, but it was one of my first since back in 2017. Stay tuned - the projects get better.

Battle Report: Cygnar (Stryker1) vs Cryx (Deneghra1)

This was a fun Friday night game at my friend's house. I brought a variation on one of my oldest and most favorite Stryker1 lists, and he brought his first-ever caster, Denny1.

 

Cygnar (Storm Division)

• Commander Coleman Stryker
• Squire
• Lancer (Gremlin)
• Centurion (Molehill)
• Centurion (Hardship)
• Storm Strider
• Journeyman Warcaster
• Charger (Scarecrow)
• Eiryss, Mage Hunter
• Journeyman Lieutenant Allister Caine
• Ace
• Field Mechanics
• Alexia & the Risen

---

 

Cryx (Black Industries)

• Warwitch Deneghra
• The Withershadow Combine
• Barathrum
• Ripjaw
• Ripjaw
• Corruptor (Grim)
• Hellslinger Phantom
• Pistol Wraith
• Pistol Wraith
• Ol' Grim
• Bloat Thrall
• Gorman Di Wulfe
• Bile Thralls (min)
• Skarlock Commander
• Necro surgeon & Stitch Thralls
• Necro surgeon & Stitch Thralls
• Mechanithralls (min)
• Croe's Cutthroats

---

Deployment

I'd played my friend and his evil, evil Denny lists before, and I had a clue that he'd be bringing her again, so I brought a list I'd built entitled “How do you solve a problem like Deneghra?”, which had Ace for true sight and Eiryss to mess with Denny should she get too close.

We rolled Scenario 1: King of the Hill, and the terrain was very woodsy - I've never played on a table with four forests. The left side had three forests lined up, and the right had two small lakes and the Khador building frame.

My opponent won the roll and chose the side with all the forests. He chose the observatory to deal with Eiryss, and I chose the observatory to deal with Denny.

---

Cygnar Turn 1

Cygnar runs forward. The centurions both get arcane shields, the storm strider gets snipe, and Eiryss gets blur, making her DEF19 against shooting.

---

Cryx Turn 1

Cryx moves up cautiously. This is why I went first - now they have to fear my shooting.

---

Cygnar Turn 2

The storm strider and charger shoot out one of the ripjaws. One centurion runs to engage the other ripjaw, and the other centurion runs up to the flag. Both centurions get polarity field.

Eiryss disrupts the corruptor, and Ace and Caine shoot at some of the Cutthroats.

---

Cryx Turn 2

Deneghra feats, and The Withering makes everyone sad. The mechanithralls charge and destroy the Cygnar objective.

With Denny's feat, the bile thralls need a 6 to hit a thrall warrior, and every one misses. Barathrum also misses. Ol'Grim finally kills it.

The central centurion gets Gorman's rust bomb, Deneghra's parasite, a pistol wraith makes it stationary, and I think there's a token in there somewhere that says he got a piña colada. It's just too many tokens. Barathrum charges in and puts the centurion out of his misery. Ol'Grim sets the centurion on fire.

Cryx scores a point for having destroyed the objective, although I'm not certain why they didn't score the far rectangular zone - perhaps the entire unit wasn't inside.

(Cryx 1, Cygnar 0)

---

Cygnar Turn 3

The storm strider charges the unit of mechanithralls and lightning goes everywhere, wrecking the whole unit.

The remaining centurion walks up and destroys the Cryx objective, but fails to kill the ripjaw because he's withered.

Eiryss gets fire for effect, planning on walking up and shooting Deneghra with a boosted RAT 9 shot to disrupt her, but is about a quarter inch too far away, so she disrupts the corruptor again. Afterwards, my opponent points out that if she had moved up, she would have been countercharged by Barathrum, so it seems that plan was doomed from the start.

Stryker gives himself snipe and disrupts Barathrum. He also channels arcane shield onto the storm strider and feats.

Cryx gets no points this turn, Cygnar gets one for the far zone and one for destroying the objective.

(Cryx 1, Cygnar 2)

---

Cryx Turn 3

Both helljacks are disrupted, and Stryker's +5 armor feat is up. This is going to be a tough turn for Cryx. Cryx spends an inordinate amount of time trying to kill the thrall warrior on the flag. Barathrum finally charges Eiryss and misses. Denny casts dark seduction on Eiryss and walks her in backwards, Gorman blind bombs her, and the skarlock commander shoots her in the back, killing her. My personal fear was that Denny would seduce Eiryss into shooting and disrupting Stryker, but that didn't happen.

Other than that, Cryx struggles with Stryker's feat this turn.

Cygnar scores a zone, Cryx scores the flag.

(Cryx 2, Cygnar 3)

---

Cygnar Turn 4

The lancer moves up to Barathrum and takes out his cortex, then the risen charge, CMA, and do a little.

The centurion moves up and tries to kill the corruptor, but fails. He does kill the bloat thrall with his shield, and it blows up like a disgusting balloon full of bile, afflicting the centurion with continuous corrosion, while the corruptor is immune. Now the centurion is corroded and on fire.

Ace and Caine take out most of Croe's Cutthroats, but are not able to take out the last one and clear the zone. The charger and storm strider take out much of the blob of infantry between the two far zones.

The only point this turn is Cygnar for the far zone.

(Cryx 2, Cygnar 4)

---

Cryx Turn 4

Bile thralls move forward and purge, killing all of Alexia's risen and the thrall warrior, and damaging the lancer. Barathrum fails to kill the lancer.

Denegra casts parasite on the centurion, and the last cutthroat charges. He and the ripjaw aren't able to significantly injure the centurion.

(Cryx 2, Cygnar 5)

---

Cygnar Turn 5

The fully-loaded lancer finishes off Barathrum, the fully-loaded centurion finishes off the corruptor, ripjaw, and cutthroat. Caine finishes off Ol'Grim.

The journeyman warcaster runs forward, and Cygnar scores all three zones and the flag.

(Cryx 2, Cygnar 8)

(Cygnar Win!)

---

Final Thoughts

• I'd initially thought that moving the centurion into such a vulnerable spot on turn 2 was a mistake, but perhaps spending it to take up so many of Denny's resources on her feat turn was a good use.
• My opponent's dice this game were just terrible. I rolled slightly above average in general - really well early on, then had some bad dice towards the end.
• The storm strider into low-armor infantry is just bonkers, especially when it rolls a lot of lightning generator leaps.

Re-entry: A Statement of Intent

 It's been over three years since I've posted here. My friends and I put down Warmachine for over a year before the pandemic hit. Then, the pandemic hit.

Recently, over the past couple months, we've been playing again. I've been building lists and making lots of terrain. I plan to start posting here, sharing the games we've played, the terrain I've built, and my thoughts on the game. 

I'm still playing Cygnar. I'll likely post battle reports as before, and possibly my views on what models are good and in what scenarios. 

But to start, I'll largely be sharing all the terrain pieces I've been putting together, because there are quite a few. I had started out by doing an image search for Warmachine Terrain, and I found a lot of inspiration. I even tried to copy a few pieces exactly, with varying levels of success. Mainly, I found inspiration. Some of my terrain has come out pretty good, other pieces not so much. 

I don't think Warmachine is in the same place as it was back in 2016 when I was playing more, which is too bad. When I'd looked for warmachine blogs, I found very few. Many of the blogs and discussion boards I used to follow have gone silent. But my hope is that there's a revival of sorts. I hope to be part of a local revival, at the least. This is a great game.

Stay tuned.