Mother's Day Massacre!

     In the city of Spinespur, holidays are a great excuse to murderface your friends. Mordin56, TokenGamerChic, Belgarath97, and I your friendly neighborhood Second Class Elitist, sat down for an evening of good old fashion violence, LXG Holiday Style. Time to massacre some Muthas!

     After obligatory family time for Mother's Day, we snuck in a big four-player game of Spinespur.  We got started a lot later than we had wanted too.... about three hours or so... but we decided what the hell, it's not like any of us have to work in the morning (we all did) or were already low on sleep (we all were) or anything like that...

     So, a large part of our unit selections were making sure to showcase our Spinespur Contest models one last time before they get shipped off to Kyle. Cause, you know, it's just like the mechanic- you gotta drive the Ferrari you just worked on around the block at 90mph to make sure the new tail light works. Let's face it, it's fun playing with someone else's toys.

Dark Faith and thugs. The Dark Age
Dragyri Slinger is a zombie standing... again. 

Molatovs and the facehugger are Nightingales.
Aniel is Micheal. Dante is a Fist of G.O.D

TGC's WYSIWYG Slaughterhouse:
Pigskin, 2 Gormandizers, 2 Shacklers,
1 Squeeler Swarm, and a pair of thugs.

Everything is WYSIWYG: 3 Chainsaw thugs,
2 Blunt Thungs, 1 Short edged thug, Caretaker,
Grave Golem, and Greygun.

     We settled in with our different lists. TGC has her in-progress Slaughterhouse, supported by Treef*cker. M56 took the field with his "caretaker/greygun combo" list, using the Contest Caretaker and golem models, along with a few of the Contest Goons. His biggest gripe was the lack of Molatovs in his list, as he wanted some fresh bacon [editor's note: be careful what you wish for, buddy]. I "borrowed" Ali Alcatraz's Dark Faith force, while B97 fielded his newly acquired Men of G.O.D. agenda. Three Agendas and an open force composition list. Should be fun. As an aside, we were really happy that there were a total of 6 model substitutions in a 550+ total points battle, and four of those weren't released yet. (Yes, we realized that M56 had one too many thugs to be "legal." It was the easiest was to make forces balance and showcase all the new goodies.)

     We rolled for deployment, and picked corners. For our little home-made scenario, deployment zones were 6" in from the corners, stopping 7" from the edge of our corner plates- which on our current DIY Urban Table configuration was the edge of the sidewalk. (By the way, snuck in a little more work on the table and buildings... it really helped!)

DIY WIP Table- slightly more WIPed

Holy Crap, it's lit!!!

         You'll notice the two of the buildings have an unnatural glow about them.... that's due to rigging them lightkits from PoweredPlay Games.... and let me tell you it added a lot to the table. Well worth the *two minutes* it took to blue-tak them into place. Look for some neat projects next week that B97 and I are using them in, like Fallout-style "toxic zombies" and a really cool defensive position from Firebucket Games for starters.

     So, my strategy was to avoid the Men in Black...er... unprimed metal... as long as possible but still try to pull some of his models away from the Slaughterhouse front. This meant setting up on both flanks, and cutting across the table towards Mordin- I was hoping TGC would send enough at him (due to his pregame shittalking) to keep him occupied and I could get a drop of Caretaker or Greygun or both. My major downside was trying a force I'd never used before, and to be honest I didn't use them very effectively because I wasn't really studied up on their abilities.  So, remember kids, do your homework!

     Everyone deploys in your classic four-player "Mexican standoff" positioning, splitting forces to both fronts everywhere on the table. Mordin angles a little heavier towards TGC than me as I had hoped.  Early rounds sees a lot of jockeying.  Belgarath secured the construction site for the Men of G.O.D. while TGC splits the bright red roof building left and right.  Mordin does the same around the darker building, and I begin moving towards the intersection with everything.

Aww, aren't they the cutest little things you ever did see?

     Now, I know Mordin's thugs love bacon, but what I didn't know was just how much bacon loved them.  A whole flock of pigs lead by Bo Peep in a gasmask start heading that way as you can see in the picture to the left above.  Mister Happy, well, he didn't take to kindly to that, and decided Bo Peep needed to split.  First corpse token of the game.  Which was followed by a Gormandizer tearing Mister Happy into slop. Our redneck chainsaw friend attacks the Gormandizer, and the look of surprise on B97's face to find out those things have 20 wounds was priceless- he was suddenly much happier facing down some Shacklers and Pigskin.  That poor redneck didn't last too long.  Pity those Gormandizers don't have thumbs, cause there's a pair of really nice chainsaws laying on the ground... up until the Caretaker vaporizes the bodies to boost the Grave Golem.

     Meanwhile, the Fists of G.O.D. advance on the shacklers, while a Warrior of G.O.D. gives them fire support (and a Nightingale kinda stands around a bit).  Cover and range being what they are, the Warrior doesn't get much done, but the shacklers make short work of one of the Fists- the closest shackler hit and pulled, hit and pulled, and then allowed the other to finish him off on the next activation.  Pretty Gruesome to watch, and convinced B97 that I was far from his biggest threat.  All according to plan....


     During all this I keep moving to midfield, hoping to swing in behind Greygun in some way and settle a score form the last game, where he and his identical triplets made my day difficult.  Along the way, Cardinal Inferi used his ability to enter a psychic attack with a Warrior of G.O.D.
 to steal some of his melee ability.  I loose, giving him some of mine instead. Weedy Bookworm gets weedier, and the ranged combat specialist now has a right hook that would make Mike Tyson want to bite an ear off. (Okay, so not so according to plan there...)

Pigskin defending an
AWESOMELY LIT BUILDING!!

A shackler and Pigskin combo finishes off a second Fist of G.O.D. and TGC realizes that Pigskin is in a strange place:  there's a second detachment of G.O.D. looking right the hell at him, and the entire Dark Faith is standing behind them, waving.  She's not sure if I'm setting her up, setting B97 up, or just waiting to see who wins, but she wants none of it.  She backs Pigface up a bit until she can figure out what it is exactly we all have planned.

As the Dark Faith advances on the...
wow, doesn't that LIT BUILDING
just look SPECTAULAR!!!

and that little piggy said "I think I'm
in the wrooooong street!"

     And here's where I start playing silly church games.  I've got a Dark Pope close enough to corpse tokens to raise a zombie or two... but mostly I just start making corpses explode.  Bodybags bursting with shrapnel everywhere, and Mordin's guys- including Greygun- are hip deep in them.  Eh, so I catch a couple piggies in the process, that's okay. Most of my force starts moving over towards Greygun and Caretaker, while Yamaha thugs on over towards the Men of G.O.D. to try to keep them a little more faithful.. or at least honest.  Having just crushed through a Warrior

Swatch of destruction?  You're soaking in it!

of G.O.D., Pigskin is in no mood for games.  In what just about everyone later decided was a bad career move, Pigskin ignores the Fist of G.O.D. still behind him to beat poor Yamaha to death in a horrifyingly violent manner.  The Fist next activates smashing Pigskin in the back, and actually doing some pretty solid damage... until Pigskin turns around and uses the Fist's face as a brand new sheath for his cleaver- it's like Christmas! Everyone gets presents! Pigskin got a new face-sheath, the Fist got to taste Pigskins cleaver, there were bodies strewn everywhere... what? You don't have corpses all over the place at Christmas? Hmmm, must be a local tradition.

Body goes Squishy-Boom!
Body goes Squishy-Boom!

     A stun nun races up the side of the building, and starts lighting up Greygun in the back, which let me tell you really helps to slow down those four shots a turn he can dish out.  The Golem finishes off the second Gormandizer, and heads over to support Greygun.  I manage to get in a couple more jolting shots before the nun is little more than a grease stain, but I make sure to pop the corpses to keep the Golem from getting any stronger.  (The Golem absorbs corpses in base to base to heal and grow stronger.  Caretaker can use his magic lantern to remove the counters at range and make the Golem stronger.  Of course, the Anti-Pope makes them look like hamsters in a microwave and they explode sending little shrapnel-bits everywhere.)

An epic duel to the... would you look at those lights?

     I get into a slow, protracted fight with Mordin, where a badly wounded Greygun uses the lane between the building and the tow truck as a firing corridor.  TGC tries to send Pigskin over to take out an unattended Caretaker, but Greygun finishes him off before he can get there.  As B97 has taken out the rest of her goons and shacklers by this time, she's out of the game. (Sadly, we all realized much later that she probably won right then, as it was about 2 am, and she got to go to sleep, while we still had to
play.)  I make short work of the rest of Mordin's thugs, but I'm simply no match for Greygun and the Golem- even with Gun being badly injured.  Especially with some hoidy toidy Bible thumpers in black suits coming up on me hard and fast.  The Golem charges down the lane, giving me an opportunity.  I get a stun nun and some support in on Caretaker, and manage to take him out!  That drops the Golem, and really only leaves Greygun. Oh, and a G.O.D. squad, who promptly mop the street with me.  Nightingales might be simple healers, but their Holy Light verses my dead guys make for a bad, bad day.

Coming down to the final... damn that building looks good lit up!

     Greygun backs into a defended position, and takes pot shots while waiting for the Men of G.O.D. to finish me off.  To be fair, he isn't really waiting long.   Greygun's good, but he doesn't quite have enough to face off against Micheal with a pair of healers behind him, and another Warrior with a Pistol to the side of him.  Seems prayers really do get answered after all kids.  The Men of G.O.D. come away from this one with a win.


     All in all, a fun little romp through the murder and mayhem of Spinespur, as always.  We all made a bunch of tactical errors (and a couple of rules ones) which we were more than willing to chalk up to the time.  Still, a lot of fun was had, nearly all the models were represented correctly, most of them were painted or in the process (Ali's basecoated and washed stuff looks better than most finished pieces on tables, we swear), and the PoweredPlay light kits really made the table more dynamic.  The pictures really didn't do it justice.  Check that kickstarter out, and keep an eye peeled for a couple upcoming projects in the next few days using those kits!


See you on the other side of the table.


The Second Class Elitist.