This post is going to start a hobby documentary on how to rehabilitate poorly treated used models and salvage an army using hobby skills. It'll also document my dabbling with Convergence of Cyriss from a gameplay perspective. I'm still mainlining Trolls, but I figure I'll play with my new CoC every once and a while.
Why start Convergence?
I've had bits and pieces of CoC sitting in my closet for years. Maybe a year after release I picked up an original Prime Axiom and Transfinite Emergence Projector basically new in box for like $60 for the two of them, figuring it was a deal too good to pass up. I also picked up a friends Aurora and Clockwork Angels when he was selling out of the faction (my wife said they were pretty).
In terms of design, they've certainly appealed to me from a gameplay perspective. With the latest release of Orion for the faction they really seem like they have the tools to be able to deal with pretty much anything, which is something PP has been setting as their goal for their limited release factions. I also kind of like the idea that once I've bought into it, I'm basically done with major purchases. It's all about experimenting with the limited toolset as the meta changes.
Also the focus induction mechanics seem really cool. I appreciate the puzzle in each game of trying to mastermind how to make the clockwork like system of getting the focus around to maximize efficiency. I'm an engineer by trade and the way PP made that clockwork system into a game mechanic really intrigues me.
What made me actually jump into the faction was that I found two separate retail for retail trade opportunities. Someone was looking to trade CoC for 40k Orks, and was interested in the entire lot I've been looking to offload for years. I also found someone who wanted nearly all of the Circle I was trying to offload and we worked out equitable trades. It's always a great value when you can do retail-for-retail trades on models you own to get models you want. The downside is that the very large lot I got in exchange for my old Orks was largely piles of crap that I had to salvage. Luckily the trade I got for Circle was excellent.
What to do when you get badly treated used models
One mistake I made on my first trade with the Orks for CoC was not asking for pictures of the models I was trading for. Note to readers: Always Ask For Pictures When Trading On The Internet.
This ended up being pretty bad overall, since the models I got were nearly all broken, some of which looked like they were given to a young child to try and paint, and some were clearly nicely done conversions that were then traded to this person who then mistreated them. My trade was to include an Axis and Lucant, but since the models weren't complete the person included a second version of the models, all of which still required bits orders from PP or just wholesale replacement of the model to get something functional.
Nearly every walking Vector chassis had all their legs broken off at weird angles, and two of the Inverters I got are missing the chain+flail bit altogether. What's worse is that I found the unit of Reciprocators I received weren't actually glued to their bases. The person used blue sticky tac and then spray painted metallic spray over all of it.
I didn't take pictures before I started fixing everything, but you can see exactly how awkward the pinning/leg reattachment went on some of the jacks, as well as how bad the paint job was:
Nothing like sticky tac for getting models on bases!
It was actually piled all the way up in huge amounts. Lots of scraping to clean it up.
Talk about a mess.
You can see what lengths I went through to get the legs back on. This was the only way it'd fit.
It looks like a 5 year old was told to pain this guy. The leg in the air was the only leg actually still glued to the model when I received it.
The solution in nearly all cases was simply pinning, lots and lots of pinning legs back after dry fitting to see which pieces went with which broken jacks. Fortunately I was able to get all my vectors up and stable on their bases.
My unit of Reciprocators were missing the tips of their halberds. These are near impossible to find bits for online, but I ended up going with the Steelsoul Protector spear from PP and luckily I was able to use the tip of the spear as a replacement for the halberds and have it work out nicely. All in all it was $30 in bits from PP to replace parts either too broken to salvage or bits that were straight up missing. Not terrible, but not great either.
What was worse is that the Clockwork Angels and Auora model I had effectively fell apart over the years they sat in my closet. My friend had used some really thin pins and apparently a not very good superglue. I basically re-pinned everything with the Angels, though making sure to use a much thicker paperclip as my pinning.
Thicker pinning = Better Pinning
Between pinning up Aurora, 3 units of Clockwork Angels, and building a fresh Father Lucant, lets just say I never want to build anything like that again. My fingers still hurt from all the pinning I had to do to get those things securely built!
Next Steps
Once everything has been built up (I still have a few servitors to do), I'm going to apply basing material and then test out using a metallic spray paint as a base coat. I'll have to paint the base and the basing material black again, but it theoretically allows me a lot of speed up in terms of getting the army painted up quickly. I definitely like the metal look, and I'm really keen on the idea of an easy to paint faction.
Gaming Results
I've been wanting to play a Synergy caster since forever and now I have my first opportunity with Syntherion. He's also got a really nice toolkit and is pretty well rounded. Apparently he's fallen out of favor with the larger meta as very few people seem to be talking about him, but I wanted to give him a shot.
Since I was playing a friend of mine who is just hopping back into the game with a brand new faction (Circle), I decided to avoid some of the more blatant power pieces like the TEP or Axiom, just giving things a go with heavies in Destruction Initiative:
Syntherion
-Corrolary
-Cipher
-Cipher
-Assimilator
-Assimilator
-Inverter
-Diffuser
Optifex Directive
Algorithmic Dispersion Optifex
Algorithmic Dispersion Optifex
Elimination Servitors
Elimination Servitors
Attunement Servitors
Attunement Servitors
I squared off against Tanith running
Feral
Stalker
Loki
Reeves of Orboros + UA
Skinwalkers + UA
Wolves of Orboros + UA
Gallows Grove x2
Unfortunately for me the first time I put CoC on the table I had…performance issues.
I initially thought that being a WM veteran of over 15 years I'd be able to master the Focus Induction mechanic in my first game. I was wrong. We weren't playing on clock since my friend isn't really used to the game yet, but if I was on clock I'd have surely clocked out given the amount of time it took me to figure out how to allocate and induct in the right order to accomplish everything I wanted to in each turn.
I was actually holding my own fairly well in the game, but a missed Magnetic Hold screwed up my plans and then after charging in on the Feral+Loki on my feat turn, I didn't realize a mistake: I charged in where I'd trigger admonition, but this charge was the last activation for me in the turn – meaning the Stalker with Admonition could move to threaten Syntherion and not worry about anything else coming in.
I also was bad at contesting when I easily could have multiple times, so rather than having to take the assassination victory, my opponent just had to kill an objective and survive a free strike to move Loki into another zone to win on scenario.
After the game I realized that taking a single TEP in the list would dramatically improve my ability to handle the 20+ infantry on the table, allowing me to better focus on getting up in the trading game.
So basically Destruction Initiative = 1 TEP minimum, at least to start. Given how excited I am to play with that piece, let alone the possibility of a few lists running two of them, this seems like a good general principle to start with.
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