Welcome back! Last time I wrote about my abortive attempts at taking space marines to an event in 2022. This time we see me descend (ascend?) back to Codex Eldar. At the time that I purchased a ticket I was playing Light ‘Quins at our local RTTs and at Dragon’s Lair GT and feeling pretty confident. I took a gander at their crusade rules and they seemed cool, enacting murder plays seems very on brand. Furthermore I had all the models painted and many reps with the list so I would not have bought myself really very much more work learning a faction or any hobby lag. Both of these appealed to me and I was settled. GW then sent out an email encouraging everyone to roleplay as the commander of their force and dress up and much as possible. So I spent a little time coming up with a narrative about being a shadow seer. I chose Shadowseer rather than troupe master because I found a place to source a cool reflective helmet mask with internal lighting and that seemed way easier than getting all the motley tights. Plus pairing the mask with some of the inevitable black clothing in a nerd’s closet and I was somewhat pleased with my outfit.
Then came the creation of and invitation to the Goonhammer Narrative attendees channel. I joined and quickly my plans on both the costume and army front were upended. On the costume front I joined the channel to see Rob’s quite cool cultist costume and Pendulin’s amazing costume. A costume so good it earned him the discord name “Mr. Goes to Damn Hard” and justly so. So my estimation of costume commitment went from “this is pretty neat” to “this is about one half of an asses worth”. Further all the degenerate goons seemed to be competing to see who could take the most ridiculous and often worst army possible. Given what I saw there talking a pure meta clowns list seemed to be pretty unsportsmanlike.
So I turned back to the Codex and paging through I came upon the Yncarne and recalled how awesome it sounded to teleport all over the board in what appear to be totally unfair ways. I also realized my shadowseer “persona”(“clownsona”) would work in Ynarri too and I was off. I then went about building a Ynarri force using the goon energy of taking things I like and not taking things I don’t. What that meant is the Yncarne is in (once I summon them), troupes were in, aspect warriors were in, a tank was in (goddamn that falcon chassis has aged like fine wine) rangers are in cause snipers are cool and wire weave nets are a delight and that’s pretty much it. Guardians are stupid so no wind riders, weapon platforms, or guardians. Warwalkers and vypers are great throw away move blockers but they aren’t cool so none of those. The last consideration was what will fit in the overhead compartment safely in my army bag of choice. Which meant I left out a wraith lord even though I dearly love them from the good ole days when they were simply immune to bolter fire (much to my local game stores consternation). The only downside if this list required both painting and learning but, what the hell it’s a big events why not paint something up special.
The only real thing I was missing from this list on the hobby front is the Yncarne. I did have one that I had not yet painted and this was just the motivation I needed to try a hard new model and reduce my unpainted miniature backlog (which is an act of good moral character). I then set about building the swirly death person which was a singularly unpleasant experience, the designers seemed to testing the absolute limits of what plastic glue can do with this kit and even when done right it is fiddly and fragile seriously just make overlapping attach points. After the build painting the swirly whirly bits really was interesting and only had me cursing when the thing fell apart part way through. That done I decided to try my list out and it turns out this list is actually mean as hell. That didn’t entirely surprise me after all I did pick the good aspects to bring, but the extent to which it killed and made trading back very hard surprised me a little. Which left me feeling like I was possibly doing a disservice to the event.
However shortly after that GW created the faction discords and after seeing the armies of my fellow interlopers, my concerns about bringing a “real list” that could do unfair stuff like “win games” faded. For some reason the Goonhammer attendees channel is just lousy with people who care not for your final score if they get to shoot their Astreaii (?) Astropodes(?) Astreaixes(?) at you. Unfortunately my costume concerns were, if anything, made worse by the posts from some of the other attendees. Some of these folks are clearly into costumes in a way that I am not. So, I’ll content myself with giving it the ole college try and enjoying the ride. Besides, if my feelings get too hurt I can always take my costume off and pretend to have been too cool to participate in the first place. So with list in place final details painted all that is left as I write this is to cover the house in post-it notes so that the collection of grandparents who are going to run the place while we’re away will be able to make coffee and figure out how to play Moana through the playstation. Catch you guys after the event hopefully its everything my 15 year old self dreamed a narrative could be.
End note the pictures are much worse than last time I know but my wife TabooRose was too busy doing real prep for this trip to muck about getting photos for this. So at least now you know how much difference a good photographer can make.
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