We previously spoke to David Moss of the Tokyo Tactical Gaming group in our interview earlier this year, when they had planned a tournament circuit. That ended up being cancelled due to concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic, but as locations in Japan are re-opening, we caught up with David again about the state of play in Japan and the group’s plans for 2020 and 9th edition.
David: Here in Tokyo the plague wars have subsided and our valiant warlords have begun to boldly emerge from their bunkers and are ready to do battle once more! Here is a quick update to let you al know what our community has been up to and what we have planned for the future.
The Haru-no-Kaze Painting Competition
During lockdown we ran a free-to-enter painting contest called Haru-no-Kaze (Spring Wind) and it was a great success. We had painters from all over the country enter with a huge variety of GW models and we were lucky enough to have Tanya from 40k Today as one of our guest judges. The show was completely stolen by KenKen‘s amazing Alpharius model. As a former Golden Daemon winner he really flexed his skills to impress us!
Stores are Reopening
Warhammer Stores have opened for sales now and FLGSs are open for gaming, too so the community is finally back rolling dice and enjoying everyone’s company again. So we’ve wasted no time in organising events to get people back to doing what they love best; killing each other’s space toys!
At our FLGS Giant Hobby we will be co-hosting a Sayonara 8th Edition gaming event with games, a panel talk about our memories of 8th and most importantly an all you can drink ticket for the bar! This will be a great chance to get everyone back in the same room, strengthen friendships and get ready for gaming when 9th swings around.
The Tokyo Tactical Reborn Event, Reborn
Speaking of which, let me introduce Tokyo Tactical: Reborn! Our original competitive event was pushed back twice by the Pandemic but we finally have secured the date of August 16th for our next 32 player 40k competitive event. As this will be very close after the release of 9th edition we decided to put the power in the hands of the gamers and they overwhelmingly voted to play with the new rule set. This will be a huge challenge for everyone but it will be great to get everyone in the same room enjoying gaming again.
Tackling the Language Barrier
The main challenge for gaming in Japan has always been the language barrier, not only between players but also with the rules themselves. The 8th edition rulebook was never published in Japanese, nor were a number of the earlier codexes or any of the material released on Warhammer Community. However, the new edition will be fully translated in Japanese and by the looks of the rules pages we have seen previewed so far with their simple bullet point summaries I have high hopes that communicating between players will be much easier than before. To help this further we have the Fukukan Talk app recently released for free which offers an easy to use bilingual audio tool for communicating in games without the need to speak a single word of the other player’s language. This rounds off the Fukukan holy trinity of Sage (an FAQ search tool) and the main Fukukan app for organising and tracking events and your army’s rankings. Of course all will be updated as soon as the new edition is released.
The Crusades Begin
Later on in the year we have plans for a Crusade event around October and a serious competitive event around the start of December once everyone has the rules and their lists fully locked down (Oops, don’t use that word!). I’m personally really excited about Crusade because up to now organising a narrative event has been especially difficult when working with the language barrier. I can’t thank GW enough for releasing the new way to play.
That’s about it for now but we plan to hit the floor running as soon as 9th comes out and we can’t wait to get gaming again! For the Emperor! Or death to him! Or just WAAAAGH!
If you want to learn more about Tokyo Tactical, check out their website –Â Tokyo Tactical
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.
