Welcome back, Dear Reader, to the ongoing blog of my hobby and competitive progress in Warhammer 40k. Last Time around I did some hobby work with my son, helping him finish his Invictor Warsuit and helping him build a(n extremely cursed) wish list.
Things have been slow recently – there’s a pretty big gap in my competitive schedule between Tacoma and Warzone Houston – leaving me with what should have been more hobby time and opportunities for practice games. I say should because that hasn’t been the reality – I’ve been tied up with other work and things like Codex Reviews. Also, I was on vacation last week – every year my friends get together and we rent a house somewhere, and this year we were in the Floriday Keys.
Vacation Kill Team and Board Games
Travel with a bunch of minis and terrain isn’t my idea of a good time, and for a weeklong trip I need to bring actual clothes, so rather than try and bring full armies we brought kill teams and had Condit bring down some terrain so we could get in a game. It’s a little bit late to get back into the game given the new edition was just announced, but I really like the 2021 edition of Kill Team and I’m looking forward to the next iteration.
I brought my Thousand Sons as a Warpcoven team, and played them against my buddy Phil’s Kommandos. Man, Kommandos are bullshit. That said, I pulled out a win against Phil despite his insistence on only rolling 6s with his sniper, mostly by “aggressively scoring on the mission.” Either way, it was a good way to refresh on the game, even if we were playing the much lamer starter box iteration of the game and not using the current tactical ops decks. None of this will matter once the new edition drops, anyways.
Our vacation house weeks typically involve a lot of cooking family-style meals – there’s a Taco night, grilling, plenty of bacon and egg breakfasts and breakfast tacos, and usually a movie night in the mix. And we play a lot of board games, with everyone usually bringing one or two new things to try. This trip had a lot of Red 7, a dice game called Spots, Hanabi, a push-your-luck game called Deep Sea Adventure, the Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Dear Leader, a game which was made for me personally, and a dead game for losers called Adeptus Titanicus.Â
Grand Narrative Prep
While we were on vacation we (Condit and I) hopped on a big Google Meets call to watch the briefing for this year’s Grand Narrative. This is the first year they’ve done this, and it was good to see around 200 people hop on to get the scoop on how this year will play out. There’s a lot more emphasis this year on letting players participate in the story over previous years, which felt more like watching cutscenes in between regular-ass games of Crusade. There are still some things I’d like to see this year but they’re doing custom missions this time around with a greater focus on giving players a way of changing the narrative and advancing certain agendas. It kind of felt like they were pushing in this direction last year with some of the Vashtorr stuff so I’m interested to see how they accomplish that this year, and how they create a sense of agency – paradoxically in order for it to feel like you had a real impact you have to be made aware of the some of the paths not taken which were available.
Meet Kaervek Ushtahl
I’m starting to solidify the concept I want for this year’s Grand Narrative. In the past two years I’ve brought the same warlord to each event – Kaervek, a continuation of a character I’ve run in campaigns past. Here’s the first version of Kaervek, converted from a Chosen in the Dark Vengeance boxed set back in 2014:
At the time Kaervek was just a Sorcerer I’d made, with a blue cloak to show his membership in the Cyclopean Cabal, a group of the Black Legion in the worship of Tzeentch, and whose members were formerly from the Thousand Sons. Kaervek was, at the time, in service to Chaos Lord Moloch, shown below:
Moloch was made from a converted Exalted Champion in the 7th edition starter box and given a Jump Pack. His red streaks mark him as a member of the Hounds of Abaddon, devoted to Khorne. In battle his mark was to lead a unit of Khorne-marked Raptors, screaming into the enemy ranks. This was in seventh edition.
You may notice he’s carrying a sword instead of an axe – that’s the Spineshiver Blade, a relic made from the spine of a Keeper of Secrets. It’s a Chaos Warrior sword from Warhammer Fantasy which I painted to look like a spinal column.
Apollyon was the leader of my warband in the campaign I ran with my local friend group in New Jersey back in 2016, called the Paulus Campaign (named after the neighborhood I lived in – everyone’s house had a planet named after their town/neighborhood, more or less). We had about ten players, with six of us doing the majority of games, and it all ended in a big Apocalypse game to more or less close out the edition. At the end, Kaervek was responsible for opening a massive Chaos gate on the planet to start a daemon incursion, while Kaervek led the charge in the Apocalypse battle. Kaervek was killed in action and ultimately Ethan’s T’au won that campaign (but their Ethereal was killed, setting them up to become Farsight-like mercenaries)… but the planet was swallowed up by daemons and warp storms. Kaervek took over as leader of the warband, and with Abaddon’s blessing was allowed to spearhead the next campaign on the planet Astradus.
To celebrate Kaervek’s promotion, show off his devotion to Tzeentch and newfound affinity for summoning daemons, and to put him on a 32mm base, I revisited the model, adding a pair of Brimstone horrors:
Kaervek performed well (and survived!) the Astradus campaign, and has been part of my army ever since, leading it as the warleader, even if he sometimes allows a powerful Chaos Lord to rise within its ranks. I’ve run him as a Sorcerer and an Infernal Master alternately, and last year he got a glow-up in a fancy suit of Terminator Armor:
This iteration admittedly needs a bit more detail and I’m going to add a couple of brimstone horrors to his base to mark him as Kaervek, plus I need a better photo with some better lighting.
Kaervek has been my warleader for the last two Narratives (Albuquerque and Atlanta), and as I prep for this year’s and the idea of doing Night Lords I need to figure out how I want to incorporate him into the narrative, if at all. I like the idea of keeping him around as a veteran of two prior campaigns and so what I think this year I’m going to shift the story a bit: Last year’s foray into the Palat system was at best a modest success – only Vashtorr really got what he wanted, though the machinations of Tzeentch were seen to fruition. As a result, Kaervek lost most of his warband in the escape from the planet after Vernal Thedge betrayed most of the warriors in his command to escape with the Command Entity. And so he’s dropped in the Warmaster’s esteem – never a good place to be – and has taken command of a warband of Night Lords, offering counsel and the support of his remaining Rubricae to Chaos Lord Anrac Shan.
This gives me a good foundation to work on, and a narrative reason for combining my Black Legion Rubrics with some Night Lords minis otherwise that I can live with. I won’t be bringing the Rubrics to every game – they’re great in Renegade Raiders but probably a bit too much for some players to handle – but they’ll be in the Order of Battle.
Phew, that was a lot. I don’t normally talk that much about army backstory – most of the time I find it tedious to read someone’s army fanfic – but something I enjoy about Kaervek is that his story is legitimately one I’ve been putting together over the last 10 years through a number of games, campaigns, and narrative events.
Hobby Progress
I’ve had limited time to paint with the vacation travel but I’m determined to make the most of it. Right now it’s a lot of Night Lords to paint, and here’s the current paint table lot:
That’s a pair of Masters of Executions in the back, a converted Haarken on their left, a unit of five Rubrics, and six marines with two Aspiring Champions. There’s more than that to do, but that’s the slate of stuff to do “next,” anyways.
Also, I powered through painting one more marine, so there’s that:
It’s slow going, but I’m getting there.
Next Time: Boarding Actions
That wraps up this week’s progress report but I’ll be back next week with some actual G A M E SÂ P L A Y E D. They’ll likely be Boarding Actions, though – I’m eager to try out the new version of the game when it drops on Saturday, and I plan to get in some games this weekend and report back on those next week. So stay tuned for those next Thursday, along with (hopefully) at least 2-3 more painted models’ worth of progress.
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