Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress for 2024. Last time around I was working on my cosplay, getting in a practice game, and putting the finishing touches on my roster before heading out to the event. This time around it’s time to talk about the Grand Narrative and the World Championships.
It’s worth noting that I’m going to be splitting this into two parts: Today I’ll be talking about the first day and a half or so of the event – the travel, the set up, the first couple of rounds, and so on. Then I’ll be back with a second post tomorrow about the final day, the aftermath, and my thoughts on the whole event.
Thursday: Travel Day
We arrive Thursday evening and make our way to the hotel. It’s still rush hour traffic, so this takes about forty minutes. The hotel isn’t in a great part of town so this year I’ve opted to book a room in the hotel proper instead of trying to walk over from an Airbnb. I wasn’t real impressed with what we got last year, even at a decent price, and I didn’t think we’d need an extra room for Bryce this year. He’s gotten much more manageable when we travel and can stay up later, so being in the same room isn’t an issue. And it’s easier when we don’t have as far to go back.
The World Championships start one day before the Grand Narrative, as it runs eight rounds over four days. That’s a pretty solid spread – I maintain that two games per day is the ideal amount of Warhammer in a day for an event – you get a good amount in, but with lots of time to decompress and grab lunch between. This year they’ve moved the WCW to eight rounds in what’s basically one big single elimination tournament with a group stage dressing. Scott Horras and James “Boon” Kelling are already playing – a major point of interest for the crew this year – and so far James is ahead, having gone 1-1 the first day against Scott’s 0-2. Both are out of contention for the Championship but both are still very much IN contention for the better record at this year’s event. They’ve agreed to a head-to-head Saturday night tiebreaker game to make things interesting.
Bryce is running around in full form tonight, rocking his own cowl and hood and grabbing any weapons he can get his hands on. He’ll steal my plasma pistol for more or less the entire weekend, and likewise run around with my gloves for most of it.
The Briefing
Thursday night is also when we have our big first briefing for the event, when we’ll be introduced to the three Lords of War for the campaign, the three characters who will be acting as the leaders of our respective factions – Imperium, Chaos, and Interloper. This is a bit of a community theater affair, but it’s a fun way to set the stage. They do one show the night before the event starts and one the first morning of in case you miss it. It’s here that we’re introduced to Rogue Trader Kristovahl Dynost III, the haughty commander of Imperial forces. She’s a departure from the standard Inquisitor in visual aspect but not so much in terms of character or theme. Death to the heretic, do it for the Emperor and all that, etc. etc.
The Chaos Lord of War is a Word Bearer – Zar Tahyed, the Shepherd of Souls. He’s got a cool costume but as with Dynost, his rhetoric is also more or less hitting the same beats as prior years – “get out there and do it for the dark gods, kill the lapdogs of the emperor,” and so on. Credit where it’s due, however – he and Kristovahl do a good job, but it’s hard to put together something compelling to someone who’s already been to a couple of these, and when you’re trying to stay on-brand for the faction. They don’t really have any tactical insight to drop so it’s more about creating the proper vibes. This is an area where I think the venue does them a disservice – no matter how good their performances are, they’re still just standing in a hot conference room and it’s hard to be menacing and also to project in that environment – the acoustics are largely terrible.
The hardest of the three to hear by far is Glitcha, da Psykamekk, but he’s also the highlight of the event. Before the event I was legitimately curious as to whether they could pull off an Ork character and well, they only kind of did. The costume is big and impressive, and the interplay between Glitcha and his grot, Zoggit, was legitimately funny. It definitely feels like a big mascot costume but it’s a solid piece of work, large enough to be unable to fit through the doors of the lower conference rooms. Glitcha would end up stealing the show on day 3 – but more on that in tomorrow’s Part two article.
After the briefing Bryce heads back up to the room with my wife, while I stayed downstairs for a bit grabbing drinks with the Goonhammer crew. Both Scott Horras and James Kelling have lost games on day one – Scott is 0-2 while Kelling is 1-1 – meaning they’re both out of the running for the top 16, but there’s still a good chance for Scott to catch up to James. I end up heading back to the room in time to watch the end of the Browns-Steelers game, which we’d have otherwise been watching downstairs if it were watchable anywhere but Amazon. Bryce ends up staying up pretty late most of the nights at the event, but that pays off on Saturday and Sunday when he ends up just sleeping in both days.
Friday: Day 1 of the Grand Narrative
Day one I’m up bright and early for breakfast with Bryce and my father-in-law, who’s visiting from out of town. He’s taking Bryce to the Delta flight simulator on Saturday, but he wants to grab breakfast with us before the event. We head down and hang out, and are joined by Chase “Gunum” Garber, who’s in my Chaos Battlegroup this year. You may have read some of his lead-up articles about his Hemocan Dynasty Necrons, who fell to Tzeentch after being tricked in last year’s Grand Narrative. This year he’s looking to pick up a third consecutive trophy, either as best Chaos or as the Antagonist.
For the first round we report to Kesserin for our battle, receiving our orders. One thing missing from last year are the team briefings – last year we had separate sessions with our faction Lord of War, and these were great little settings to meet up with your team and have some plot development. I think dropping these was probably the biggest miss of the event from a narrative standpoint, as those faction briefings were the best way to figure out what was going on in the story.
The missions this time around are bespoke, written just for the event – and I have some pretty mixed feelings on them. I’m glad they put in the work, but on the whole the missions needed another pass and just aren’t very good. Day one generally had some communication issues, and this is at its worst in the first round, though they’d get most of it shored up by day’s end.
Round 1: vs. Gabriel’s Astra Militarum
In the first round I was up against Gabriel’s Imperial Guard, and this was pretty much a nightmare scenario for me from an opponent standpoint – Gabe was rocking a trio of Rogal Dorns, a pair of Chimeras, three Armoured Sentinels, and a Baneblade. For my largely melee army, this is essentially impossible to crack – the best I can do for anti-tank here is a Vindicator and a Land Raider, and if I really get stuck in there in melee with the Plague Marines I can maybe take one down. On top of that, the mission has us scoring for breaking through to the other side of the table – there are no objective markers, we only score for VP for putting units in the opponent’s table half. This means the Renegade Raiders rules are just straight-up dead on this mission, forcing me to switch to Veterans of the Long War. Adding one final blow, Gabriel’s faction orders are to “hold the line,” while mine are “break through their lines,” and he informs me his plan is to sit back and deny me entry into his deployment zone. Cool.
There’s a rule on this mission preventing a unit from shooting targets more than 18″ away and giving -1 to hit at more than 12″ but it largely doesn’t matter – I’ll be in range if I cross midfield. And that’s basically what happens – I send units across, they get completely destroyed, and Gabriel only sends one Dorn my way, and I destroy it with some combined grenades and melee output of a few squads before they’re all destroyed by the Baneblade. The terrain here is some of the best I’ll play on this weekend – it looks great and has actual area bases – but it’s also a double-edged sword, since it blocks Gabriel in and makes for some harsh movement.
Midway through the mission we get new orders: fall back and leave the battlefield. With the game tied at 0-0, I opt to do just that, since there is no way I’m going to win this one, save maybe getting 5 points before being tabled. The new orders say to get off the table, then tell our Vox Localum (the room GM) when we’ve done that. I have a fair number of fast units, so I pull everyone off the next turn. Then we report and well, none of it mattered – the Vox Localum asks us the score, which was 0-0, and then tells us he can only put in a 1 or a 0 for the result. Gabriel spends the next turn scoring VP on my half of the table to notch a win, meaning that by retreating off the table I’d inadvertently just forfeited the game. Not my favorite way to start an event, if I’m being honest.
Otherwise, Gabriel was a great opponent and had a very pretty army. He’s a good player – and good enough that I was never going to win a game going into his skew list with an army rocking a Heldrake. I was completely unsurprised that he ended up winning Hero of the Imperium, and he absolutely deserved it. Lovely army, lovely opponent, lovely costume.
I head upstairs and grab lunch across the street in the mall food court area, grabbing Dairy Queen with Bryce. I sit with Princess Lexi and JD Reynolds, aka “TheArmorofContempt.” They’re both in my battlegroup, with JD repping us on the Kill Team front. Lexi was in my group last year and is bringing Chaos Knights and tore some poor sod up in the first round.
Round 2: vs. Will’s Necrons
For the second round they send us down to the basement to fight on Rorgan, an ice planet split across two rooms. These tables were woefully sparse from a terrain standpoint. Round two was one of two “create objectives, then leave them for the next round” missions at the event, and I’m not sure doing this for the second mission of the day to leave objectives overnight is a shrewd move. My opponent for this mission was Will, a Necrons player repping the Imperium team with Annihilation Legion. He’s all melee, running three units of Skorpekh Destroyers, two units of Flayed Ones, two units of Deathmarks, and a couple units of Immortals, plus a Transcendant C’Tan. It’s a nasty melee blender to handle, and he gets the first turn, swinging one units of Flayed Ones into my Cultists and ending them, but otherwise being unable to close the gap elsewhere. I take the initiative to close it for him, bringing up my Terminators, Raptors, and both units of Legionaries, killing two units of Skorpekh and decimating the third as the Rubrics and Plague Marines kill off the Flayed Ones in my backfield.
During round two we get a visit from Glitcha, who was wandering the halls with Zoggit and looking to trade:
I had a single Crusade Relic – a Kinetic Dampener I’d received after having my warlord snag the only relic in the first round – and I offered it up for some Teef. I received two teef for my trouble, while Bryce was given a third. I think the Teef could be used to get free re-rolls for any roll, but I didn’t end up using them. They made great add-ons to my costume, though.
Will’s got a decent army to take me on but the lack of good hiding/staging terrain means he’s going to get shot to pieces and torn apart in melee before he can hit back. I put down most of the objectives in this one and then Will gets to bring back two full units of Skorpekh Destroyers via the mission rule in round 3. He then fails six re-rolled 9″ charges – two each with Skorpekh and another pair with the C’Tan – leaving him wide open for me to wipe him out again. That’s pretty much game and Will asks me if I want to call it. I’m OK with that if he is, and this means I’ll walk away with some insane Crusade rewards.
A short time after Round 2, the moment Bryce has been waiting for finally happens – Andrew “Marchettus” Brennan’s wife arrives with his kids in tow. Bryce and Andrew’s son met last year at the narrative and became instant friends, and they’ve played Minecraft together on Xbox many times since. We see them going up the escalator, then Bryce immediately runs back down and shouts “I have a gun!” and Andrew’s kid shouts “I have a sword!” and they take off running around together. Two peas in a pod, those two.
Paint Judging
After round two I took my models back up to my room. My Heldrake had fallen on the floor twice during round 1, shattering the second time and losing a few pieces of its toe claws when the back leg came off and got stepped on. My plan was to get some green stuff to repair it by making some DIY claw tips before Saturday. But then surprise!-it turned out Paint Judging was actually Friday night. This was a surprise because usually they hold judging for day 2 at these things, and also don’t do WCW and Grand Narrative judging on the same night. I see everyone’s displays out and start to get upset. No one has so much as talked to me, nor did I see any paint judges go by our room – I think they literally just never hit us up in Rorgan, because Jack Hunter also didn’t get an invitation to showcase. I’m not only here for the paint competition, but I’ve put too much work into it to not be in the competition, so I find Zach and ask him what’s up and he tells me to bring my army to him so he can take a look.
I run back to my room, then spend the next twenty minutes looking for Zach, before someone finally tells me he’s in the staff breakroom they’ve set up. I barge in, demanding my name tag for showcase, and Zach looks at my models for two seconds before handing it over. I find a decent place to set up and try to not take up too much room. The Night Lords are ready.
As far as my chances, I’m not sure – there were some great entries and in particular that Adeptus Mechanicus army next to mine was extremely good. In the end I think it came down to me and her for best painted as I saw when I picked up my army that we’d both made the final cut. I’m just wasn’t sure how bad those missing Heldrake toes were going to cost me. It was very much a wait-and-see kind of thing and not super pleasant.
As far as everything else goes, well, Craig “MasterSlowPoke” Sniffen is here again with his wonderful Rainbow Warriors. They look great, and I like the effect. What’s working against Craig is that he won with this army at Albuquerque in 2022, and also I think my Night Lords are a touch above this year. Craig’s largely being hurt by taking the same army to this event three years in a row.
Dave Gormley has the Best Display category on absolute lock, and I’m never even going to attempt to challenge him. That thing is enormous and amazing and it’s all new.
Dillon Grant’s World Eaters were also very cool, and I liked his modular display board quite a bit. He also made the final cut, though you just can’t compete with that Mega Gargant.
Team Dinner
I’ve had Andrew “Marchettus” Brennan locate us a spot for team dinner, and all of the Goonhammer crew walk over to Porfirio’s Mexican Bar and Grill for some just OK Mexican food. Scott and “Contemptor” Kevin Stillman grab the booze (they don’t have a liquor license yet at the restaurant so it’s BYOB), and we’re joined by Stat Check’s Jeremy Atkinson, who is finally able to join us as he’s just at this event as a player and not a judge. Scott opts for two cases of beer – Dos Equis and Modelo – and two bottles of Tequila. We’ll end up crushing most of that at dinner, though the Tequila made its way back over to the hotel and would show up again the following night. We went pretty hard, and ended up grabbing additional drinks over at the hotel bar. Scott in particular felt like death the next day.
There’s a night briefing for the narrative that some of our crew go to, but it’ll get a repeat – give or take – in the morning. The big news is that the Imperium absolutely bombed on the first day. I wasn’t convinced that would hold but it’s always tough to tell. The Imperium faction tends to have less experienced players thanks to space marines being the most common entry point but a lot of this boils down to the relative strength of factions and they have all the Astra Militarum players, i.e. the game’s best faction. I’m 1-1 and that’s not necessarily out of the ordinary – I lost a game last year when I did a 2v1 with a new Chaos player and I’m not really here to win games anyways – though I certainly want to win the games I play. Losing to Gabriel is nothing to be ashamed of and this year’s games will turn out to be the hardest I’ve played yet at a Grand Narrative, for a variety of reasons.
Tomorrow: Days 2 and 3
That wraps up my recap of the first day and a half or so of the event. Come back tomorrow when I’ll recap the latter two games, talk about my experiences at the event, and reveal the results of both the awards ceremony and the secret Saturday night game between Scott Horras and James Kelling to act as a tiebreaker between the two.
Until then, have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
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