Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress for 2024. Last Week I talked about my final games at the Grand Narrative, and my overall thoughts on the project. This week it’s on to new hobby progress, prep for my teams event and a little Tanksgiving Magic.
Tanksgiving 2024
The Saturday after Thanksgiving was the Tanksgiving event at my local GW store. The concept is pretty straightforward: Build and paint a vehicle or monster from new-in-box to full complete in November, then bring it to the store for a big megabattle and maybe win an award. I had already completed this work for the Grand Narrative, with my Land Raider being the new tank – and this was all according to plan.
So that was easy. What we still needed to do however was get my son’s Stormtalon Gunship painted. He’d previously assembled it before the Grand Narrative, but we still needed to put paint on it. So I primed it up gold for him and had him do the work. His general process is “Wash with Agrax,” then “Drybrush with Liberator Armour,” then “paint random bits red.” I helped out by painting the canopy, and using painter’s tape to mask the base.
We got the whole thing knocked out the night before the event, and he was really happy with the results and all the blood he painted on it. It matches the rest of his army and he’s put together quite a force so far – I’m certainly proud of his progress, and he’s started at a younger age than I did.
Normally, I think Tanksgiving is supposed to be just a mega battle of the model you painted. This means a smaller, faster game, where everyone has exactly one unit. Our GW store manager looked at the Tanksgiving games run on Friday, saw the feedback on them that this was “kinda lame,” and instead invited people to bring whole armies for a big mega battle, tracking wounds inflicted by their commander unit, the vehicle/monster they painted.
I didn’t read any of this or even seek out the info, so my son and I showed up with one vehicle each.
The good news about this however, is that only having one vehicle each means we can play, kill something, then go home and not be there all day for an interminable Megabattle. Credit to Max, he’s capped turns at an hour and fifteen minutes each, and they’re moving pretty briskly, but it’s still going to go all day and neither Bryce nor I wants that. Well, kind of – Bryce wants to leave whenever it’s not his turn, and then stay and shoot when it is. Bryce’s biggest challenge with Warhammer isn’t the rules so much as the interminable boredom he experiences when it’s not his turn.
On that note, I’ve updated Bryce’s Warhammer notebook to include a new datasheet:
If you don’t remember Bryce’s Warhammer notebook, I created that back when I was teaching him how to play the same weekend I was originally supposed to be at Tampa. It’s designed to act as his own rulebook and datasheet reference, primarily because I couldn’t find the datacards at the time but also because I felt they were too complicated for teaching him. We haven’t played as much since then as I’d have liked, but I plan to get in a game with him or two at home soon.
Tanksgiving is a fun way to spend a morning together. We each kill a unit or two – Bryce’s Stormtalon takes out an Invictor Warsuit and a unit of Eradicators, finishing one off in Overwatch in a moment that leads to some big high fives – and then get blown up by a Space Wolves flyer dropping a bunch of melta shots on us. We give as good as we get, and we’re more or less happy to be walking out a little after lunch time.
We weren’t the only ones that didn’t get the “bring an army” memo, but we did get some strong support from players on our side who brought more than 500 points. Such as the guy who brought the Acastus Knight.
While I’m here, there were some great armies on display. I particularly loved these second edition Ultras:
The Battle Honours Reward
On the way out I finally fulfilled a promise I’d made to Bryce, which is that if he finished his Battle Honours book, I’d help him pull one over on Max. Specifically, I’d help him with something he’d asked me about a couple months ago:
Hey what’s going on there –
Ever since Bryce first looked at this poster and saw the “unknown” chapter right in the middle he’s been asking me if that’s his and if we can replace it with his. So I told him that if he finished his Battle Honours book, I’d put that up there when Max wasn’t looking. So congratulations, Bryce – the King Warriors are now officially canon. That unknown chapter everyone was always wondering about? It was the King Warriors. Don’t ask about their primarch, though – Bryce has been playing a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog this past week and it’s bound to seep into his lore in ways that will make you regret asking.
Next Time: Hobby Frenzy
That wraps up this week’s update. It was a mostly quiet week as I did a bit of resting from the Grand Narrative but I have my teams event in less than two weeks and a ton of hobby work to do before then. As I write this I have three Defilers and six Deathshroud to paint for it and I’m not looking forward to any of it. At this point it’s not too big an ask (thankful for Leadbelcher spray cans), but I do have my work cut out for me. And also I have to find two Defiler legs, which I know are sitting somewhere in my bits… uh… room, and I just need to find them.
Pray for me.
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