Welcome, Dear Reader, to the final installment of my ongoing journey of competitive and hobby progress in 2024. Last Time Around I recapped my games at the Rise of the Empire Teams event in Houston. That put a nice little cap on my year of competitive play. Coming into the final week of the year, it’s time to take a look back at the Year That Was, look at what I accomplished, and talk about what’s next.
First off, this was my biggest year yet in terms of updates – I decided to commit to a regular Thursday column back in March or so, and since then I’ve published 44 of these updates. If you missed any of them, you can find them below:
TheChirurgeon's Road Through 2024 Series - Click to Expand
Alright let’s get into the year and how things went.
2024 by the Numbers
- 82 games of Warhammer 40k played
- 74% win rate
- 9 events attended
- 44 Road Through Articles written
Games by Faction:
- Death Guard – 33
- Chaos Space Marines – 21
- Thousand Sons – 23
- World Eaters – 5
I didn’t play quite as many games this year as I’d have liked, and admittedly I may still get in another game or two this weekend. But more of it I can chalk up to the cancellation of Tampa and leaving early at more events – while I didn’t necessarily do worse overall this year, I did have more day 2/3 drops, always in situations where I was out of the running and eager to get home in time for dinner.
That said, I had more success this year than ever before. Specifically:
- I won my first RTT (Asgard, May)
- I won Best Painted at the GW Grand Narrative (November)
- I made it to the top 32 cut at Tacoma for the first time at a GW event.
Of these that second one – winning the best painted at the Grand Narrative – is by far the accomplishment I’m most proud of. Not just because I put in half a year of work, but because it felt like the culmination of a three-year journey starting in 2022 in Albuquerque, where following that event I resolved to improve my painting and army presentation.
It’s also just a really cool trophy, and a definite step up in terms of quality from the hand and chainsword I won at Kansas City two years ago. I’m very proud of my Night Lords as an army, and I wish there were a way to make them more competitive so I could run them for Best Overall attempts. But alas, Raptors and Bikes are just Not Where It’s At.
Of course, I’m already planning for next year’s Grand Narrative. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to paint for it. I have no idea when Emperor’s Children drop, but if they’re any time before July count on them being the thing I take. Alternatively, Iron Warriors or Alpha Legion might be the play. Or Word Bearers. Look, it’s gonna be Chaos. I also still need to finish painting my World Eaters, but I’m less confident they’ll be a good Best Painted candidate – these things are tricky. You really want a flashy army feature you can point to, and runes on Word Bearers, scales on Alpha Legion, and hazard stripes on Iron Warriors play a lot better than blood and gore effects on World Eaters. That said, I’m pretty happy with my Angron, and I’m going to run them at least a few times this year as I get more painted.
Events
In terms of competitive play well, I’ve kind of hit my ceiling for the time investment I’m putting in. I could probably add some more practice and get up to 120 games per year, but one of the reasons I enjoyed doing a weekly column was the pressure to get in at least one game per week – something I wouldn’t have done if I didn’t feel the need to write for a column.
My Events this year:
- Oxford Super Major (April)
- Asgard May RTT
- GW US Open Dallas (May)
- Asgard June Charity RTT
- GW US Open Tacoma (July)
- WarZone Houston (September)
- Dragon’s Lair Open (October)
- GW Grand Narrative (November)
- Rise of the Empire (December)
That’s nine events in total, same as last year, plus I ran the Narrative at the 2024 US Goonhammer Open. That’s a lot, but I think I’d like to up that to 10-11 with two more RTTs in the mix. The biggest challenge is always that the closest location for RTTs to me tends to sell out incredibly fast, and showing up day of hoping for a drop sucks. At the very least, my plan next year is to get in events in January, February, and March. I don’t think I’ll be heading back to the UK next year for an event, but there’s a new Houston event that started this past year (Wardome) that I missed by virtue of going to Oxford and my plan is to attend that one.
This means my plan for next year is roughly:
- Three GW US Open events (Tacoma and Dallas seem very likely, no idea where the third will be – May, July, October?)
- Wardome (April)
- Rise of the Empire (Dec)
- Challenger’s Cup (Sep)
- four RTTs
- Grand Narrative/World Championships
- Two additional Houston events
That puts me on track for twelve events, with a plan to hit up one per month and stay local for most of them. It’s both much cheaper to do and my wife is much more amenable to events where I come home at the end of the day, though as Bryce has gotten older being alone with him for a weekend is just not a big deal anymore.
One of the best parts about being a parent is this slow transformation of your weekends. Something you don’t hear parents talk about often is that, after your child learns to walk and demands more and more of your time, you start to dread the weekends, particularly if they’re in daycare or with someone else during the week. The weekends morph from being your time to recuperate from a rough work week into 48 hours of entertaining this other, small human. They wake you up at 7am (or earlier), and from then until 7pm they’re demanding your attention and care, with no concern for whether you’re sick, have to do chores, or if you just need ten minutes to take a shit. You don’t want to park them in front of screens so you instead have to spend two whole days figuring out how to keep them busy. Trips to the park, walks around the neighborhood, anything you can do that will keep them occupied because lord knows they aren’t capable of self-entertaining yet. When we lived in New Jersey, we used to go to the Liberty Science Center every weekend on the light rail. That place was an absolute life saver and getting the membership passes was worth every single penny.
Then they get a couple of years older and something magical happens: They start to do their own thing. They can play with their toys on their own, or read, or just turn on the TV themselves and watch cartoons in that age-old tradition of Saturday mornings. They start to develop actual friendships and, if you’re lucky, they’ll be with kids who live on the street. Soon they can just interact with each other without you.
And look, this is bittersweet – it’s a grim reminder that the inexorable march of time has closed the book on another era in your life, and your children no longer need you in that same way they did. But on the other hand, you can stay in bed another hour or two before they have to be fed (though they’ll eventually clear this hurdle as well), and your weekends can involve them without revolving entirely around them. Some time around 5-6 having them solo really stops being a pain and it makes it much easier for one parent to travel.
Of course, you can always go hard mode and bring your child with you to events.
Introducing Bryce to the Hobby
This year I made a concerted effort to introduce my son to the hobby. He had a great time at last year’s Grand Narrative, and it felt like a good time to bring him in. He’d had interest before, but I decided to bite the bullet and work on painting and eventually playing with him. We ran him through the Battle Honours program at the local Games Workshop, got him started with an army, and even worked on a Display Board – leading up to him winning the gold for Youngbloods at this year’s Armies on Parade.
He’s still got work to do, and he’s only played three games this year, but we’re getting there. The game is the hardest part, and it’s what’s next. He doesn’t really have much patience for other players’ turns and well, there are a lot of rules. I’ve tried to help by making him a custom rulebook, but at this point I just need to make time to play more games with him.
The other part of it is taking him to events. This year we took Bryce to the US Open in Dallas and the Grand Narrative. The GW events tend to be better events for kids to attend, because they usually have a lot more going on like hobby competitions and exhibition games. I was surprised at how little there was for kids comparatively at this year’s Grand Narrative, though – it really felt like a missed opportunity, especially since Space Marine 2 had been released.
It’s pretty critical to have support for these, and what usually happens is I bring Bryce to events with my wife, as that lets us hand him off and trade off duties. Bryce can hang out at the venue and do hobby stuff or be on his tablet while he’s with me, and that gives the missus time to recharge and do cool stuff in town like visit Meow Wolf. It’s definitely something we have to balance, though – it can’t just feel like she’s playing a supporting role while we’re at the event or she’ll just end up exhausted after the weekend and wondering why she didn’t just stay home. Which I totally get. So we pick and choose our spots.
But when I can bring him along, it’s definitely worth it. Bryce isn’t as into Warhammer as some of my friends’ kids, but he likes to travel with us and do stuff, and it’s great having him there to share the experience. He’s really coming along with his hobby progress, though I admittedly need to make more time to do stuff with him next year – it’s just hard to get him to focus at home, so I usually take him over to the local store where there are fewer distractions. That’s great for him but awful for me as I really prefer painting at home. But it’s an OK sacrifice to make.
Anyways if you’re a parent and you’re reading this, bring your kid to events. And put pressure on events to have stuff for kids – especially the Games Workshop events. This hobby can only grow – truly grow – if kids are becoming involved in it, and that can’t happen if we don’t bring them with us to our spaces and include them.
Improving Competitively
So how do I improve from here? Well, as I mentioned earlier, I don’t think I can put in the time to actually take the next step. My general plan is to increase my events count by 2-3 for the year, try and get in a few more games to hit 100+ total games, and then if an army I play happens to become top tier, maybe it’ll work out for me. That’s a big ask, but ultimately I can’t double up my time investment and work two jobs and be a decent dad, so that’s just how it has to shake out. But that’s OK! As my good friend Bair said, you have to make your peace with being good enough. I’m a pretty good player, but I’m not gonna be great, and that’s fine. If I can sneak into the WCW with a Best Overall score, that’ll be great but if I can’t, that’s OK too.
That said, I am eyeing a Creations of Bile army at the moment – I already have Bile painted and they seem pretty cool to play. The problem will be painting more Possessed. But I have those models too…
Hobby Progress
It was a hell of a hobby year for me! While the Grand Narrative put a nice cap on it, my year was more than just Night Lords. Let’s do a quick look back at everything I got painted this year.
How top Paint Everything: Chaos Space Marines
We’ve been doing updates on our “How to Paint Everything” series over the past year, updating the articles to have more detailed photographs, different methods and techniques, and guides to important elements like flayed flesh for Night Lords or parchment and purity seals for the Word Bearers. In January I finished updates for our new How to Paint Everything: Chaos Space Marines page, which included updated guides for every major legion, including the renegade chapters like the Scourged, Brazen Beasts, the Purge, and the Flawless Host. This meant painting a lot of guys, but it was on the whole a great project that I enjoyed doing.
My year started pretty light on the 40k front, both in terms of hobby and competitive play, and I didn’t get as much done as I’d have liked until April, when I got a couple of guys painted for my Death Guard while working with Bryce on his King Warriors.
From there I was back on the HTPE grind, and there were two big ones I wanted to put some time into this year – Leagues of Votann and the Adepta Sororitas. We had OK but not great coverage on Votann, but were missing some key Leagues, so I stepped in to paint those up for tutorials in How to Paint Everything: Leagues of Votann.
How to Paint Everything: Leagues of Votann
Likewise, we were pretty threadbare on good Sisters of Battle, so I painted up one of each order for our article on How to Paint Everything: Adepta Sororitas. For the record, I hate these models – battle sisters are in my opinion one of the game’s worst kits. Super fiddly, bad contact points, and needlessly complicated to assemble and paint.
How to Paint Everything: Adepta Sororitas
I took a break from HTPE updates during the summer in order to do touch-ups and add units to my Thousand Sons, who were my army for Tacoma for the third year in a row. This didn’t require a ton of work, mostly getting a few new models painted – another Infernal Master, an Exalted Sorcerer on Disc, and a couple of Rubrics.
Almost everything after Tacoma was Night Lords. I wasn’t making changes to the Thousand Sons army, and I’d started the Night Lords earlier in the year but I needed to buckle down on those to ensure they’d be ready for the Grand Narrative.
I am so immensely satisfied with this army and how they turned out. They look fantastic, and it’s a great ode to my first army in this hobby. There’s still some work I want to do on them – I want to fill out that bikes unit, and it’s worth painting another full actual unit of Nemesis Claw, plus I want to do some Chosen – but if I don’t get to it soon, that’ll be just fine.
Defilers and Deathshrouds
Which brings me to the last big project of the year – painting my army for Rise of the Empire. This basically meant turning around six Deathshrouds and three Defilers in a two-week span, something which wouldn’t have been possible if not for some help from my buddy, Max (he helped apply some basecoats).
The army looked great at Rise, and I was happy to have it ready to field in time. The maulerfiend scourge conversions worked out great, and while it’s not a best-painted army or anything like that, I’m super happy to have it done.
As I write this, the next bit is terrain – I’m finally painting up my Bheta-Decima terrain and once this is done, I’ll be moving on to doing the Killzone: Volkus stuff.
That won’t take me too long – the furnace there is absolutely the most complicated part – and I expect I’ll finish the rest over the next week or so. Volkus is a bit more complicated, but my plan is to ape the style done by Paulie Wallis, with lots of great verdigris and plant growth.
Otherwise, the plan is to keep improving as best I can on the hobby side. Every time I bring an army to a new event, I try to add new models and techniques, and I’m constantly going back and touching up old armies and models to bring them up to standard – there’s always more you can do. The Night Lords were all new, but I can tell you with certainty that my Thousand Sons were better this year than last, and last year’s better than the year before. Continual improvement isn’t just for competitive play. I know some people who recoil at the notion of competitive hobby events but I find them to be a fantastic motivator to improve. and so my goal next year is to keep at it and keep improving my existing armies while building even better new ones. I saw the look on Craig and Jack’s faces when they saw my trophy this year at the Grand Narrative – they’re going to be putting in some work to try and beat me next year.
Running Goonhammer
Along with all of this, and my full-time day job, I’m also CEO of Goonhammer, Inc, the company behind this website and everything else. It’s about as thankless a job as you’ll find, particularly when I have to deal with the world’s dumbest behind-the-scenes drama about little plastic men. That said, there was a lot I enjoyed about this year. For one, we hired our first full-time employees, and while we’re still far from our goal of “everyone who wants to do this for a full-time living can do so” goal, I’ve been able to find a way to legitimately pay two of the brightest, most creative people I know to do the things that they actually trained to do professionally.
On a related note, we started doing video this year. Not so much a pivot as adding to the mountain of work we’re doing by doing it over in another channel, video is an area I’ve wanted us to expand for a while. At times it very much feels like we’ve “tapped out” on the market for written content about Warhammer and if we want to grow the audience, we need to find ways to bring our unique expertise and voice into other mediums. Podcasting is out, since there are already a lot of Warhammer podcasts and I don’t want to compete with the wonderful people already working with us, but there’s a pretty big gap when it comes to video content. Specifically, there’s not a lot of good, high-quality content about competitive play basics out there. Too much of it is battle reports (which are boring, even in the best cases), or timely content about the meta or a new release. Our aim was to try and produce more evergreen content that can act as a good jumping off point or referesher on tactics, and to inform people about things like traveling with minis and attending events.
We’re still finding our groove with regard to video content, and we need to figure out how to settle into a more reasonable cadence that doesn’t slowly kill Campbell – though I’ll blame GW for dropping 30 detachments on us this month if he dies of exhaustion – but I think we’ve done some really great video work so far, between our unit and detachment focus videos and some of the bigger pieces around major updates. Video’s a bit weird because I think it’ll take a while for us to break even on production, but there’s a lot of potential for growth there.
We also raised our freelancer rates this year, I’m happy to say. We’re nowhere near where I’d like us to be in terms of our rates for articles, but we also lose money on most of the articles we publish, especially if they’re not about Warhammer 40k, so there’s only so much I can do there. But long-term my goal isn’t so much “hey let’s cut this content if it isn’t making money” but rather “how do we make money on this so we can break even?” and in that regard we’re always looking for new ways to do that and get more eyeballs on what we write. Goonhammer does pretty well with Patreon and we just changed over to a new ad partner (Playwire), in October, but when you factor in the amount of articles we publish and the nearly 50 owners we have in this creator-owned enterprise, that money doesn’t go nearly as far as we’d like. That said if you’re reading this and considering supporting us, know that $2 per month through Patreon is more than we’ll typically make from all the ads you’d see in a month, so it’s worth it for everyone if you support us just to go ads-free on the site.
The apps are also a big part of what we’re doing next year, and we’re looking for more ways to make Administratum useful, not just for 40k, and not just for Crusade players. We’re also trying to figure out how to make Tabletop Battles better for paid subscribers, though our goal there has always been to make it as easy as possible to get the app and start recording games, so the app will remain free as long as we can afford to keep it that way. Hell, I don’t even want to require a login because that makes it one step harder to go from “hey what’s that app you’re using?” to “I am recording my first game.” That said we’ve talked about doing Google sign-ons but apparently Google wants money every time someone does that, and that’s not a cost I think it’s worth taking on at the moment. Again, these apps are almost entirely labors of love and the people who work on them have day jobs which pay them to do other things. Which makes sense because I can legitimately tell you that the engineers we have on staff are some of the most talented developers in the fucking world. They’re an absolutely fantastic team to work with.
And that’s really the biggest upside to Goonhammer – getting to create a space where the most clever and talented people I know can come together to create something wonderful. A place where we can create something sustainable over time that provides real value to the tabletop gaming community that rewards us for investing our time into the things we love. I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to do so far – building a company from a position of $0 starting investment is uh, not something I’d recommend to anyone else, but it’s cool to see how far we’ve come doing it.
What’s Next?
That wraps up my look at 2024 but yeah, I’m coming back next year with a new column – and a new banner – for 2025. I haven’t set any real goals for myself yet, but I’ll talk about those next week and that’ll make for a good column to kick off the year. My one goal that I can drop right now is to keep delivering a weekly column through next year, and that means something along the lines of 52 articles, delivered every Thursday. Probably a few more, if I need to split an event into multiple posts.
So check back next week for the first instalment of my Road Through 2025. And if you enjoyed this series or there’s something you’d want to see in it, let me know in the comments below. I love reading the comments – even when they’re from weirdos hate-reading the series because they’re still mad about my Custodes review. I always enjoy having people come up to me and let me know they like the series and if you see me at an event, feel free to stop by and say hi. It’s always good to get feedback and know that people are reading.
Finally, this column wouldn’t be worth doing if it weren’t for You, Dear Reader. Thanks again for following along with me for another year. This isn’t our most popular column, but it’s my favorite series to work on.
Best wishes on a Happy New Year,
-Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones
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