246. The Warhammer Newport Open

An extra long episode where Phil, Tim and Richie talk about going to the Newport Open, taking part in the Age of Sigmar Grand Tournament, The Warhammer 40,000 Narrative Event and The Hobby Challenge which involved a huge table of sprues!

For more content check out our Patreon next week where they'll be a Newport vlog and a giveaway competition to win one of the official Warhammer swag boxes.

Watch the episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/SZtzI0N-N6s (helpful for the Hobby Challenge section)

Get Paint of a Mini Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-paint-on-a-mini/id1886097598

Transcript

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Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Welcome everyone to episode two hundred and forty-six of the Lookouts Podcast, the World of Renown podcast, where it's just one person for the most part talking on his own about Warhammer. 40k, Age of Sigma, and everything in between. But for a change this episode, I'm not just talking to myself. I'm actually joined by Tim and Richie throughout the course of the episode. We are doing a Warhammer Newport Open special, an extravaganza, where we all went off to play some Warhammer, a variety of game systems, and we had a great time. And we're going to be talking about that in this episode. We're going to start off by being joined by Tim as we talk about the Age of Sigma Grand Tournament. And we're also going to have some general chat throughout about, you know, the hotel, the food quality, the goodie bags, the value for money. Are these Warhammer Open events any good, etc. etc.? But yeah, we start off talking about the Grand Tournament for Age of Sigma. Then I'm joined by Richie, where we talk about the narrative, which is a 40k sort of narrative campaign experience. Sadly, I couldn't really ask anyone to talk about the Grand Tournament 40k. Although I was tempted to get Joe historically from the show, but now he's on the what was it, the Liam Dempsey Hobby House uh channel. Um yeah, I don't think he would have been allowed to join me, so I didn't bother asking him, but uh he was there, which was great. Uh you know, there was a bit of a reunion. Dan was also there taking part in the grand tournament for AOS, but again, he's banned from this show now uh for a variety of reasons. Not just because we don't like him, obviously not. No, we do love you, Dan, honest. Um so yeah, and then lastly, I talk solo all about the hobby challenge that I joined on the Friday and that experience. And is the hobby challenge worth it? Yes, is the answer. I'm giving you that one for free. So maybe in exchange, uh give me a like or thumbs up if you're watching on YouTube. Uh, as always, this is a dual part uh podcast. You can listen along on audio formats, you can watch along on YouTube. Some formats are better than others. Uh so for example, when it's just me and Tim talking about Age of Sigma, he did a terrible job at taking any photos. So it's mostly just us talking. However, in the section where it's myself and Richie talking about the grand narrative, I will hopefully have an array of pictures flying at you, showing you whatever thing looked like, uh, assuming I can get that all edited in time. Fingers crossed. And then lastly, in the hobby challenge, that's a bit more of a video format where I'm showing you the creation that I created in the hobby challenge itself. Um so yeah, the choice is yours as your preferred method of listening. And if you would like some extra lookouts, uh content, there will be an episode of Transitional Noise in the next week after this episode is out, where I have done a video log of my time at the Newport Open. Um, and also over on Patreon, there is a chance to win an official Warhammer swag box uh because I ended up with two of them uh because I entered the hobby challenge, I didn't steal it. I have a whole one basically unused uh that I will just give away because otherwise it's sitting around gathering dust at home. Uh that will also be a competition over on Patreon, exclusive to um, you know, uh Patreon members, basically. So head over on there in a week's time if you want to check that out. And with all that plugging away done and dusted, let's get on with the show. Transitional noise.

Age of Sigmar GT (with Tim)

SPEAKER_01 4:25

So we are going to talk all about Newport, and I'm joined by Tim. Hello, Tim. How's it going? Hello.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Yeah, it's going good. It's uh a nice sunny Saturday, but not too hot.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Well, it's uh great to have you uh on the show. Uh so you and me uh went up to Newport. So Newport um is the official Warhammer gaming events. I don't know what they actually call it, if there's like an official name for it, because they're not quite grand tournaments because they encompass multiple formats.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

Yeah, um I feel like it was just Newport Tournament. Wait, or was it the Newport Open?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

I can't quite that was it.

SPEAKER_02 5:04

Sorry, I've got it on my shirt right here. Here we go. It says UK Open Newport. Yeah, wearing the official uh brand of shirt uh represent yo. Yeah, good point. I guess they can't call it a GT because as you said, it's just encompassing all well, really weirdly, it does 40k, AOS, and kill team. And I'm like, if you're gonna do kill team, would you not do Warcry? But I think they're trying to kill off Warcry, and that's a whole other conversation.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Uh, quite likely. I just suspect it's not as popular as Kill Team as well. I don't know how competitive it is in comparison to Kill Team. It feels like Kill Team's got quite a healthy competitive tournament scene, whereas Warcry might be a bit more casual, sort of, you know, friends, you know, beer and pretzels, as people like to call it.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

I tried looking into getting into Kill Team, and every video I saw on like a tutorial, like let's play, I just I just got lost. I think I have to play it if I was going to get into it.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

It's got some confusing elements without wanting to sidetrack what we're talking about. Yeah, got some keys confusing elements mostly around cover and how cover works. Um I've played it several times, and every single time have to relearn what on earth the cover system operates because it's quite confusing. Uh but we're not here to talk about killseam. We're here specifically to talk about your time. This isn't about me, this is all about you this episode. Uh, talking all about uh Age of Sigma Grand Tournament. Um, as you mentioned, this UK Open, the first one of its kind in at Newport, um, that's sort of been outside um Warhammer World. I want to say that could be wrong, uh, because I think there was a Birmingham one as part of There have been others.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

This is not like a Games Expo or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

But this is the first one that sort of intrigued us both. So I went along for the grand narrative. Uh so if you're listening to the podcast, that'll be a separate section. If you're watching the mini sode, that'll be a whole separate episode. So you have to wait around for that. Or it's already come out, whichever order uh that they're being done in. Who knows? Timey whimey stuff. Uh yeah, so that will be done in a separate section, but we're here to talk about grand tournament for Age of Sigma. Interestingly, some of the future ones, they're alternating 40k and AOS. So there's an it's either an AOS or 40k grand tournament singles event and a AOS or 40k doubles event, and it's the other system. So one time it's 40k doubles, and it'll be uh AOS GT, and then the other event will be AOS doubles and 40k GT. So that's quite interesting. Whereas this one was both a 40k GT and an AOS GT. Um so we got sort of lots of lovely people. Uh Dan from the show, or previously from the show, uh, was joining you for the AOS GT because you had both signed up to the grand narrative, we did, but turned traitor and decided you don't like 40k anymore. Uh so both doubled down on AOS. Um people like Joe, also from the show, from even further back in time, uh, was around at the 40k GT. So that was nice to catch up with him as well. So there's lots of other people that we saw and knew out there as well, which was good. Uh, we went up early, so we went up on Thursday. Uh the first game for you was on Friday. My first game was Saturday. Uh so I had a day doing the hobby challenge. Uh you can see sort of in the background um a sort of Necromanda esque terrain piece that I created as part of that hobby challenge. Uh that was good fun. Um but we yeah, we came up Friday. What was your general thoughts on the venue, the hotel? So we stayed at the uh the manor house. The manor house, which was the sort of recommended, yeah, the Celtic Manor House, which was the recommended one. Uh, but weirdly, I think when we got round to buying tickets, the discount code actually made it more expensive uh because I guess all the decent ones had sold out. So uh we ended up getting cheaper twin rooms, not that we should, um, rather than the sort of standard doubles or what have you. Um so we were staying in that venue, which I think is just like a golf course and also an adventure playground for kids. So there was a weird mixture of men there to golf, families to do the family stuff, and then a swathe of really nerdy guys there to play Warhammer. Uh so it made breakfast very mixed and diverse.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

It was a very interesting dichotomy when we went down to the breakfast table in the morning. Um, the hotel itself was really nice, and as you say, it's like a a place for people to do fitness or like various different golfing activities, like there's a golf course there, and they have a driving range, lots of conferences, conference rooms and stuff like that. The conference rooms, yeah. Uh we were sort of like ushered away at the back of the hotel, not because we're smelly wall gamers, but just because that's just the rooms.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Well, it was where the cheap rooms were hiding out. Um and it was very much not that I've seen it, but it was like uh uh you know the the movie backrooms from the trailer, but also from what other people were saying. There were these endless corridors that just looked the same, and also most of the time didn't even have any lights in or operating. It was very spooky and strange.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

The the first night we turned up, I am very grateful that we actually took some time to sort of just walk around, get the layer of the land, and work out how to get to places.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

It was an utter labyrinth uh because it's on a hill. Uh the sort of the the main entrance is like the top, but that's not like the top floor, but that's sort of the middle floor when it comes to the lift. And we had to go all the way to like the basement where our room was. Even from there, there was several more like escalators down to basically come out at the sort of the bottom of the hill, which is pretty much just opposite to the ICC centre, which is where the Newport Open was taking place. So, yeah, it definitely helped that we we had a bit of time to sort of wander around. Thursday, yeah, we got you know, we did our check-in and things like that, but then we got to go over to register for the Newport Open itself. There was a pub quiz happening at the time. We'd sort of just missed out on the start of that. Uh so we just went off and registered. Um, we got our goodie boxes. We did. Um, of which we sort of did a preview opening it. I I I've done some footage which I recorded and I tried to vlog the whole thing. That will hopefully be a Patreon video coming out next week if you're listening at the time of release. So yeah, you'll get to see what's in that goodie box in video format over on Patreon. Um, but yeah, we got goodie boxes. You got a slightly more expensive one because you paid for the premium one. I did. Can you remember how much that cost?

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Maybe an extra 100 quid. If it was worth it, probably not, but I just Well can you remember what you what was in it? Yeah. So you got a two sort of setup not sedivatory, the two unique like models that you the event exclusive miniatures.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yes. One for Age of Sigma, one for 40k. One was, I think, just a free guild, I don't even want to say marshal. It might have been a marshal, but some kind of Cities of Sigmar Bog standard sergeant, for want of a better word. And then the other one was a Cadian officer, not even a commissar, I think, just an officer. So he might also be a marshal. I can't remember the term of uh what they were called on the box. Um they were both okay, but nothing sort of spectacular in terms of really they weren't particularly interesting, but they were just good, is the way I would describe them.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

I thought they were cool. But yeah, you got that, and then you got an absolute weapon of like a a ruler, a g a gauge, the nine-inch gauge with like the three-inch, two-inch, one-inch, one and a half inch.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Yes, is it which was made and made out of swittle and had the Inquisition symbol on it. Yeah, that was quite cool. That was really interesting, actually. Um, there was a bunch of other things like stickers and like a book, like a a lined ruler, uh like lined ruled book. Uh, those two things, like stickers and the book, I also got. So I got a bog standard uh box to open up, which was just included in the price of my ticket. Um, and included those. I'm trying to think what else now. Um kind of foam insert with um paint that you could like put paint pot holder and uh paints in. Your premium one also came with a collapsible water pot as well, and yeah, there was like a handful of other things in there.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

I would like wound tokens, objective markers, oh of course, yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

You got a patch as well.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

Yeah, I got a raven guard patch, which was randomized. It was, everybody got a random patch, so I'm not sure. Uh does that mean like I'm a Raven Guard player now or what? Is that how it works?

SPEAKER_01 14:36

You've been determined to be a Ravenguard player, yeah. With a press scanned into Raven Barce. Yeah, I think uh Spike really wanted the Ultramarines one, but didn't he got uh Imperial Fist, I think, or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

So yeah, those didn't he get word bearers?

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Yes, he did actually. Yeah, so yeah, a bit a bit random. I would describe it politely as TAT because it's mostly stuff I won't ever use. Uh the book was quite useful, so I used it for keeping track of all my scores throughout the grand narrative, uh, because it wasn't compatible with the app or or any apps because it was using the Dominatus deck for our scoring. Yeah, oh, and also when we registered, uh you got your t-shirt, which wasn't included. Was that paid for extra? Uh is an extra like 30 quid or something like that. So an even extra extra on top of your premium. Yeah, I went all the time included. Um yeah, I think Richie also got the premium box on the t-shirt as well. And yeah, you know, to be fair, the t-shirt's quite nice. So obviously you could see it earlier, it just says uh UK Open Newport on the front, and then there's a large, like a large logo on the back, if I recall correctly. So I was looking at that one in the shop because they were selling it, and I was almost tempted to buy it as a memento because at least I would get use out of that, I would wear it. Whereas things like stickers and a paint pot holder, I have no need for personally.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Yeah, I'll totally hold my hand up and say the box is complete tap. Like it's I didn't really need it. I don't know why I splashed out for it. I think it was just I got swept up in the hype as I always do with GW merchandising and marketing skills. Of it's not necessarily FOMO, it's just like, oh, I just want to do all the things when I can, as I can, because I don't know when I'm gonna do this again. And even more so now that it they're sort of navigated a world away from doing events at Warhammer World, which I'd like to touch on later. I was like, well, it's the first one I'm going to, so let's just go all in. Let's let's really ham it up, let's get like the closest hotel, let's get like the premium box, let's get all the things and really embrace it. And I'd say that actually really helped me get in the mood for the tournament. But similarly, I um would have probably got the same experience if I didn't buy the premium box or the t-shirt. Um, but I don't regret it. So that's that yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

I mean, yeah, there was a few other bits in there. I think previous years you used to get like a water bottle, which I guess is a little bit more practical. And there were water stations for our so you could fill up your bottle if you had one. So maybe that would have been a more useful addition this time around. Uh but you did also get a £10 voucher. Oh, such a bugbear on this. Uh, but uh also the one other thing I'll add before I I bring you in on this was uh we got a free bonus gift for being a Warhammer Plus subscriber. I did. Um so I was readily expecting a pack of dice because that is historically what Games Workshop always gave you. Um instead, we got a free drinks token, which allowed us to go to the bar where the pub call was having, which was in this sort of uh tented area outside, which is where everyone was having their lunches and stuff, and we basically had a choice between uh bolt gun and I think it was some kind of stormcast drink as well. I can't remember the the name of that one, but it was basically an IPA and a paylail, and I was like, I don't want either of these because I don't like pay all I I like lagers out of my alcoholic beverage. Um so I disappointingly had to have a tango, I had to have a soft drink because that was the other thing I could use my free voucher on. So yeah, not particularly uh the best, but great that they were offering sort of the branded Warhammer World Bugman's beer. Well, it wasn't beer, it was pale ale. Um so yeah, that was interesting, I thought. Um did you e did you enjoy your drink? I had a sneaky feeling you didn't, if I recall correctly.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

No, it wasn't like the best drink in the world, the bolt gun ale. Uh and I do like pale ale's, but yeah, this one not so much. And what was your other gripe? The voucher. So I get why they've done this. It's classic sales. They did it last time as well, I think. Um, where you have to basically Yeah, where you basically have to spend 25 quid to use the £10 voucher. And it's kind of like I don't know, it just seems like a gotcha system. Um because I forgot my tape measure stupidly. And it was like, oh okay, I got a £10 voucher, I'll just run to the store and just pick and use this, thinking that it'll be stupid GW prices, and it'll actually be like 14 quid. Lo and behold, it was six pounds, and the guy was like, and the guy told me, Oh yeah, you can't use it because 25 pound limit, blah blah blah blah. And I was like, Oh, really? That sucks. And he was like, and then he just instantly, and it's like some of the staff just have this switch, this click, and I'm sorry, but I'm gonna point it out, where it's like GW corporate drinking the Kool-Aid mode of like, yeah, but you're losing out on four pounds, and it's like like GW's doing you a favor, and it's like, I really don't care. Like, I'd rather just have the tape measure for free at this point for free, which cost the company probably like a pound because they make so many of them. So it was like, uh anyway, so anyway, I I just paid for the tape measure with my own stone cold cash, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Yeah, that's right. Because um, I guess w I with it being a minimum of £25, ultimately means Games Workshop gets £15 and it's lost £10, but due to profit margins has still made money. Whereas if in your example they were just giving away free stuff, they're just then losing out on money, uh, which makes sense. Um, I used my free voucher, my £10 voucher, to do the £50 hobby challenge on the Friday. Uh so it only cost me £40. And then I was given another one of the boxes, the same one that I got on the Thursday, I then got on the Friday, and the guy was saying, Well, we give this to you because inside is your uh you know, your paint holder and um some other bits to help you do your hobby challenge. And I was like, Oh, okay. Um, it took them a while to grab one because I think they'd run out, so I had to go back out um to the main lobby area and grab me another one. But inside I got another £10 voucher. So um throughout the course of the weekend, I I got £20 out of games workshop. I yeah, I bought a the only ogre that was um viable for me to buy, which was the Blood Pelt Hunter, which you actually can just see there. Yeah. Um which I felt like was maybe not a great choice, but I was like, well, I've got the voucher, so I'll just buy something with it. So I was like, oh, I'll do that. Um I would have loved it if they had the ogres available admittedly a week early, uh, to actually just buy in person. Then I would have goggled up some with the hype, probably. Um, and maybe just spent Friday. Building that or something instead. I think in hindsight I realised that Necromunda was out that weekend and they I don't think they had the new boxes available or any of the books, or I just completely missed them, I'm not sure. But I did find it odd in retrospect that they didn't have anything to sort of celebrate that a new edition of Necromunda was out because what I found quite odd is I went on the Thursday a day early almost purely just to hang out with you, Tim, and get a lift up with you. Friday I was expecting I'll just have to wander around town or something. I because I knew at the Newport Open there would be gaming, I wasn't expecting there to be anything else. And actually, what they did have was the this hobby challenge, which lasted all three days if I wanted it to, but obviously I was gaming the other two days, um, which was basically access to uh another miniature, which was uh the orc in uh Mega Rama. I think you got you got to pick a brand new miniature, either space marine or orc. Uh there was a narrative about a space hulk and a signal, and the spacer means are coming onto the signal uh onto board the space hulk to stop the signal, and you had literally access to a table's worth of random sprues uh for you to get building uh stuff, and I spent all day assembling something, and then you were meant to spend the next two days uh painting it basically. Um so there was that to do, and some people came Saturday and just did that, I think, as well. Uh there was also painting classes as well, which I spoke to one guy uh on the hobby challenge, he did that, and it was like 100 plus pounds. One of them was on object source lighting, but he got to keep his free space marine. He said that was maybe a skill set a little bit beyond him, but then on the subsequent day he did another painting course which was a bit more his level and he enjoyed that one a lot more. Did he say he was taking the class? No, but I've seen since they've been advertising golden demon winners so for future ones. So I don't know who did these ones in particular, if it was the same people or if they're changing it up, and that was GW stuff, like heavy metal team people would make sense, and maybe they're getting some golden demon winners in uh to do these future classes. Uh, I'm not sure. But my main point was I was just generally surprised that there was actually other stuff to do beyond the gaming because they never seemed to really advertise that. Um, but then the fact that there was a brand new game of Necromunda, but that there wasn't even like an option to play that uh there was a bit puzzling. Likewise, there was a little photography corner. Uh there was like a sort of a miniature base with tactical rock and some sort of some foam and cardboard uh weapons that we could take some pictures of, which we did. And there was like some space, I mean helmets and a couple of other uh bits, not a huge vr array of stuff, and they weren't like the best quality like you've seen in previous times with some sort of cosplayer equipment. Um but it was all fine and it was all good. Um and that was sort of it in terms of other things that you could do, plus a shop, of course. There was like a Warhammer shop which was well serviced with normal boxes of miniatures, t-shirts, and sort of yeah, a couple of little trinkety key ring things, like you know, purity seal keyrings and things like that. Uh no objective markers this time around, because obviously they've uh sort of removed them from the game for the most part. But yeah, there was some interesting stuff uh there, I thought. Um so yeah, that was you know the the pre-game preamble. Is there anything else you want to add to the the the pre-game stuff?

SPEAKER_02 25:39

No vibes. Well, I'll I'll do that at the end.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Sure. Okay. Well, let's uh get on with actually talking about the main topic 20 plus minutes into the video. Um yeah, the Age of Sigma Grand Narrative. Talk us through your list. What were you taking, Timmy boy?

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Okay, so I was taking Maggot King and Nurgle, and I was taking the battle tactics Legend of the Parch and Burning Vengeance. I'll look up the list to double confirm in a minute. Um, and uh they were taking the Telebanner Nurgle. So in the first regiment, General's Regiment was Rotticus, two sets of plague drones, um, just minimum union size, three three models each, and the Poxbringer. Second regiment was the Great Unclean one with uh Gift of Feeble or Gift of Feeble Frenzy. It's a heroic trait that gives plus one attack to demons on a free up in any combat phase, and the Rust Fang for the minus one to save. And then he was accompanied by one big blob of plague bearers and spoilpot scrifner, and then at the very end, the Glockkin. And that was my list.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

So you had three very big things on the table. Yeah. And then plus your your flying bugs and your your big unit of plague bearers, and that's sort of it, really, plus a couple of characters, right?

SPEAKER_02 27:05

Yeah, like so like a true Timmy player, I just wanted to push around the big things and have fun. The way the list worked in my head, and in hindsight, I probably would have changed battle tactics. I'm actually looking into that now, but not to get too far ahead, is that the Grey Unclean one is there to bring back either one unit, like one unit of the plague drones up at half strength or the big blob of plague bearers if somebody managed to chew for all of them. The Glotkin is there to just smash into stuff. I had so much fun just running him up the board and just be like, ah, whatever, deal with it, don't care. Um, Rottigus is is there to kind of do the same, but he's really there for his 18-inch aura um to stop any sort of recursion um and just do mortal wounds and healed stuff up as well. The plague drones acted as more like a screen, but in the end, I actually ended up playing them to get me like the first heart of uh Legend of the Parch, which actually hampered me in a way.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

So is that the shield wall one? So it's sort of like for 40k people, it's like three steps of secondaries that you do in order. So you you select you have two of them to do, and each one has three parts to it, but you have to do them in order. The first one, if I recall correctly, is you've got to have two units within six inches of your deployment zone, so just outside your deployment zone, and is it within six inches or twelve inches of each other? So the two units have to be near each other outside your deployment zone, hence forming a shield wall.

SPEAKER_02 28:47

Yeah, you are yeah, you're kind of right. It's basically six in you have to be outside of your your friendly territory, six inches within your friendly territory, wholly within your friendly territory, and two or three inches within another unit from your army.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Yeah, okay. Yeah, which I guess if you go, I guess it's very dependent on which map you're doing, which mission, and and the because the deployment maps are all over the place. So was that the thing you struggled with, or is it when you didn't go first? It was harder to do.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Really, it was like the second part of the mission that uh sorry, the second part of the battle tactic that really did me over and I found hard to score, and it but it's basically because of the wording. So the second part of Siege of Ashes, sorry, it wasn't Legend of Parch, is you complete this uh you complete this battle tactic at the end of your turn if you can con control an objective within enemy territory. That objective is contested by at least one friendly unit that did not use a move ability this turn, and at least one friendly unit charged this turn, which sounds pretty easy, but it's actually not that easy because most of the battle plans that we were playing the um the objectives were either in no man's land or that it was just kind of like a big bunch up in the middle, and there was no way I was gonna get the back objectives, so it was quite a struggle just to hit the ones in the middle. Um so yeah. So yeah, so uh well yeah, and it was also to do with positioning and just it was quite a hard tournament to be honest, because it was a GT. There's quite a lot of heavy hitters in the GT as well. So that was another reason why I find it diffic difficult to score like outpost resupply.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

So but with that one, does the objective have to be in your opponent's deployment zone or just outside your has to be uh within enemy territory. Oh, okay. So yeah, that's a bit of a tool ask, especially when your army's quite slow. Mm-hmm. So maybe that's just a a bit of a bad pick. And this And you need two units to do it as well, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:08

Yeah, so you you basically need a friendly unit the sat on the combat. Yeah. And then you need another unit to charge. Yeah. Now I'm not saying it's impossible, and you can very much do it with some clever play. For example, in the turn before, you could possibly get a counter charge off and send a unit in, so that on your turn next turn, you could have a unit that charges in. But my dice rolls just didn't end up allowing me to do that, or I just positioned bad. The big blob of plague bearers were a great help, but also a hindrance as well.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

So yeah, it's just uh battle tactic with a requires a lot of spinning plates, basically. Yeah, a l a lot of things need to align to pull that one off, whereas some of the others are a lot simpler, and I think yeah, with the battle tactics, there's an element of playing to your strengths, but you've got to play a lot of them to work out because in theory, in paper, you might go, Well, that seems doable, and then once you try it, you go, Oh, actually, that's not easy to do whatsoever. Um, and maybe one that seems harder is actually easier to do. So yeah. So is that the battle tactic you would swap?

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Yeah, it is. I'd I'd take it for Burning Vengeance, where you pick a hideout and then you have to go get that hideout and do that's fair.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

That's still going into your opponent's deployment zone, but it's a terrain piece rather than an objective. So I think it might be to do.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

I found with this list because I generally win the game of attrition unless they have a real hardcore list, not a hardcore list, but uh just in a sum up against um a real strong list. I always had some stuff floating about, or I could bring back the drones to go over there and nab it if I wanted to, because nobody expects Nurgle, the Spanish Inquisition, to be able to like go get stuff in their backfield. And that's where the drones were handy.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Yeah, because for one CP you can bring back a unit back at half strength. And can they they appear anywhere?

SPEAKER_02 33:24

Within six inches of the Great Unclean one, nine inches away from enemy units, or within uh a fecculent Namor tree. Oh also. Oh okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

So if you have hoofed one of those two up the board, you can do that. And with the changes in this uh GHB, we talked about a few days before checking on the day, I can't remember now. Um, that faction train pieces can't be charged by default, um, or it's a lot harder for them to be charged. Uh whereas in previous games that that's the big weakness of having faction train is it is chargeable. Um you can still fight them, but you just can't charge them, so you have to just end a move within them, basically.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

It's like I can't the tree is a weird one. Can't test the objective, can't be got an objective, pardon me. I can't pile into combat. I can't charge into combat, I can't move into combat. I can just move around. People can come back and come into combat with me, and they can charge the tree. Sorry, they can't charge the tree, but they can end up within engagement range of it and attack it. It it's just an annoying sort of like a move blocker, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

But it does stuff for you as well.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

Yeah, like it can attack and stuff, but people can disengage with it and carry on with their lives willy-nilly. It doesn't stop deep striking or any of that because it doesn't have a move characteristic. But if it did have a move characteristic, then you could charge it.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

So it does move though, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Yeah, but it's an ability.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Right. So uh okay, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

Yeah, so yeah, so that was my list. That's kind of how I planned for it to work. My first game was up against a chap called Ben Chalk, lovely guy, ended up an amazing converted army. Um, he was running Slaves to Darkness. He actually ended up winning Best Painted A Painting Award, anyway, for his army, and rightly so. It was gorgeous. But he was basically basically running Slaves of Darkness, and it was the Godrath Warban faction. He had a Cron Spine, he and in his general's regiment, he had Belakor, he had a big blob of chaos knights, a blob of chaos warriors, two gore beast chariots, which were cool. It was nice to see them actually, but they're like converted, all of his army was converted. Um, a gaunt summoner, a reinforced blob of uh chaos chosen, and uh his faction terrain, you know, the big chaos shrine spiky thing. I uh he took banning for vengeance and siege of ashes. I actually lost this game, and it was a really good game, but the problem is that his gaunt summoner had like his chosen inside them, so he could teleport around and then deploy the chosen.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

To me as well. There's not what you can do about that, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

No, and because it's like they have you know fight first, fight last, and but they get to fight twice and they hit hard. Everybody knows chosen hits hard. It it was just too much for me to deal with. Like they managed to, if I remember correctly, they managed to get well, did they go with yeah, they managed to get through the plague bearers. So I tried to when I did bring half of them back, which was nice, and then the Glotkin and Rothka slowly took away the chari uh the chosen and then slowly got away rid of the Warriors as well, but by that time I was playing catch-up and I was sort of like trying to chase stuff around the board, and in the end I I lost that one uh 47 to 40, so it wasn't like a massive loss, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

It was close. Were you tabled at all?

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Uh in this tournament.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

Well, let's say this game, give me posted when it happens, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

No, no, no. In this game, no, no, no, it wasn't tabled. I had a few units left, so it wasn't the end of the world.

SPEAKER_01 37:19

But yeah, yeah, it was it was a nice looking army because I remember uh seeing it at one point, and it's sort of like a winter theme, and some of the big beasts are the old ogre uh I can't remember what they're called, the ogre beasts, uh basically. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:35

Yeah, it was it was really nice. Yeah, yeah. The thing uh that really happened to me that game was uh Bellicor. And it's like, oh, if I do a free up, you basically aren't moving, or you're not shooting, or you're not doing anything.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Yeah, does he select one thing for you to either not do, or damage when it happens?

SPEAKER_02 37:57

No, he just selects a unit and you're like, I want to move with Glockkin. He's like, free up, nah, no, you're not, or is it a four-up? But basically he rolls a dice and says you can't.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

So that was kind of strong, especially in movement, because it's like, oh, your combat unit can't go anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 38:15

Well, it's not even just movement, it's every every turn, every phase. One thing every phase. So it's like if you want to charge with him, roll a dice, you're not charging. If you want to shoot with him, roll a dice. If I pass, you're not shooting.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

It's like when I want to try and heal, but you've cast a spell within 18 inches of your big guy that I can't do it.

SPEAKER_02 38:39

Yeah. So yeah. No. But my spell goes off on an eight, chances are lower. But, anyways, so yeah, so I ended up losing that one. That was game one. That was game one. It was a really good game. It was a it was a nice game to kick off kick off the event. Game two was against uh a guy called Dan, and he was what's running the Cruel Boys, and I freaking hate cruel boys a lot of dirty tricks. Yeah, all the dirty tricks. But he so he was running cruel boys, he was running them as trophy finger, and he was doing burning for a vengeance and siege of ashes as well. His first general regiment was uh Gobsprack, and then he had a breaker boss on Trogoff, and then Cruel Boys Monster Killer, and then a man skewer bolt boys, and then a Merc Mob with Belcher Banner, whatever that is. Uh first regiment was a swamp boss uh skurdrek with a breaker boss on Trogoff, and then some hobgrotts, which were reinforced, and then he had another regiment which was a snatch boss on sludge breaker beast, sludge sludge breaker beast, god words, hobcrop slitters, cruel boys, monster killers, and man skewer bolt boys, and then in his third regiment he had a Scourge of Ashki killer boss on Great Nash Hoof with a slippery scumbag artifact trait or whatever, and then in the fourth regiment he had uh a Merknob uh with Belcher banner. So lots of regiments, lots of regiments. So I I won the roll-off. I obviously finished the playing first, and I actually decided to go first because I want to get shield walled as quickly as possible, and I just want to move up into the middle and and sit in the table. But you also wanted to be doubles. I also didn't want to be double, yeah. There's also the doubling, but that did actually happen in the game. But I don't think he took it. He actually just gave it to me because he didn't want to be the underdog, which makes sense. Anyway, um Oh, he didn't want you to be the underdog, you mean? Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. He didn't want me to be the underdog to give me the Brucey bonus of the battle planner at the time. Crawl Boy's all the dirty tricks and stuff was not actually that bad. So he did start doing damage into like Rotticus and the Glockkin and the Great Unclean one, because obviously he's got the monster killer stuff, but I'd managed to just yeet my Glockkin up the table just to start swinging and smashing everything because when he hits, he hits like his combat profile for just his tentacle without being damaged, is like five attacks. It's freeze twos, is it minus one or minus two, and then five damage apiece? But you can do plus one to hit on a four up in the combat phase if you charged, which is also which is also nice. So you got a free, not a free all-out attack, but you get all out attack without the minus to the save. So yeah, so he was just having a whale of time just smashing into stuff, and then because he had deployed quite close together and the disease can jump and hop from unit to unit, I was also just pinging stuff off left, right, and center. Um it was a tricky game. Um it did take a most of my games did almost go like the full distance of the full time. There was only one that slightly overrun, I'll go into that in a minute. But it wasn't too bad. It's definitely not been my worst experience of Cruel Boys, and I ended up winning that one just by like 56-54.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

So another really close, um, close game.

SPEAKER_02 42:30

Yeah, another close game. So literally just scraped that through, and it was all and really it was just a battle tactic, in it, I believe, was the only difference. That was it, hence why he didn't want to take the double turn, because obviously he wouldn't be able to score. Right, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

Um nice, so one loss, one win.

SPEAKER_02 42:51

One loss, one win. Yep. Not bad.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

And then your final game on uh Friday. Who was that against?

SPEAKER_02 42:59

My final game on Friday was a great game. It was against a chap called Gareth, who was the captain of Team England. Ooh. And I got my face smashed in.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

Well boy. I'm not surprised if he's the captain of Team England.

SPEAKER_02 43:14

No, and you uh and I'd kind of want him to be. But I'll go over his list in a minute, but the game itself was just it was a real joy because when you play for me, when I play someone better than me, it's such a learning experience, and I feel sorry for the person I'm playing against because they must be like, this is just easy, it's like shooting fish in the barrel, but whatever. Anyway, but I learn so much from them, it's like, oh, I'm gonna use the word shenanigans, but it's not really shenanigans, it's just clever playmanship. Like he was running Iden F um Iden F Deepkin, and so he just measuring everything out with. Like combat gauges and stuff like that, and it's like he found like the smallest of gaps, but was outside of the combat range of like let's say I had one unit here and one unit here, and the combat range of was here of three inches each. He just managed to find this gap just to send his heels like straight up the middle, and it's like really yeah, like really finite stuff, and I loved it. And it was just it was just great to get my face smashed in by someone who's quite knowledgeable. So, yeah, so yeah, so so it was a great game to play. He was a really nice guy, but he was running, yeah, the Achillean Beastmasters, he had two drops. His first regiment. Oh, he was taking Blazing Onslaught and Siege of Ashes. Siege of Ashes coming up a lot, by the way. His first regiment was Mafila, the Oracle of the Abyss. Don't know. And then he had the Achillean uh Ishian Guard reinforced, and then he had the uh the Viadan, the turtle, he had uh Isharan Soul Scrier, and then he had the Achillean Morsa Guard, so both sets of eels reinforced, just one for the damage symbols.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 45:13

No, they're the sharks. Ah, okay. He did have one of them. So the other things he had was like Icon of the Storm, he had some Nemati Reavers, the Scourge of Ascu ones, and then he had a second set of uh Nomati Reavers that were reinforced. Um and then he had the Achillan Alapex as well, with like the harpoon on it. So that's the shark one that you're talking about there, and obviously the shipwreck as well. Um besides this being like a wonderful game to play against, the the problem with the Iden FD King, especially for me, is like they can pick random objectives and sort of make them tar pits, and so like it's minus your movement, minus one inch in the first turn, minus two in the second turn, yada yada yada. And so for playing against like Maggot King and Nurgle, it's like that's actually quite a big hit. Because the fastest foot thing I have is my big units, which are moving at six, everything else is four inches, and the drones are eight inches. So and with a big blob of play bearers, it does limit my manoeuvrability a bit.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Yeah, so if you came from four inches to three or two, that's massive.

SPEAKER_02 46:29

Yeah, it's huge. It's huge. But yeah, really good, enjoyable game to play against, but uh yeah, I lost that one. 6425. Yeah, a bit more of a smashing.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

So if you had a takeaway, what would be your one lesson or like tip that you learnt from him or tactic?

SPEAKER_03 46:50

Was there anything?

SPEAKER_02 46:52

Yeah, there was. Take a lot more gauges. Well, the three inch ones. Yeah. No, uh yeah. Or the nine inch ones. No, the three inch ones. But the nine-inch light sticks are actually really helpful, and I should buy some of them as well. Um it's it's been just I guess it's just been a little more knowledgeable of the game and how the game works. Like, he has so many more reps of AOS on me. Uh and they play each other on tabletop simulator as well, and they're theorycraft in a way, so there's no way like I could keep up with that kind of caliber of player as it is. But yeah, my one takeaway would be like just try and be as like precise and clean as possible and measure stuff out because you never know if you can just squeeze a model in there or not. Yeah, it might be cheeky, but you're in a GT. So it's kind of expected, really.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

And fair game.

SPEAKER_02 47:48

If you're in like a throne of skulls again, or more of a chilled event, maybe not. But yeah. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 47:57

Sure. Okay, so that was day one, Friday. One win, two losses. One win, two losses. Um, I guess not great, but not not terrible either.

SPEAKER_02 48:09

It could be worse. Could have been a lot worse. And considering it was a GT as well. I was quite happy with that result.

SPEAKER_01 48:16

Casual friendly Tim. Casual friendly Tim.

SPEAKER_02 48:20

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

How did uh your games on day two go on Saturday?

SPEAKER_02 48:26

So Saturday, they went pretty well actually, a lot better than day one, and I didn't feel that tired or lophargic after the first day of gaming, which I normally feel. Just a little sidetrack bit here. Like I always find when we go to Warhammer World, because I'm so enthusiastic and energetic, and I'm like, I'm not screaming across the table, but I have to raise my voice because the noise in Warhammer World is loud, it's echoey, and it's really hard to hear people. So you elevate your voice just to be heard, and it's draining. That is draining. So, and then obviously the space around the tables is not that great either.

SPEAKER_01 49:07

No, you're sort of squashed in in rows, so there's um two gate two tables normally directly next to you and people quite close behind you, whereas here each individual table was its own little island, lots of space to walk around. Um, and as you say, uh you didn't have to shout as much to be heard, so that's all positives, I would say. So the sort of the overall gaming experience was good. I guess we could interject now and talk about the terrain, uh, because we didn't do that at the beginning. The terrain, I would say, isn't as good as the Warhammer World stuff. The Warhammer World stuff was much more customised. I think some of the tables were a bit more like tournament standard. Um, but here it felt like they had just taken the footprint of the woods uh as cutout mats, and the cutout mats did match the um the mats they were using for each table. So there was a variety of sort of different table styles, and then the mats matched, and then on top of those mats was effectively just bunches of faction terrain, if I recall correctly, which is a little odd uh when you see you know the mausoleums for Nighthorn on a table, and if you were a Nighthorn player, it might look a bit odd or be a bit confusing, but that that was throughout so the vast majority of the terrain used was um upcycled faction terrain, because I guess that's the majority of AOS terrain that Games Workshop has for sale right now, is the faction terrain stuff. Um, did you like it? Do you think it was like painted well or put together well, or was it a bit of a torn run crop out?

SPEAKER_02 50:46

Um it it was a little bit slapdash, but I kind of expected it for this GT. I wasn't expecting like really gorgeous terrain as we would get in Warhammer Worlds, like that's kind of the draw, and that was kind of like the selling point. This was more torn and focused, and I I was grateful just to have terrain that's painted and like built, and it's all the same and matching. It wasn't like the best, but it wasn't the worst, um, and it was fit for purpose in in my mind.

SPEAKER_01 51:16

Fit for purpose, the worst compliment you could possibly give.

SPEAKER_03 51:19

I'm fit for purpose. What's that saying about you, Phil?

SPEAKER_01 51:25

Uh okay, you know, I I sort of agree. It was I thought it was a bit disappointing. AOS terrain, it was said functional, but not aesthetically great or particularly interesting, and you know, it wasn't elevated. Um for you know, this is being done by Games Workshop. The company that makes the game, I would have expected a bit more effort into the terrain. And you know, this is their first one, in well, not one of the first in the UK. So maybe it will get a bit better over time. Uh again, it doesn't have to be as fancy as the Warhammer World stuff. I would say the Warhammer World stuff is thematically 10 out of 10, but maybe not as practical sometimes, because some of the pieces that they have are just too big and they're not quite the right size. I I think I would have rather I wouldn't have minded it if it was more just the generic terrain kits that they have, like the actual places of power or the ruins and things like that. But instead it was predominantly, you know, two pieces of faction terrain stuck on a mat of some kind or or stuck on the woods or something, like the terrain area. And it just yeah, there was no kind of cohesion on a table in terms of design. So I think they could improve those elements a bit more for sure, just to be not only practical and fit for purpose, but also visually much more aesthetic. That is sort of what I would want from a games workshop official tournament, both you know, hitting both sides of the hobby, basically. That's fair.

SPEAKER_03 53:02

That's fair.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

But yeah, the tell me about was it game four now?

SPEAKER_02 53:07

Yeah, it would have been game four. Uh so it would have been the the first game on the second day, uh, feeling bright and bushy-tailed. And I ended up having a a sort of a mirror match, pretty much. Um, so I faced off against the lovely Terry Pike and his wonderfully painted Maggot King of the Naval Army. This guy definitely went on to win Best Painted for His Army or a Painted Award as well. Um so I managed to play two armies that got into the cabinet. Nice. I think I did.

SPEAKER_01 53:39

Yeah, I saw this one and it was really impressive. Um had some really nice conversion work uh in especially like the did it have like some of the endless spells? Like it had the burning head, but it was like a little Nurgle head or something. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and then it had some really nice like sort of purple accents to the green of the the the Nurgles for the colour scheme.

SPEAKER_02 54:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He um he's spent like I want to say five or several years painting this army. Wow. He does like commission painting. He is a Pike's miniature painting on Instagram if you want to check him out. He also has a YouTube channel, yeah, which is at Terry Pike. Um he's got some lovely stuff on that. I remember seeing um his Orange Stormcast video ages and ages ago. But yeah, just gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous army. Anyway, sorry, I will stop foaming at the mouth about his army. His list, as I said, was was pretty much a mirror list, but with a few additions of the the latest Magaking of Nurgle range. So taking Teleban and Nurgle, his general's regiment, Ros Rotgus, one unit of plague drones, uh a big blob of plague bearers, and a small blob of plague bearers and the Poxbringer. Second Regiment was a great unclean one, two sets of Nurglins and spoilpot Scrivener. His third regiment, or second regiment, if you want to say, uh, was uh Belga, the Sincewitch Since Witch, Since Witch Words. Oh yeah, the Witch from Darkmore. So yeah, and then the Scourge Vashki Putrig Bright Kling uh Putrid Blight Kings. You'd think I'd know how to say this stuff after playing Maggot King and Nerville for some.

SPEAKER_01 55:33

It's your own army, but I forgive you because games workshops um way of spelling and pronunciating um words of yeah, so the the this uh this match started off uh actual like uh what is it it's not Don of Wars when it's horizontal.

SPEAKER_02 55:51

Is it hammer and anvil when it's yes, lengthways lengthways? So it was like hammer hammer and anvil deployment. So it was just kind of like what was it? No, it was like a jaggedy stair one. It was really weird, but it was kind of cool. And I think really what win won this game was actually my deployment. Um because I just set it up so that it was gonna be a plague bearer smush just to really really like just get all that stuff tied up. So that wasn't going anywhere, and I used SpoilPox Scrivener, I believe, to give me like extra command score uh in total, not for each model, just in total, which meant that we were fine over an objective, and because I had oh no, and plus my spoil prox was giving me plus one to hit as well. No, plus one to wound, and my potspringer managed to get in to give plus one to hit, and also my great unclean one was enough and nearby in the bubble to give him another plus one attack. Sorry, the potspringer gave him plus one attack. So the propspringer hit first, then the plague bearers, and the plague bearers are doing three attacks each with all out attack, they're now hitting on threes, winning on twos instead of fours and threes. But really, I'm just fishing for sixes. So instead of like 10 attacks, I'm now throwing like 30 attacks into a big block of plague bearers, even though they're still minus one to hit because they're contesting an objective, like I am. It's it's just it was just great, and so I won that attrition war, and then my plague drones were coming around the side as well just to tear into them, which meant Rotticus was just marching up the middle, Glock King was just smashed into his plague drones and wiped them off almost in one turn, and then managed to sort of go round to the flank and go towards his Rotikus and start doing damage on him before my other Rotticus came up, and my other great unclean one came up, um, and managed to push those um to get those objectives and get that score in. So I ended up winning that game uh 7148. Oh, quite a big one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was I was really proud of that because when you have a mirror match, it's kind of like I know how to play my army, yeah, kind of thing, you know. I I I know it could be a bit of a slog, uh, especially when it's like two or two attrition armies going against each other. And this was actually the first game I had a clock brought to my table. I knew was that because he thought you were slow or he was slow? No, it was the tournament organizers thought we were being slow.

SPEAKER_03 58:34

At what point did it happen?

SPEAKER_02 58:36

Hmm. Bottom of turn four, and I think we were supposed to be coming towards the end of turn five. Oh, okay. And it or was it like bottom of turn three? And I was there much point having a clock that late into the game, like it might have been turn three. There was basically half an hour left on the clock.

SPEAKER_01 58:55

Right, okay. So they gave it to you with half hour left. Was it more to be like this is how much is left of the yeah? Do you know what I think that's probably quite a useful feature to have? Like, I I kind of hate the idea of chess clocks, but having an actual kind of countdown timer on your table saying this is how many minutes you have left of your game, I think would be generally quite useful for most people. And sometimes they have that Warhammer world, like in the the big projector at the back, they've got a clock, but that is often uh behind you for or behind one of you, um, so you're not really conscious of it, and they occasionally do like time uh call-outs and things like that. Um but having one actually on your table probably gives you a bit more of a pressure to you're you just notice it a bit more, I think. Yeah, I think maybe that'd be quite useful. Was there an element of shame as well? Like, oh no, I'm the slow player.

SPEAKER_02 59:55

No, not really, because I was talking to Terry and I was like, we're not dilly-dallying about here, we're not taking our time, we're rolling dice, we're we're taking names, we're doing stuff. And he was like, No, we're not being slow. It's just because we have two attrition armies, we're both five upwards, you know, and we don't do that lot of damage.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:13

This is what I always tell uh you know, Dan and Richie when they accuse me of being a slow player. I'm like, it's just for army style, you know. Likewise, you know, I'm not really accused of being a slow player with my Thunder Warriors because they they get things done quick or the games end up uh you know on time. Nighthawn, I think, is just a slow army because there's a lot going on. It is now you often get into you know combat turn one, which really slows the game down, I think. Um and then it only speeds up. I think the last turn tends to speed up quite quickly if once stuff starts dying. But as you say, if you've got an attrition army where you run a lot of dice but not a lot's dying, then the game does just feel slow.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:59

Yeah, yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:01

As you say, even if you're doing lots of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:03

Well they didn't realise is like I was the roticus was almost done on Terry's side, along with a few other things. And so to them, it just looked like oh, there's still big stuff on the table here. Right, yeah. And it was like, well, really, no, it's you know, it's almost done. But, anyways, chess clocks, don't have a thing against them. Happy to have them on my table. I just keep forgetting to do the flicky thing for so it's my opponent's time and not mine. I am just terrible at that. It doesn't matter. We finished the game before the chess clock ran out anyway. Like 10 minutes to spare. So it's cool. Uh head uh yeah, by the way, tournament organizers or not tournament organizers, the the ruling staff that are wondering about, like Matt and then like his team. And I know we said this before, it's just a real joy to have at the events, and I feel very lucky that we have like the game designer wandering around with his team, and they are actively engaged in the hobby.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:06

Yeah, that they they mentioned that um in the award ceremony as well, and that was something I wanted to pick up on. So, Matt is the lead designer for Age of Sigma. Pretty much every AOS event I've been to um since fourth edition at least at Warhammer World, he's either taking part in the event or he's sort of helping out run the event. Um, and then when it's come to sort of Warhammer Fest or these sort of external events, yeah, it feels like he's always there helping run it, uh, you know, being like lead judge, etc., handing out the prizes at the end to the winners, which is really great to see that someone is that involved in the game and sort of willing to sort of go the extra step to see the game being played or to themselves go out into the real world and play the game with other people. They're not just in an ivory tower playing amongst themselves, uh that sort of thing. They're getting sort of more hands-on experience with regular punters playing the game, which I think is yeah, credit to him to do that. I haven't seen the 40k team do that in a while. I don't know if they did that this time round, but the fact that that wasn't called out in the prize section makes me think that wasn't the case. So, yeah, props for the AOS team for always doing a bit more than what the 40k team seems to be doing. So, yeah, that was really good. It's generally sort of heartwarming to see. I didn't get a chance to actually go up and say hello to him. Normally I try to and sort of, you know, fan over him slightly because yeah, I think he's he does a really good job um and yeah, for the game. So yeah, you just say that's that's good to see.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just wanted to mention that because I feel like it it should be worth calling out for sure. Yeah, it's always worth calling out. Okay, so that was game four. Mm-hmm. So moving on to game five. I played a wonderful chap called Jonathan, and he was bringing along the Hellsmiths of Hashut, and it was the Bullfather's Horn faction. Um, and in his and he had a cron spine, and in his regiment, uh sorry, in his army, he had the general's regiment, uh, Uruk Tar, two sets of hopgrotts, an infernal cohort with uh Hashoot blades, and then and that were reinforced, and then the other infernal coff cohort with like the spears. Second regiment was a demon spin demon smith on infernal Taurus, some bull centaurs, and then the rocket battery thing, and then the Scourge of Ashki armoured anointed sentinels as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:48

Well, okay. So the bull centaurs reinforced at all?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:54

Uh yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:55

Okay, yeah, because I I I can't remember if it was this one, but I did see uh Hellsmith's player with a ton of the bull centaurs, so it might have been this guy.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:04

Yeah, it was this guy. So this army this match was actually quite difficult for me because of the manoeuvrability of the opposing force that I was facing. So I ended up just kind of like castling up in the middle as much as I can before before fanning out to capture objectives, but he built up such a lead on me. It was hard to claim it back. Like Glotty did his work and wiped out a unit of ball centaurs, which was great. Chloe and Cragmar managed the half the movement of the ball centaurs and minus one to their run and charge as well, so it means that they weren't going as far as they should. So there was a bit of move blocking with terrain and stuff as well, which meant they couldn't really get stuck in as quickly as they normally would, which gave me time to throw Glotty up the middle to go into like the infernal cohort um and various other stuff, along with like my great unclean one deciding to just smash hopgrotts in the face because it That was funny. And so I got to sit on objectives, and here comes the problem of like, cool, I'm sitting on objectives, I'm scoring primary, but secondaries are just getting harder and harder to score.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:11

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:11

Kind of thing. So I'm great at move blocking, I'm great in sitting and stuff. But yeah, trying to push through to the other side is is seems to be a bit of a problem. So I actually ended up losing that game, which was 66-56. So still close. Still close. Not a total smashing, but like fair play to Jonathan. You played it really well. And I did everything that I could to try and claw it. But yeah. Good try. Yeah, good try. And so that lends me to my last game on the second day, game six, which was facing off against Stormcast Eternals and the Sentinels of the Black Citadel. So this was a guy called Sam, lovely chap. He actually came down with he didn't come down with Jonathan, but he knew Jonathan as well. Just a little side tip bit. Quite a lot of like team players in this tournament, so quite a lot of like friendship groups going on, which is always lovely to see. So it's kind of nice when you're like, oh, I played so and so, and they're like, Oh yeah, he's my mate from this, and blah blah blah blah. So that was kind of nice. Um, anyway, sorry. He uh was playing, yeah, uh Stormcastinels Sicils of the Bleak Citadel, uh, Sentinels of the Bleak Citadels, and it's General's Renishment. You have naive Black Talon, who, if I remember correctly, can charge into something, do a bunch of damage, and then before you get to attack back on a free-up sheet gun.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:44

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:45

Which is great. And then he had a unit of Aether Wings, he had Neve's Companions as well, and then he had some Vanguard Raptor uh long strike with crossbows, which were reinforced to do all the shooting damage, so they're like it's like a multitude of attacks per unit. Let's say three, minus one rend, but three damage each. They're like worth 400 points. Yeah, tasty. He then had the Skurjevasky uh Iridan the Witness. Love that little model. I say little model, that big bird model. It's like such a gorgeous model. I mean it's great.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:23

Uh yeah, because he's like a big executioner, isn't he? I'm like a crow or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:27

Yeah, then a reinforced unit of prosecutors, and then another reinforced unit of prosecutors, and then a unit of reinforced reclusions. The prosecutors are basically gonna deep strike and then just charge on you with like a 3d6 charge, remove the lowest or remove whatever one you want. So they're pretty much guaranteed to get in. And if they charge, they're doing damage on the charge, they get like plus one damage, I believe, or something like that. Again, it's like either two or three damage on the charge, it hurts, it really does. But my stuff is tanky enough to kind of withstand all of it, and then because my plague bearer unit is minus one to hit when it's contesting an objective, like the long strikes don't really want to go into that, so then he's trying to take down my big stuff, and because of the spell fleshy abundance, which is unlimited, it's like okay, cool, you've done let's say 14 damage to Glotty. It's like, right, I am just throwing all the fleshy abundance at him to either make him minus one to wound or to try and heal up as many wounds as possible. And if he's not in combat, I'm gonna rally him back up anyway. So, like, I'm just at that point of the tournament, like I feel like my tournament brain started kicking in a bit more, and it was like, okay, heal, heal, heal, heal, heel, and send him off again. But it was tough again because the prosecutors do damage and I struggle outputting damage. Like, as soon as you take away Glotty, I'm relying on more actually Rotticus than the Great Unclean one, which doesn't make sense. But I find Rotikus because he has more attacks, even though lower damage has a greater output than the Great Unclean one who has higher damage. But less attacks, but he does have a shooting attack. So swings aroundabouts again, really tough matchup, but I actually managed to secure a win on that one, and that was uh 51-56.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:32

Lots of really close games.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:34

Which was I don't know if that's you or indicative of the game as a whole. Hmm, they say it's indicative of the game. Could be just say it's a really quick game.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:45

Well, it could show that you're you know the Swiss Coast pairing style matchups have paid off for the most part.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:52

Maybe, maybe. But fair play to Sam. He knows his army, he knows what he's doing. Again, it's just that war of attrition kind of thing. And maybe just picking the wrong fight, using the wrong tool with the wrong fight. But he played it well in my mind. That's good. So yeah. But anyway, so yeah, so I finished uh day two on a win, which was good. So now I'm at three wins, three losses. Ooh, bang in the middle. Bang in the middle.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:21

But spoilers for everyone watching at home. That isn't it. There's more. It was a three-day event for um the GT people, two more games. Is it is this the time when you get put in a bracket? Because I okay. So you are uh let's say you so you you're in the middle of a pack. I think there was how many players were there, but like 60 or was there more? I feel like there was sixty. There's around sixty, I think, for AOS. Yeah. So I guess you are you put in a bracket of like 10 other people, or yeah, I was in like second bracket.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:58

There was in on the app, it was like there's bracket one and then there's bracket four, and then no bracket three and then bracket four. I was in bracket three, but there was no bracket. So so second bracket, technically, I'll take it. Nice ahead of Dan.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:17

Ha. Yeah, Dan didn't do quite as well as he normally would do. So yeah, that's good. Yeah, okay. So maybe it's like 15 people per bracket or something. I would have thought the first bracket would be 10 players, but who knows how they've divvied it up. They might have done it based on just number of people. Yeah. Divided by number of brackets or something. I don't know. Um yeah, so basically it means now you're fighting because I guess the idea is even if you know you've lost a game or two, you're not able to win the overall prize. There are prizes for winning your bracket. So you are now sort of trying to win your bracket, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:54

Yeah, I'm not sure how it works. You've literally just explained it. But from my understanding, is that it doesn't matter what you do before the bracket. Like if you win all your games in your bracketed segment, then you got a chance to win the thing over.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:15

Yeah, because you get put in the same uh bracket as the people with the same win ratios. So all the people that won all their games up to now that have gone uh was it what three games, six games so far you've played, right? So the people that have gone six and oh, all of those people get into the same bracket to win the tournament. Everyone that's gone five and one should technically be in a different bracket, regardless of at what point maybe that they they had their loss. And then there should be, in theory, another bracket for all the people that went four and two, and likewise three and three, etc. etc. So it that's how it should be broken down. Whether it is or not, I don't actually know. And I guess if you you got um you know several wins but then a draw, maybe you would then be put into the same bracket. So yeah, it I think you could argue that someone that had gone six and oh versus say five and a draw, technically the six and oh person deserves to, you know, if they if they both win all their games in the final day, deserve to they're more maybe more deserving of the win. But I think because they're all lumped in the same bracket, potentially they've both got an equal chance of winning. I think, but I'm I'm I'm not exactly sure how they're they're doing it. That seems about right though. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:41

Meh, it doesn't matter. Like I wasn't focusing on the bracket, I wasn't going there to win a tournament. I the main reason for me going to this tournament was I've just never played eight games before in a row.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:51

Yeah, so a lot of games. So yeah, final day Sunday, you get to play two games, which isn't really many games to you know sort out a a bucket, um, a bracket or a bucket. Um, but at the same time, equally, uh there's not enough players to really justify playing eight games. Yeah, you would have worked out one probably one person would have gone um six and oh in that tournament, and no one else would have if they had paired them up correctly. But yeah, I guess it's designed to work at a bigger scale than the events are currently at. Um so yeah, tell me about your game seven. Who were you playing against?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:29

So I was playing against a lovely chap called Adam, and he too was also running the Stormcast Eternals. So having played Sam, that actually really played in my favour because he was playing the same subfaction, so the Sentinels of the Bleak Citadel. So I kind of used the gimmick of like they can pick one unit to give like a five up ward, and I knew what most of the army was going to do anyway. So he was running Ionis this time, the Cryptborn, which is the guy uh on the dragon. He's super cool. Uh a Lord Terminus, some praetors, uh, a reinforced unit of Reclusions. He too also had the Vanguard Raptors with the long strike crossbows, and then in the other unit, he had a Knight Arcanum, Questor Swoll Sorm vanquishers that were reinforced, and Vigilors. But I forgot to say that both Sam and Adam had their Portaloo Storm Tech Portal action terrain, which basically means they can just like teleport stuff about, which is a really which was a bane against me. But it also means that they can like teleport their long strike bows about, and then I've forgotten what it is, but there's somewhere where you can give your long strikes kind of like a a move and a run, and then they got so that means they can go up to 11 inches, and then they plus got an 18-inch uh move, run and shoot, and so they got an 11-inch move technically if you give them uh all out run, and then they got an 18-inch fret range. So it's kind of scary because of the damage they can output. They can do so you know anyway, point is because I played a similar or the same faction yesterday, the day before, uh, that really helped me in playing this this army, and it was the same sort of thing, it was just playing the game of attrition. There was a lot of double turning back and forth in this match, like he double turned me and I double turned him, and then he double turned me, and then I just stayed as the underdog and just sort of clinched it at the end, and so ended up going uh 7043 to me. So I feel like that was like my highest win of the weekend overall, maybe, but again, uh a really great game.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:48

Yeah, yeah, it would have been more nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:52

Yeah, I I was really happy with that. Couldn't ask me more, and it was really nice because it was on a Sunday, he was really chilled, he was just a nice guy, um, and knows his army, and he's really into like making his own rules and all and campaigns and stuff, and he was showing me some of the stuff he does, and yeah, it was really cool. Really, really good.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:14

So you're I'm four and three at this point. Four and three. Oh, you're up.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:20

Um going into your final game.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:23

Uh, who is this against? So my final game was against Damien, who was there with his son as well. His son has played a few times in the world's championships for Age of Sigmar. So not too young then. No, he was like 15. Oh, so he is young. Like his his son has been playing like since a young age kind of thing. Um hardcore mode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think he plays for Team Wales as well, his son.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:53

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:53

Not entirely.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:54

Wait, he's still fifteen.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:57

No, well, I can't remember his age exactly. But all I know is he's played a few times with Wales and played with Team Wales. Yeah, okay, when he was young and his dad went with him to all these tournaments and stuff. But that's that's the kind of players they are. They play quite a tight competitive game, which is cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:15

So is Damien quite also competitive? Yes. I I would say so. And I don't mean that in a bad way. So he wasn't there like, oh, I'm just playing a casual game because my you know, my my son's playing and he's very good.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:29

Yeah, he was just it's a GT, so you're expected to bring it. Like, you know, this is not hold hands, make daisy chains, dance around the Maypole stuff. This is Warhammer, my friend. Make friends. This is GT. I'm throwing dice in your face, I am drawing blood kind of tournament. Like, that's the mindset you should go to when you go to like a Warhammer open slash GT, especially if you've got like world like uh sorry, like national teams playing there as well. It's just uh it's just an understanding. If it it's it's a real odd like playing in tournaments, it's a really odd mindset, uh, because every tournament is different. And over the years since we've been playing, it's like we've kind of said, like, oh yeah, throne of skulls is this kind of tournament, and narrative is this kind of tournament. And I don't think that's uh no longer the case, as in like a narrative is a nice fluffy tournament, or it's supposed to be, or you know, uh throne of skulls. Uh, was it thrown of skulls? And then the GT was supposed to be like the cutthroat one, throwing the screen.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:31

Yeah, well, Throne of Skulls originally was the cutthroat one, then it became the friendly one, um, and then yeah, the GTs became the hardcore ones.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:41

But really, it it just comes down to who's there on a day and what are people turning up with. A tournament's a tournament. I think I will maybe caveat it a little bit with that if there's a bracket system, you know it's competitive. Like you don't have to worry about bringing the most meta or most streamlined list possible. Like that's I for me personally, and I don't want to speak for everyone, like I expect that. Like, and I'm okay with that, because that's that's the tournament I'm walking into. I'd like to think if I'm going to Warhammer World, it's a bit more laid back and casual, but again, depends who's there on the day.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:24

Yeah, no, that's fair. I would say it completely varies, and you know, AOS is just as competitive as 40k. I would say the mindset's still there. It's not to say that people aren't putting an effort into their armies. They're often in tournaments, people that have very excellently painted armies or converted armies for this, you know. And and some of those people might be more casual players for sure, but uh I would say that's probably maybe more m minority than others, I would say.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:00

So yeah. So that but anyway, so my last game was against Damien, and he was running my favourite faction to play against. Cruel Boys! Oh, my dear. And he was playing the Cruel Boy Claws, and this time I just couldn't handle the dirty tricks, and Damien knew how to play his army and play it well, even though he said he's not been playing with it long. He's just a good player. So in his general's regiment, he had Kragnos, um, and then he had some gut rippers reinforced, then he had a killer boss, some corpse-ridden vulture, and then he had a manskewer, uh, bolt boys, and then a murk knob with belch banner, and then in a second regiment he had Godsprack, the mouth mork, and then he had a breaker boss on the Trogoff, and then he had like Cruel Boys Monster Killers and Cruel Boys Monster Killers. Um so two units of them. And I just played it incredibly badly as well. Like I was trying to get I was trying to get the charge off on Kraggy because I know Kraggy can just run in and do all the shenanigans, especially if you get him off, especially if he gets the charge. But he moved blocked me with um his dirty tricks of being able to move a unit to get in the way. And then by the time I did get into Krachnos, he was like, Oh no, no, no, dirty tricks fight first. And it's like I've done all this work and I and my plague. Yeah, and my plague but I should know that. But my plague bearers went into like gobsprack, and gobsprack was just which was a bad matchup, uh, in terms of in terms of the battle on the in terms of the army on the battlefield, and gobsprach is just munching plague bearers away, and then there's the whole like, oh, if you do a spell, I'll roll 3d6, and if I beat your dispel, that means you're taking mortal wounds as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:56

So the dirty tricks. Does he need to roll over something for them to go off, or does he spend points? Uh point resources, secondary resources.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:08

Yeah, I can't remember exactly how it works, but it's some kind of resources. Yeah. I'll be honest, I don't pay attention. I just trust people to know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:19

Terrible. Too honest, Tim, for your own good. Uh, but you are right, yeah. I think that there is a resource mechanic of like wall points or whatever it is, um, that they get to use, but I can't remember if they've got to like roll a three up for it to go off. So there's if there's an element that it's not guaranteed that sort of feels a bit more fair, but if it's a bit more, yeah, I can just say this is and it's happening, is if my point to you is going to be if he had been up front and said, Oh, by the way, if you charge Kragnos, I've got a deity trick, you know, 50-50 chance or you know, 75% chance it'll go off and I get fights first, would you have still done it because of the chance that it wouldn't have gone off?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:59

Probably not. I might have charged into something else. Fair.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:03

Then I would say that was a gotcha. But then, you know, maybe he was like, Oh, that's the point. It's make sure you change your mind. Because I think it's be it's better to be up front with those things sometimes because of the mind games it does on your opponent, and it sort of feels more fair.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:20

I don't want to take anything away from Damien because Damien was very honest. He was like, Do you know he did say like, Do you know cruel boys? Do you know how they work and everything else? And I naively said, like, yeah, I know a bit. Because it's like the eighth game on the last day.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:36

You've warmed up your competitive brain, as you were saying, and you played played them earlier.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:42

Yeah, and I played them earlier, and I didn't encounter as many shenanigans this time, that time as I did this time. And so it was just like, yeah, it was just interesting to see how different people play them. So, yeah. Lesson learned. So I ended up losing that one. And the final score for that one was like 67-14. 14. I yeah, I got smashed. I got tabled.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:12

The bracket system did not work there, but the bracket system did not work. Um yeah, valiant effort, I guess. Uh, so what were your final scores? And do you remember where you came overall? Uh so I was four and four overall.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:27

Bang in the middle. Bang in the middle. In terms of where I came. Oh, I can't remember. Did we post it in the chat?

SPEAKER_01 1:26:37

Oh, I think you yeah, in in our little chat group, you posted it because you were you did better than Dan, didn't you? Yeah, I think I did. Yeah, I beat Dan. We shouldn't be to be fair. I think you'd but you both probably were flagging by the end because I think eight games was quite a lot to to give. I mean, I don't think I would have enjoyed playing eight games. Normally we struggle playing our last game on the Sunday at Warhammer World because instead of playing five games, we've technically saw played six or seven because we go up Friday into a practice game on the Friday, which lasts for f you know, the length of two games. Yeah. So we we we're a bit more tired out. So I guess we're sort of used to that extra day of gaming, but it starts a lot earlier, goes lasts to a lot longer than we would normally do on the Friday. So um I can see why you you're both exhausted from that.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:36

Yeah. I didn't I would say I didn't feel as exhausted as I would at Warhammer World, but I was I was exhausted. Hmm. But but I enjoyed every single game. I learned a thing or two and I can't wait until the next event I go to, albeit a little while. But yeah, I ended up finishing twenty eighth overall, and Dan finished thirty five, not to rub it into Dan.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:00

No, I mean that's both quite impressive um out of yeah, 60 whatever. That's too shabby. Yeah, that's probably your one of your better. Definitely one of my better results just going. They did really well last time, but I think that was more favourite game, favourite army votes. So yeah, this event was pure filth, no soft scores whatsoever, no favourite game, no favourite army, which is you know a change, because normally traditionally games workshop focus on the hobby elements as much as gaming, and things like favourite game scores are meant to dissuade people from just being, you know, filthy tournament players and being rude and things like that. So it's interesting that they've done away with those elements.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:48

Well, this goes back to my point of um you know it's you know it's a tournament, like a hard-hitting tournament if there are no favorite game votes.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:57

Well, wasn't there favorite uh and this was because I remember Joe talking about it for the 40k, there were painting scores, but the painting scores were done by the judges, not by the players.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:10

Yeah, I didn't really understand how the painting scores worked. That was kind of weird.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:14

So I don't know if that happened for AOS, but it sounded like for 40k. The judges went around. So did you get to put your army out on display at any point?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:21

I mean, you could have. I didn't bother because I saw Terry's and I scored Ben's and I was like no chance against.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:29

Oh, okay, fair. I mean, yours is a very solid painting, but theirs were, I guess, a level up.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:38

They they've gone the extra mile, so like thank you for saying mine is solid painting, but yeah, don't know. They they were cut above the rest.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:45

If you've gotten into the cabinet before, you can uh but I as you say sometimes it's what you're up against. I I get the feeling that well, the judges go round, give the there's all like some sort of base criteria that you can score, they they give a score out of, basically.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:01

And I think it's less on personal feelings and more technical has have these things been achieved. Um, but I'm not entirely sure. I d I don't know for a fact. And the 4k might be different from AOS as well. Um so that would be interesting, and then it sounds like from that score you maybe narrow it down to like the final few, which is maybe where personal preference comes into it, potentially. Um okay, cool. So you did pretty well. You enjoyed it enough that you would go back to another filthy tournament. Um that's a good sign. Any other things you'd like to say in terms of overall feelings of the weekend, the location, the games in general, or the tournament format. Anything you change?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:47

I'd say just bring back an event to a Warhammer World, even though I said about the space and everything else, it's just not the same.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:55

I kind of wish it was to the War World. Different feeling. I played against, in the grand narrative, several Welsh people that were clearly playing because they they were surprised that there was somewhere near them that was, you know, you know, game software doing an official thing, so they went along to it. Um, so in a way, it's good for those people that they get to experience a Warhammer World-esque event without it being a Warhammer World because that would be too far for them to go to. Um, whereas we just sort of travel up for it. So it felt like you got a different variety of players and you got a lot more local people from the nearby area attending, um, than maybe you'd get a Warhammer World, which I think pulls in more people from all over, but it's still there's a lot of people concentrated around the Nottingham-ish area like the Midlands. So yeah, I thought that was interesting. Um I think the only other critique I think we all felt was the lack of food areas to go out in the evening was uh disappointing because where we were there wasn't really anything nearby, and everything closes at nine o'clock, and the games finish at eight, I believe. Yeah. So there's not a lot of time to finish your game, say your goodbyes, pack up your bag and your minis, and go back to your hotel room and then go out somewhere and get there before they got kitchens closed. So every night we had was a bit of an issue of where we where we try and eat other than the expensive hotel. So yeah, the the nearby amenities wasn't great, but the hotel and the closeness, the proximity to the ICC venue was very good.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:46

Yeah. The thing you've actually just jerked my memory there. Lunches. Lunches were not free, they should have been free, they should have given us a token or something to use in the local catering thing, because the options were limited. You get more options at Warhammer World than you did at this place.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:05

Yeah, this had it was the same food for the three days. It was nachos on chips. Sorry, it was loaded nachos, so chili and cheese, uh, that was not melted on either nachos or chips, was your two main options. There was a deep-fried chicken ball type thing and rice, but which I didn't have. Uh, that looks quite you know nice and healthy. And then there was a salad or baguette option, which was basically the same thing, either in salad form or shoved into a baguette. Um, and at one point I tried the baguette one, but I felt like I maybe got less of the meats than if I just had it as a salad, perhaps, because the baguette limits what you can actually fit in, whereas a salad went into a box. I felt like you would have got more. But yeah, they were okay. And depending on the time, sometimes there's a very long queue to get the food, and it was a similar, like they had a separate bar, so the queue for that was different from the main sort of cafe lunch food. But if you just wanted a hot drink, you also had to queue up for the the main food section, which sometimes was very busy. And uh I yeah, I thought it was advertised somewhere that food was included. I thought so too. I misread that, or I'm just confusing myself with Warhammer World. And then at one point we thought, oh, maybe it's not for because someone had said to you when you I think Dan had asked, and they said, Oh no, it's for a two-day event. So then I thought, oh, maybe the grand narrative people get our lunches included and you guys don't, and that turned out not to be the case either. And so maybe we need to do a little bit of looking uh to see uh if we were correct or if uh we can find any evidence uh to see if lunch was meant to be included and then just not done. Which, you know, uh Games Workshop has as precedence of doing um one time at Warhammer Fest, uh they said lunch was going to be included, and it wasn't until we all kicked up a big fuss. Uh and then I think they gave us a little refund partially. I can't remember what I did, but yeah, lunch was not included when they said it was. Has happened before. Yeah. A previous Warhammer Fest event. So yeah, that would be nicer because the costs do add up. Like I spent a lot of money just on food and drink over that weekend. And yeah, the the lunch was not particularly cheap either, to be fair. It was like seven, eight quid for the for the food. Yeah. Um, which isn't too bad, but you know, it's just c cafeteria levels uh of of food. Uh and then drinks are quite expensive, I thought, uh, as well. So yeah, it wasn't too bad, but not as you say, uh you got slightly more variety, like you literally get a roast dinner on a Sunday at Warhammer World. Not that necessarily that's what I'd want, but you know, that's one of the food options, and there's normally like three or four different food options that are completely different from each other, plus salad, dessert, you know, free drinks, all included. Yeah. Soft drinks, uh sort of thing. Um, so yeah. Cool. So uh yeah, any any more final words for me, Tim?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:21

Nope.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:22

That is it.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:23

I believe I covered everything. Thank you very much for your time and for everyone listening to me trolled on.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:29

Well, yeah, thank you for joining me once more. Uh glad you enjoyed it. Uh yeah, greatly appreciated uh your your words of wisdom uh and your recounting of the events. So, with that all said and done, uh we'll move on to the next part of the show. Transitional noise.

40K Narrative (with Richie)

SPEAKER_01 1:36:52

We're gonna be talking all about a new port open still, and we're going to cover the grand narrative. And one of my co-conspirators in the grand narrative was Richie, so he's joining us. Hello, Richie, how's it going? Hello.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:08

Thank you for letting me come back. I've also fixed my webcam uh for this session. Uh people who watch the videos or the socials will will be will be pleased to see that I'm not stuttering all over the place. Because I have I now put my I I've I realize I rewired my my desk setup and I put my webcam into a USB hub, which was a rookie mistake. Uh, but it's now going direct into my PC, so I should be in full FPS for the entire recording.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:35

Smooth as butter, for sure. Yeah, you're you're coming across well uh so far. Thank you. Um uh yeah, so if you're watching along on the Lookouts uh podcast, uh this is part of a wider talk all about the Newport open. If you're watching the mini sode episode, this is one of many videos that you can uh check out. Uh so yeah, by all means check out the others. This one specifically, 40k grand narrative. Uh Newport was was it last weekend? It was last weekend, wasn't it? The weekend before. Yeah, it was last week.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:08

When we're recording this, it was last weekend.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:10

Yeah, yeah. Um so yeah, it was a good experience. Uh I've obviously talked about uh sort of my take in the AOS one in terms of the overall weekend of the hotel uh and things like that. But let's just get your thoughts on the general vibe, the event as a whole, and the hotel where we were staying. Uh what did you think of it all?

SPEAKER_04 1:38:31

So I I had the best experience, I think, of the hotel because I went I parked in the wrong place when I got there, because I follow I followed the signs wrong. I parked in the actual convention centre car park, which I thought was what I was supposed to park, and then I walked into the main hotel and went and found uh which was literally like going into the back rooms. It was just deserted, massive hotel, but then no one anywhere or anything, lights softened off everywhere. So that was a bit weird. And then I followed the signs to reception and I found what I thought was the reception, which again felt like being it was like a in like a some 1940s horror movie hot um reception with just like a small desk and one s one um fairly disinterested Gen Z lady behind the reception desk. And it was very small. This is what I later went to the main elaborate, glossy Disneyland um uh reception later, which was like, oh, this is the real hotel. But I thought I thought it was in a very strange hotel at at first. But it was I thought the hotel was fine. I thought it was very it was very big, it was like a big um convention centre hot uh uh a big hotel complex with like uh health spa facilities, a golf course, and for the convention centre, if it was really busy, it would be it would it could be huge hugely scaled. We appear to be the one a quieter day or quieter time when the hotel was being less used.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:49

Yes, yeah, I think so. It was um the Celtic Hotel, if I remember rightly. Um the Celtic of the section that we were in, um, but yeah, the the Celtic uh hotel, I think, was the main brand.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:05

Yeah, um but yeah. They were in the manor house, which was like the cheap seats uh of the place. And I found the manor house reception, not the Celtic Manor reception. And the manor house reception was like greatest was very was very tiny, and the Celtic Manor, the Celtic Manor part was huge and glitzy. Uh had an enormous buffet, uh, which was I I'll be honest, it was mostly a bit disappointing. Um but if you order but if you did order stuff, um Tim recommended ordering an omelette and that was that was good. I got ordering an omelet and some sourdough toast was very good. But the actual buffet itself was a bit I I don't I don't mean to I don't I don't mean to discredit them because they they they ended up clearly a lot of people work very hard in that hotel. But I preferred the kind of buffet breakfast you get at a premiere in. Um that was just my take. Because I've been onto a couple of premium inns lately on like Warhammer trips or family trips, so they've always been like very basic, very but standards. You couldn't order omelets though. So that is a difference. So if you do stay at the Celtic Manor resort, um I recommend um and you have the breakfast there because that's usually I think included in your price. I do recommend ordering an omelet to be cooked and brought to you because that's a bit better.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:20

Yeah, I I had uh two poached eggs uh on some sourdough, which was really nice uh on on the last day. But yeah, I think the problem with the the buffet as with any buffets is it's just out there slowly going cold over time. Uh and maybe some places can keep it warmer for longer, um, despite the sort of turnaround of the food and uh and you know uh the clientele eating the issue was uh my issue is the bacon.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:46

I like my bacon, I like my bacon to be like crispy on both sides, and however they cook it there, if I put in like a massive tray and just cook all of it at once, so it's like crisp. So it's all like all the bacon's like on its side, like on it like vertically, and then is it's in that the tray where you can go and help yourself. And it's like it's like it looks all crispy on the top, but then you pick it up and it's all kind of the the wet, soft, not very exciting part, like meh version of bacon underneath. So every time I picked up a slice of bacon to make a bacon sandwich, because that's what I like from my breakfast, it was always a disappointing experience getting that piece of bacon out. Um so that's that's just my that's just I I I like a good I like a good consistently crispy bacon slice rasher.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:28

Yeah, so that was a bit disappointing. Uh and speaking of other disappointing uh things, what was your take on your premium registration box? Uh I got Tim's uh opinion, I would like yours as well.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:43

I don't know. I I here's the thing, I can't remember how much it cost me.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:47

Um Tim was convinced it was £100 or more.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:51

How okay? If it cost me £100, it was probably not worth it. Uh I mean he could be wrong.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:59

He could be wrong.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:00

He he's he he he sounds probably right because I got what I got my like Spike made our booking and I and I asked him to upgrade it for me. So I don't have FOMO. Uh yeah, that for me. Uh it was it was lots of stuff in there. I've I've not really used much of the stuff that was in there uh so far. There's like some counters which was any oh one thing he did have something that was I thought was really good, and I will cap that it's not worth £100. Um was the uh like uh what's it like a scorecar, like a like a perspex score keeping thing. Yes, yeah, with a little dry raised pen. Yeah, it was like that's really good.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:37

A3 in size, yeah, perspex, and it was A5, not A3, A5. Oh, sorry, uh yeah, A5, the smaller than A4 one, like sort of this uh sort of size. Um and yeah, it was sort of AOS 40k branded, and it was designed to keep track of your your round scores, um, sort of primary, secondary total for each turn. Uh that looked really good, and you got a driver marker with it. And I saw lots of people use theirs, and that was only in the premium box, so I didn't get that. And I thought that was a cool, a cool thing to get for sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:12

I was a bit jealous of that. I you got well I thought that was really cool because I because you have to you well when we're doing the narrative event, we can't use the app to score because uh because the for the 40k app for tracking a game and doing the scoring is phenomenally good. Uh but if you're playing in like we were in the narrative event, which I which I assume we'll come on to later, yeah, uh or earlier, depending on how this gets edited in. Uh you we we couldn't use the app, so you had to be like tracking it down manually. And I I I was using that because I could just write down all the scores as they came in, and that was really helpful. It's also really helpful for playing AOS because the AOS app doesn't have scorekeeping in it for some reason.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:56

Sort it out, sort it out AOS team. I don't imagine that will come next year with uh AOS 5 that they will do that, uh, which sort of makes sense. Um, which yeah, it was quite handy, and the fact that AOS doesn't do it is uh finally means the 40k app is better than the Asia Sigma app when historically it's always been the other way around. Um but yeah, and then overall kind of the sort of the the event center um any other things like lunch, what did you would you make of the food options?

SPEAKER_04 1:45:29

What do I make of the food options at lunch? Uh lunch wasn't included, which was a bit different as someone who's been to many Warhammer Worlds events, it was a little bit strange. Oh, the lunch the lunch wasn't included. Um but then I w I don't know where they would where they would do it. But they had the they had like a food tenth thing, uh, which was I think it was fine. I had on the on the the queue was really big on the I was I was there for the narrative day, narrative tournament, so only two days for lunch that I was there. The first day the queue was really busy and I was too busy yapping with people. Um so I forgot I didn't have to I I was like, oh that queue looks really busy, and then people told me what they had, and it was like a curry or something. I was like, I don't know if I want that. So I just need chicken McDonald's and rice. I just super eats and some McDonald's, um, which I felt bad about until I realised that Dan and Tim had driven to go and get McDonald's um because they had finished earlier, um, and they've already gone before that. But so uh I didn't have any of the food on the on day one. Uh day two I had the loaded nachos, um, which was like chili beef and nachos, as you would expect there. I thought that was I thought that was fine. Uh I I thought the options were yeah, because if I th what were the options were loaded nachos, some kind of vegan thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:52

Oh, I don't remember seeing that. That there was load loaded nachos, loaded fries, the chicken and rice, and then a salad or baguette options with meats. I didn't see the salad.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:03

Oh, though they were down the end of the salad. There was a like some kind of vegetarian vegan like hot option as well. Um but I didn't order it because it didn't look well obviously sometimes there are some time vegan things are okay, but if it might have been the one of the vegan things where they they they use a fake word for it and don't tell you what it is, like chicken or something, uh which I usually avoid on principle. But I can't but they they they had some. I thought it was fine. They had like some pastries as well. Uh I I guess I'd say I think it was fine, but then we we kind of s had a good like a at the breakfast at the buffets. I wasn't too hungry um when it came round to lunch. Uh I think I was only some you could get some drinks there. Well one I mean I i they had unlimited water, which I think is good, but there was a convention centre, so it had like refillable water stations. So I had I I on day one I had a bottle of smart water which became tap water by lunchtime.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:00

Uh smart as the the day went again.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:03

I got less smart as the day as the day went day went on, but I was that was actually that was a I thought that was a very good thing that you could just refill they had lots of refillable water stations.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:12

And you didn't have to go too far to to get it, which was good.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:15

Yeah, you could just you could just refill w your water, which was good, because otherwise it was kind of in the middle of nowhere. So I I think it was a very good thing they did have the food tent. I thought the options were f I thought the options were fine, they weren't like that it necessarily that exotic, but it's it seemed fine um for what it was. So yeah, it was it was better than and you could get crisps and chocolate bars as well there. Um but yeah, I thought it was fine, but I didn't I didn't partake too much of that. But I did I'm a big fan of the f of the free water because you can just get some more.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:48

Nice, cool. Okay, well that's good. Uh let's get on with the um the highlights, the the whole of the uh grand narrative. Uh the windows. The windows.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:01

That was the coolest thing about the event. The job we're in the the see, for the people who went to the competitive events, they just got to be in a big room, which I hear didn't have any echo, which is probably very good. We got to go upstairs into the narrative room, which had which is a giant room, maybe 50 meters wide, if not more, with floor to ceiling windows which were like 10-20 metres high of glass. So we I've got some photos. We should we should we should put some photos, edit in some photos there, because for me, yeah, that was the coolest thing ever. It's like we're in the middle of the woods in some magical land, it was beautiful. That was my that was my highlight.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:39

I I felt like I completely missed that and didn't even look out the window, or maybe I did and was like, oh, it's just some trees, and then I gave it no notice whatsoever. It wasn't I was just focused on the room and the tables. Um, so yeah, obviously we we we've registered, uh we've got our little lanyards where we were encouraged. I've got here. So you've got a lanyard which you put your name on, and you're encouraged to put your um your character name on as well. Inquisitor Ixos uh was my character. Um there's a whole bunch of tables that are themed. Uh there's like I think there were four different areas of Armageddon. It's moons.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:24

It wasn't just Armageddon. There's a is there's a few different locations, not all of them on Armageddon.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:31

That's fair. Yeah, I I uh couldn't quite keep track of all the names because they sort of said them a few times and then you instantly forget them. Um yes, it's like the green sector, the red sector, the slightly bluish sector, or the desert sector, I think was basically you know how I was mentally compartmentalizing them. Uh so the the all of those uh sort of I don't want to say generic 40k terrain, they had the sort of the gaming mats, but they were laid out um a little bit more different than a normal um sort of grand tournament style tournament setup, but they did sort of do that thing where they they butt two area terrain pieces together to form one big thing. But basically, rather than just having one level of terrain, they stacked them up so there were three or four uh levels in some areas. The sort of more wood uh sort of jungle theme had a load of the Age of Sigma um or war cry terrain, so there were like trees growing up through the ruins and things like that. That one was really interesting. A couple had like radar dishes uh on, but it was mostly just ruins uh in various forms with a couple of trees. Um there wasn't you know pipes, craters, or anything like that. It was sort of very standard uh current 40k terrain that you can get hold of. And that was all kind of custom painted, but not to all high standard, like a very quick paint job, but serviceable, and then interspersed with some of the pre-painted terrain that was being used downstairs. So downstairs and competitive um tables. They all had the new brand new pre-painted terrain sets uh that have that kind of UV pre-painted stuff, uh, which I did show off on the lookouts of social medias uh if people wanted a closer look at those. Um but yeah, we had a couple of those added in for extra detail. So it kind of gave you some extra uh bits. So it's like, oh, here's a a room but with a generator in and things like that. So it's uh um it added some more flavour uh to them. What did you think of the tables?

SPEAKER_04 1:52:44

I thought the tables were cool. There was the red ones, the grey ones, the yellow ones, and the green ones uh as in that's what like the surface was. You had like the uh the like the grey rubber-y ones, which was a mighty I don't think that was a spaceport, I think that was like a city. Then there was like this red, the the typical kind of red astro um agnec type Mars style terrain. I think that was the spaceport. Yeah, one was a spaceport or dock for um space. Yeah, yeah, docks, yeah. And then there was like the yellow a yellow one which had lots of orky terrain on it as well, which looked like it looked very much like there was Imperial City, it was like Imperial City where the orcs had now taken over and set up camp and built lots of I put lots of their terrain on it as well. Uh which was great. And then there was the bet the the coolest looking one, which was the green area, which is all very grassy and swampy. Um that had buildings but also like giant like dead snakes skeletons of giant snakes and other and trees and other more interesting things on it. So I had it really cool. Uh I liked them. It was one thing that was that was that I had not seen in any 40k board or set up for years, definitely not this edition, because they they did have these like s these like mini um terrain template map template things or various type rectangles and squares which they put which which matched the the map the the mats you were playing on.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:10

Yeah, so I think I think they cut out the area terrain pieces from the mats that you were using.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:17

They looked pre-made. They looked I d or whether they they didn't look like a laser cut or something.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:22

Yeah, I don't think it was like cut by hand. I assumed it was like seen seed or something.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:27

However, however they they they however they did it, they matched the style and they had lots of square ones, but they also had some, and if they definitely had them on the green, I don't know if they did it on the others, I can't recall if the others did it too, but they had ones that were more like bean shapes, so they were curved. So like these curved terrain area pieces. Um uh yeah, rather than just rather than just like right angles and squares and rectangles, and they looked really cool as well, which was something I'd not I've never seen at any kind of 40k event. I mean these like nebulous kind of organic looking terrain template shapes, and they look really cool. Uh the terrain, all the tables looked fantastic, even the ones which were using the kind of terrain you always see, the way they were laid out looked really interesting and cool with lots of little other with like little bits here and there. And while they had like the terrain footprints there, um via these uh these other kind of neoprene mats that were put on top of the bigger initial neoprene mat, it looked it looked it looked all really nice. So the tables looked really cool. Um yeah, uh they were they were and they but they're also functional because uh you could say, Oh, I can't shoot through this.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:34

Yeah, because they they were a good compromise of sort of functionality with Lem Fed uh while still looking more thematic than the 40k stuff. They they probably didn't look as thematic as some of like the gaming tables you would get at Warhammer World. Um, but in terms of practicality, it was like a good compromise, I thought. Uh we were also joined by Spike, um, who was um an Ultramarines player, he came and joined us. This was like his first time at an event like this, and he was really wowed by the terrain, and he was so impressed he went off downstairs and bought um some of the terrain, like the the radar station and the antenna one and the I think the landing pad, like that uh war zone.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:17

He was getting very into it. He was he was very upset with me that I hadn't yet chosen whether or not I was going to be mercenaries or or the antagonists.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:26

Yeah, oppressor or liberator, yeah. So let's let's uh talk about one other thing first and then we'll talk about like how it was all set up. So yeah, in addition to that of the room, you had the gaming tables, but you also had like the the main stage uh which had some theming to it as well. There were these two kind of red astro no Adeptus Mechanicus like gun turrets either side of the podium, and there was a couple of other like little decorative uh bits for detail. So that was some sort of kind of nice theming to the room, and then there's Nick Baton, who used to be, I don't think he still is, in the uh sort of Warhammer Plus presenters. I think he's now fully on to the events team.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:07

So he was there dressed in I've seen Nick doing very in I I've seen him performing various roles of In Games Workshop, and his enthusiasm is always infectious.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:16

Yes, yeah, yeah. He's he's uh yeah, so he was uh um imperial navigator, like um sorry, uh Imperial Aeronautica, like pilot. So uh yeah, he was like very on theme, and then there was the other guy, the American, who runs the grand narrative in America. I want to say his name is Craig or Chris.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:36

I think I think his name is Chris from when I I think yeah, I think when they did I I don't recall if they ever did like a proper introduction or if at the beginning, or if they did, I missed it. But during the closing ceremony where they um where they were thanking all the staff, I believe his name was Chris.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:49

Okay, yeah, uh no, it felt like it began with a C, I'm sure, of some kind. So yeah, Chris, let's go with Chris. Um so he was dressed up as a word bearer's uh like priest or prophet of some kind, um, which was quite cool. Um, and then he was doing the majority of the leading of the sort of explaining the narrative, but also the preamble of this is how the campaign's gonna work. And he did that in his sort of normal voice, and then he was like, but then from then onwards it was mostly told from the narrative point of view of his character, and occasionally he would drop out of that, but for the most part, he's sort of in character for the for the weekend, which I thought was uh quite good. And uh yeah, so the very I think a day or two before we were given an email with a form to fill out, which was do you want to be a liberator, oppressor, or mercenary? Um, so I ticked liberator because I had my Thunder Warriors, which was mostly Imperium aligned, made sense.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:48

I wouldn't mind that's what were you really, Phil? What were you custodies?

SPEAKER_01 1:58:53

Thunder War. Yeah, okay, there you go. You're custodians. Yeah. Playing them as uh uh yeah, rules-wise custodies, and obviously I was being led by an Inquisitor who I took for theming more than everything else. Um so yeah, it made sense. But the mercenaries could have been a sort of rogue inquisitor faction as well. So I was almost tempted to go down as mercenaries, and I was hoping there would would be uh so you were considering going down the mercenaries.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:23

Oh, I I was yeah after all the all the the grief that both Spike and you gave me because because I was I I was taking K I was taking chaos knights because I had them I had enough of them painted. And I was like, Oh, I don't know which side it wasn't clear if the oppressors was was like orcs or if they were chaos, it wasn't quite clear other than the oppressors in the name of the bad guys, Richard. Well, yes, the bad guys, but we didn't know who the bad guys were. So I was uh Well, you know, that's just a matter of opinion.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:55

It's in the faction name.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:57

Uh but I've I was I thought I'm gonna take the the mercenaries, so I would do as I would be helpful to the organizers and be like, well, if they it depending on if that one faction has too many, I can be moved to the whichever one would be benefit would be benefit. But yeah, both you and Spike were very upset with me that I was chaos knights and claiming that I wasn't an oppressor.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:19

Well, exactly. Well, I think that is completely correct. Here's the thing for me to be a mercenary seems fair enough because I could be it's okay for you. You were clearly a hundred percent oppressor. That that's the difference.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:31

I w I wasn't I was knights that I was knights that have lost their way. That's not uh I have much more right to be in the mercenary section than your fake custodies do.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:41

Oh, okay. Well, we're we're let um everyone down and the comments decide the the knights covered in skulls and dead bodies the oppressors or mercenaries uh versus the uh rogue army of genetic warriors being led by uh an Inquisitor. You decide.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:01

Yeah. Um so yeah Either way, it didn't matter because there was the the there were because when they were when they started and they made us say all stand in to our different groups, which I think was a bit odd that I that they didn't already know this, but they must have had like a situation where not everybody filmed the form in because I know Spike didn't fill the form in.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:21

Yes, yeah, I think some didn't fill in the form.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:23

Yeah. But they had all the oppressors in one big no, sorry, all the liberators in one big group. And then all the oppressors in a significantly smaller group. And then all the mercenaries in a pretty big group. And when they combined the mer they immediately moved the mercenaries into the oppressors, and that still wasn't enough people to balance with the liberators. So they had to m they had to m they had to they had people volunteer from the liberators to switch sides and join the oppressors, which I was on at that point. At that point, I'd already decided I'm gonna join the oppressors because that feels like the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:00

It does, yes. So uh yeah, uh, I think a custodians player and a black templar's player volunteered immediately to turn traitor and um join the oppressors, and I was censored to do that as well because I thought automatically that makes sense. So it's quite funny that uh well I didn't get a chance. I was sort of I was mentally considering it, and immediately two people sort of rushed forwards. A custodies player just clearly wanted to be a traitor.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:27

I think it's I think one of them, I think they they were two friends, they looked like they were they would stay and they both did it. But I think they there was a second opportunity, I'm sure. There was there was only two opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:35

Oh, yeah, so there was two, and then they did the count, and then there was another opportunity, and then someone else volunteered. Um, but yeah, by that point I was like, ah, maybe I'll just stay here um and see what it uh was going to shake out to be. Yeah, so basically mercenaries was meaningless. It was mostly um, I guess like they sort of narratively yeah, put all the mercenaries with the oppressors and talked about the mercenaries sort of um ruining the chaos uh whims and things like that, but it was mostly just a uh mechanic to fix for the player numbers because it wasn't ticketed as liberators and oppressors, which was how you would do it if you wanted exact numbers. You could just go, cool, there's 30 tickets of each, for example. Uh but instead they just randomly let people pick. So you could have had a situation where you had 100% of players were all Imperium. Obviously, that's unlikely, but that could have happened. Um so yeah, yeah, mercenaries was just a sort of mechanic to fix the teams, um, which was fine. Um, it would have been nice if there was a a little bit more to them as the weekend progressed. Uh yeah, so we got some cards. Uh so we got the uh grand narrative. Uh this was the grand tournament deck, which was your secondaries. So these are just the uh Dominatis deck branded for the uh grand narrative. Uh not everyone picked these up weirdly. My last two players were like, what are these cards? Because they were using their chapter-approved deck. Uh, noting we were told to bring our chapter-approved decks and then didn't actually need it. And our Dominatus deck. And the Dominatus deck, and again we didn't need that. So we got um I got the Liberator deck.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:24

As you I as you wait, we did we did need the the chapter approved deck because we did need it for secondaries.

SPEAKER_06 2:04:34

No, because that's what this these ones are for.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:39

Did you not get those?

SPEAKER_04 2:04:40

Wait, what are the wait, what are those then?

SPEAKER_01 2:04:42

They're they're the grand tournament, which are the secondaries. So you play this as your secondaries. Did you not pick up the second deck of cards?

SPEAKER_04 2:04:51

Was there two decks we were supposed to get?

SPEAKER_01 2:04:53

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:55

I uh are you sure?

SPEAKER_01 2:04:57

Yeah, look, um uh center ground, uh hold on, engage on all fronts.

SPEAKER_04 2:05:04

I'm not sure. I need to go and check what um secure memory. I'm gonna be I need to be wait, can we pause and I'll go back? There's a check.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:11

Okay, Richie, you're back. What have you found?

SPEAKER_04 2:05:14

What I've found is that I I uh I only have agenda decks. I had no idea there was a s there was a secondary mission deck. I have so that at the end of the event they had spec like you could have spare things that you could take, and I took some. So I have I have a complete oppressor agenda deck and a complete liberator agenda deck, um, plus the agenda deck and some other cards I had when I played it, but I did not have any secondary deck. And every person I played with had to use the all of my opponents had to use their own secondary deck from chapter approved. Where did you get an an official No, wait, wait, wait, no, because you got yours the day before. Uh yes, you didn't.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:57

So I I I registered on Thursday and I went down and they gave me the agenda deck plus the secondary deck, um, which was maybe because it does say grand tournament, so maybe I wasn't meant to be given that, but they they did. Because I think people like Joe in the 40k tournament got these. So maybe they didn't have them.

SPEAKER_04 2:06:19

I think you I think you have something you're not supposed to have, because when Spike and I tried to register, we tried to register on Friday when we arrived, and they wouldn't give out cards because they said they weren't sure which cards to give us.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 2:06:32

So it could have been that you got that you got some spares because.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:36

I thought I thought they also so I thought you got your agenda deck, and then once they had done the teams, had told everyone to go and get their secondary deck. There was no support Maybe they didn't.

SPEAKER_04 2:06:49

From what I recall, the well does does the secondary deck say liberator or oppressor on it?

SPEAKER_01 2:06:54

No, it just says Grand Tournament on it.

SPEAKER_04 2:06:56

So all the decks that so when when we got our decks on the day of the event or the morning of, it basically was there were there's a there's a table, uh for some reason at the other side of the massive room where you could go and pick up either the Liberator deck or the oppressor deck. Uh and they had the agendas in. That was it. There was no secondary deck we were given. Because I I don't because it almost felt like if you wanted to do secondary either, that was a s that was like an additional thing. Like that wasn't a that was almost not a requirement in the narrative. You didn't have to if you didn't want to. Uh because some I know that some there was some confusion from some players who were doing their liberator or oppression mission and a chapter-approved primary mission and the chapter-approved secondary mission. So they clarified after game one, I think that you do that you only that the the primary mission was what you got in this deck.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:54

And that replaces the chapter-approved primary. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:57

But there was no there was no uh secondaries deck we got there. So it seems like you might have lucked out and they gave you the wrong deck.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:05

Maybe they shouldn't.

SPEAKER_04 2:08:07

That's that which could be why Spike and I didn't get them, because they probably might have been giving them out incorrectly to people who were there for the narrative, also getting those secondaries.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:15

Yeah, maybe that was just for the grand tournament uh once. But I did speak to the it wasn't Chris, but it was a guy, I was specifically one guy gave me the cards, and then I was told to go double check with the guy that was sort of organizing the grand narrative. Uh, and I spoke to him and he said, Oh no, these two are correct. Because I at the time I had questioned, oh, there's only two decks as Liberator and Oppression, but that we were told to sign up for mercenaries as well. And he was like, Oh yeah, no, we're just doing these two, and the mercenaries will be divvyed out, which is why I was kind of convinced you would probably just end up in one of the two things and that mercenaries wasn't its own faction, even though in Dominatus it is its own thing, so you can play as a third faction in Dominatus, and ultimately we were just playing Dominatus.

SPEAKER_04 2:09:04

Um anyone in the comments who was also at the event can if they can confirm whether or not we were supposed to have got if there was a second there was there was a third deck. Because as far as I'm aware, that from the from when we when Spike and I registered on the day, you could uh you either picked up a liberate uh wait, an oppressor deck or a liberator deck, I'm totally which was which. Um and that's all they gave you. Um but there wasn't we weren't given a secondaries deck. Uh maybe you I guess you lucked out, or or they were supposed to, and then they forgot or they didn't have enough. Who knows? But we I don't we weren't we were like Spike and I definitely were not given a secondary deck because we had to use our chapter-approved decks in order to do the secondaries.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:47

Fair. Okay, that that makes sense. Uh yeah, so we we divided up into our two teams. We were given, if you took them, your cards, uh, and maybe not the secondary cards. Um, and then I think for the first mission, the oppressors uh went to uh tables, so they were told just to select a random table, and then the liberators, because we were doing like effectively a drop sight uh attack. Uh, we then sort of got to go up to someone to pick our first uh game. Uh I decided to pick the guy dressed up is in cosplay as an orc, um, the goth rocker. He was painted all in green, he had the kind of goth rocker top hat. I was like, he looks like a hoot to play against, and I'd I probably won't get a chance to play him otherwise, so I'll just make a beeline for him basically, and because I'm sort of conveniently next to him anyway, it was quite easy. Um so yeah, that was my uh opponent for the first uh game. I actually wrote all of my things down in the free book that came with the sort of registration uh box of tat, which was the one uh kind of good thing I think that I used the most out of it. Uh yeah, so against David, and yeah, I was doing Planetful and he was doing Dig in. So we were doing the Dominatus deck, uh, and I had undenied about my detachment type because I knew the different detachments tended to affect uh the primary missions, but in actually it turned out to be completely meaningless because uh each mission you were assigned a primary based on sort of how well you did in the your previous mission or just the general theming that they wanted to go with. It wasn't anything to do with forced dispositions. Your dispositions were meaningless in the the grand narrative. Um so yeah, I was uh I took my Thunder Warriors, which if I recall my army list, was a captain on bike, uh a blade champion, uh, a unit of four custodial. With spears, a unit of four wardens with axes, uh, two bikes, uh, three Ventari, which are the jump pack guys, and the uh Inquisitor. And basically you had uh you were told beforehand to make a thousand-point army list, a five hundred-point sideboard, so you could swap stuff out, and five hundred points if you were to do a doubles match with another player. Uh my my sideboard was effectively my inquisitor and losing two enhancements, is how I figured out I'd do my sideboard. And then I ended up doing that for all my missions because I kind of wanted the Inquisitor in for a for theming, but also if I ever needed to do actions, I could sort of have him around or have him sit on an objective, that sort of thing, while my because I had basically four units in game, which was incredibly low. Um, yeah, what was your uh equally low army list?

SPEAKER_04 2:13:01

Well, I also had four units, uh, because I took chaos knights and I was rocking in every map every every game I played. I also my fat my core foul, as you said, when I was cycled, my core thousand points was a knight abominant, uh an armager stalker with the melter and the claw, another arm wait, what is it? Armager. I'm being I'm I'm being rejected. The Wardog. The Wardog Stalker. The Wardog Stalker. Um but yeah, for for people who don't play, people are more familiar with regular knights. But the Wardog is the Armager. So I had the Stalker, which is it has a scout move and it gets plus one to wound um against targets which are not near the friendly units. But I had one which was like my anti-tank variant, which has got a melter and a claw, another which is my anti-infantry variant, which has got a chainsword and uh gapling gun. And then I would either then depending on how I was feeling on the mission, I would either run I was either running a knight styrix um with the claw with the uh claw and rad cleanser, or the Tsarastus knight asheron, because I have both of those knights and I've got them painted up. And I've and so it was in it was fun to I I tried to use the Asheron more because it looks cooler because it's taller. Uh but as a Traserastus knight, it is terrible. The Styrex was better points-wise. But so I but I usually went run with the Asheron because I think it looks cool when it's really tall.

unknown 2:14:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:36

So that was my four unit. Nice. Um yeah, it's worth pointing out that um each table, obviously, each of the four colored uh areas represented a different um zone. And if I recall, there was what do they call it? It was um like a shiny card or something. There's like these perspect uh sheets with the table number, not even table number, it just was sort of sort of saying that what the zone area was. Um there was a place to put your sticker, um, actually, of which I've got some here because I I collected them as I went, um, whether it was effectively oppressor controlled or liberator controlled.

SPEAKER_04 2:15:18

Um how were you collecting them when you're supposed to stick them on the thing when you won your game?

SPEAKER_01 2:15:25

Well, you'll see these ones are oppressor controlled. So every time I scalped a table and converted it from liberator to oppressor, we didn't have to return the yes, but we didn't have to return the stickers. I asked Nick, who was my team captain as of the Imperium. Uh, he was like, No, you can keep it. So I was like, Oh, I'll put that in my book as a little memento. Uh so my mission was to always go for oppressor tables whenever we got to select them, um, because I wanted to flip them, of which there was apparently some kind of bonus for turning them into liberator-controlled. Um, but what actually also you got was there was a uh war zone rule. I should have taken a photo and I think I forgot. There's a war zone rule which affected both players to represent the the area that you were on. There was a defender bonus. So if it was a presser controlled or liberator controlled, only that player got that bonus. And all the defenders uh were, I think, to like the right-hand side of the table, and all the uh attackers were on to the left-hand side. So there was always like a fixed uh position where attackers and defenders were uh across all the tables, and then every other table had like the deployment card for that row effectively, like whether you're doing dawn or war or whatever. So you sort of had to occasionally go off and find which uh deployment zone you were actually playing because it wasn't on your table, uh, because they were, I guess, short on cards. I guess that was one of the negatives. Um, so yeah, you got to go up to your table, uh, your attacker or defender, uh, and then yeah, you you had uh maybe a defender bonus or an attack uh uh no attacker bonus. And sometimes the uh war zone bonuses were really useful, other times they were kind of completely meaningless. I think in the first game I we didn't use it at all. Um one of them was like you can shoot over 24 inches away, which was occasionally punishing, but 24 inches is still quite big on these tables. So you know, especially when there's so many ruins on the tables as well.

SPEAKER_04 2:17:33

I think they all most most of them had like a an advantage, uh uh a benefit to me in some way. There's one set of tables where it was either the defender benefit or the general benefit was a five up in run to ranged attacks, which is like I'm a knight.

SPEAKER_01 2:17:52

Oh nice. Well, there was something on those lines, and as I last time very humble. There was one which was Titanic Clash or Titanic Jewel. So it's like if you're a Titan fighting another Titan, there was a benefit, and there was like plus there was another benefit for just attacking Titans, and it's like, okay, cool, I don't have any of these, and neither does my opponent, even though they had like some big units, they weren't Titanic, uh, so it didn't really matter uh in those games. Um yeah, my first game went well. Uh let's go through them. Yes, I was playing David the Orc. Um, I think it was like his fourth game of 40k ever. So he sort of apologised in advance for getting some rules wrong, of which he did occasionally. And a few times I corrected him, uh, but then towards the end, I was like, actually know what, just let it slide because uh it was a bit of a whitewash, uh, to be fair. Um, in terms of deployment, uh, he had infiltrated some orc commandos within sniffing distance of my wardens, um, because that's how he deployed them nine inches away directly from them. Uh, and then we did the roll-off, and I won. So it's like, okay, cool, I'm just charging those. So I obliterated his commandos, uh, turn one. Uh turn two, he uh, or in his turn one, I think he duh de jumped uh his weird boys and a bunch of knobs into my back lines to try and kill my Inquisitor who was on an objective, but then he failed for roll. Um and then I sort of countercharged by deep striking and uh charging in with my Ventari. Oh, and this was the mission where actually you could deep strike within six inches, but you had to take a hazard roll for each model in your unit, which I took the risk because I then meant I was doing a six-inch charge into his um knobs, which I just obliterated. Uh so yeah, every time he charged into me, I just uh got you know a scratch on my armor, and then I just absolutely wiped the unit every time. So towards the end, I just sort of eased off, and there were times when it was like, okay, cool, that's minus one AP, and he's like, Oh, I've got six up save, so um, can I save on sevens? I was like, Well, no, but just roll sixes and see what you get. And I was sort of just letting him have it because otherwise it would just be the quickest game ever. Um, so yeah, I felt a bit bad for him uh because it was such a a slam. Um, but I in a way that was I just think a bad matchup in terms of what he bought versus um what I had. And then it turned out he had things like a Dakarig in his um sort of sideboard, and I was like, I should have taken that, that would have probably been more effective, maybe. Um yeah, because it was 51 to 17 in terms of the scoring. Um and yeah, I think it was a combination of being quite new and maybe just you know bloody custodies, right, Richie? It's like playing custodies, it's not fun. Exactly, exactly. Um It's not fun.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:53

You think you think you've got a chance when they've got lethal hits on fives or some nonsense.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:57

They do, yeah. And that was to be fair, that was me taking the the tamer version of the list. Uh because of the whole um thing around dispositions. I took the one that I thought would be the easier disposition for me to play, uh, not to like beat my opponent, but it was the less lethal of the two options, but the more defensive one.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:18

Um so I took uh I did think it was admirable you didn't take the ridiculously overpowered customer.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:27

No, I I didn't take lines of the Emperor, which was plus one to hit, plus one to wound. Um so instead I took the crit hits uh five plus. Uh but it also gave me a five up fill uh four up fill no pain strat, which I don't think I ever used because I don't think ever really I think I maybe used it once in one game uh because no one really had dev wounds against me. Um so yeah, I took the tame river two list basically, but it um I still did quite well overall. Um so yeah, first game went well, it was good fun, and it was obviously nice. David was a real laugh, and he he got a prize at the end for basically being the person that wore green all weekend uh because he committed to his cosplay for the whole time. Uh, how did your game one go?

SPEAKER_04 2:22:14

My game one, I believe, was against someone called Andrew, but it might not have been. Uh it was it was one of Sisters of Battle, Adeptus Horroritus. And what did he have? He had a big unit. Did he have a big unit of stuff? I forget what he had.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:32

A lot of melter, from what I remember. Didn't he have a sideboard of Melter that he sought in?

SPEAKER_04 2:22:37

He he did have a sideboard of Melter. Um I remember when I when I brought to when we got to the table, he was uh he made no bones of letting it be known that he was not happy about having to play against knights. Um is the best way to put it. Uh and because he's his uh his list didn't have anything to deal with that and it was so unfair. I said, Well, you guys I said you do you you said it's more I'm there for you for me because I can have a sideboard and my sideboard will still be high toughness vehicles, whereas you could have a sideboard full of melter guns. And he goes, Well, I do. It's like well then why aren't you using it? So I had to explain to him that you can't I but I I I don't know necessarily know that everyone fully understood the concept of a sideboard. Which I think it's I think it's fair because if you've if you've not if you've not played it because essentially it was very I I would say underexplained in the rules pack, but it it's a but it's much more clearer if you've played Crusade before, which was is in fact the the way it was worded was very clearly lifted straight from Crusade, which was that you had you could bring 1500 points of models with you to the event, but each mission you can only make a list of a thousand points. And I don't think everyone necessarily understood that nuance. So I was I was glad that I was able to explain to it was like, hey, you you you literally just make a new list. If you want to bring all the anti-tank stuff, um you can. I don't want you to, obviously, but you can totally bring all the anti-tank stuff um and just remake your list to be a thousand points. And I think it and he and he did it if he was a I was slightly disappointed because he had brought the Triumph of St. Catherine, which I've never played against. It looked his his his list looked beautiful, it was so well painted. And I was looking forward to going up against the Triumph of St. Catherine, but he took it out and brought in all the Melter guns that he had.

SPEAKER_03 2:24:27

Boring.

SPEAKER_04 2:24:29

Which was fine. I mean that's what you supp that that's what you're supposed to do when you come up against um Chaos Knights. And uh annoyingly, he had he had a lot of he had an awfully large amount of Melter, and I didn't kill enough of it quick enough. Or more specifically, I didn't kill his he had like a squad of melters, a squad of multi-melters and three pa uh three warsuits with melters. And I was and I was busy playing I was I was busy playing the mission, I I thought I would try to prioritize con keeping control of objectives and taking out the smaller units of his with the regular melters or on objectives, so I took all those out. Uh but as the game as the turns went on his warsuit unit just just stomped its way through me and all of my units, all of my vehicles one all of my knights one by one. Which was a m which was quite a shocking scene. But once we get once but once Sisters of Battle get like to turn three, you're in very big trouble as an as a knights player because their miracle dice has always got six fives and sixes in there, which means that every time you do fail a save for a melter weapon, you're taking like eight to ten damage.

SPEAKER_01 2:25:42

Oh, because they're saving it for that, right?

SPEAKER_04 2:25:45

Yeah, they're saving it for that. Okay, that's gonna hurt, and it so I it was uh it was a it was a fun game playing against others I I wasn't familiar with with lots of empty tank that I was quite scared of. And but it was it was a it was a f real trial by fire of taking like knights into a game against a list, an army I've never played before because none of you none of I'll say you lot, I mean the guys in I normally play 40k but run um or have a fully painted um Sisters of Battle list that I can play against. But so it was very cool to play against that. It was very tricky, and I did get blow all my nights got blown up and I think the final score, I can't remember what the final score was pretty I feel it uh it wasn't as close as I would have liked it to him to have been because I ended up just being pulled in different directions and not playing the mission as well, whereas he had loads of well he also had loads of Seraphim and Zephyrim, so he was all over the board um capping all the objectives which I couldn't really keep up with. So I learned um my le I learned some valuable lessons in that game. Um and I lost. I lost I I lost quite badly in that.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:55

Fair, fair, fair, fair. Um so yeah, that was uh Friday. So then we had lunch, uh, which we've already talked about. Then we were on to game two. Uh I was playing against uh Ricky, which was technically Eldari, but it was this amazingly converted army where it was all bugs. Oh yeah. I think the story was they were like corrupted by a um of a Votan core uh because he had that uh in he showed me some of his other army. He had a big giant head, which was this floating Votan core, um, and that was like controlling all the bugs. Uh so yeah, he had he literally had like these uh amazingly printed out data sheets with like photos and lore uh explaining what everything was. So he had like um war walkers, uh a um a fire prism, which was like the giant, like one of the giant AOS bugs. Um he had the new exodite, but just one of them as a character with a which had a sniper rifle. Again, it was like a bug riding a bug. Um, so yeah, he had like that it was a really amazing army. I only took one photo of the entire game, unfortunately, for some reason. I don't know why. I think I was just quite focused on the actual game itself. We um I was doing Vital Strongpoint because I won our last mission. That meant we uh the primary we were doing was uh Vital Strongpoint, and I think if I'd had lost we would have been doing something else, uh, and therefore he was doing Repel the Foe as his mission. Um he got to go first. It was quite close for the first uh few turns. Uh so turn one, he scored four, then I scored five. Uh then I was doing like 17, he was doing sixteen, and uh turn three, I did five, he did eight, but then I sort of won ahead in the last two turns and scored quite big, whereas he sort of just did average. Um this was the one where uh the word bearer walked around and placed a gem, a little green gem, um, in the middle of our table, um, which he had to do an action on it, and then I think roll a dice uh plus the turn to it and on a six plus or seven plus discovered the intel or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 2:29:26

Did you have a similar thing in your I wondered what those green I saw the green gems um on like the the the table at the fr at the at the front with that was when we did like check-ins after the games to give the results. I saw the green gems, but I never understood what they were for.

SPEAKER_01 2:29:44

I think I think they were on the winners' tables, Richard. So one of the games later on, the guy had like three of them. So um yeah. So in our mission, uh he was trying to do that, and I basically uh tried to stop him. My my captain on bike um was basically his fire prism was murking my army left, right, and center. Um so I had to sort of have my captain hide from that, but then charge in and killed um his character that was doing the action. Uh so I stopped him from doing the action, and I was like, fine if I've lost, at least I've done that. Um but then actually the tide turns and I managed to wipe out his other uh units because he had a unit of dark creepers that again was just murdering everything. So I deep struck my Ventari, uh not deepstruck, I um rapid ingress, um, out of line of sight, uh like I guess nine inches away, and then in my turn I could have moved 10, and it basically I could do an easy charge into him, which I did um to get rid of those. And once that had done and the fire prism was hiding out um for most of the game as well, uh, so it sort of neutered his shooting capabilities. Um yeah, I sort of won the game eventually, but it was 73 uh to 61. Um, but yeah, beautiful army, really lovely chap. Um, yeah, it was a fun, fun game. I enjoyed that one.

SPEAKER_04 2:31:12

Well, over on the losers' tables. Uh so after after after my first game against um Sisters of Battle uh showing my age against the Adeptus Sororatus. Yeah. Uh I was like, who am I gonna be up against next? And lo and behold, I was up against uh Adeptus Sororitus again.

unknown 2:31:33

No.

SPEAKER_04 2:31:34

So I got it up against Adeptus Orotus again. It's a very different list, a very different list. It was very, I want to say very more optimized. It felt very more competitively optimized because both it uh it was there's lots of big units. Um yeah, lots of like big units of like 20 models or so. Um one of them was some big unit scissors with some buffed up characters, one was a big unit of whatever the ones are called with the halberds and the shields, big unit of them. And some small I feel there were some smaller units of something and more than Vale leading a unit of battlesuits, which something I've learned is battlesuits are pretty good. Uh I learned that in game one when more than Vale is leading them, they're insane. Uh they're like ninth edition custodies in that they're getting clusters to hit and all the rerolls under the sun. So uh guess what guess what they do when they see you? Uh they kill you, um, is what they do. Um so that's a that was a very painful um lesson to learn against uh against the Bowser. I was able to avoid them in turn one. Um I get and get to a good starting point. But when they did have like eyes on any of my knights, they were just like pop.

SPEAKER_01 2:32:52

Was that from shooting or from combat?

SPEAKER_04 2:32:55

Mostly from shooting. I didn't from what I recall I don't think I think they might go into combat. I know, I don't think they're going to come up with me at all. Maybe once. Um, but they just did so much down. I think they did actually they did one. They did on one occasion, I was like alive on a couple of wounds they charged in to finish me off. But they do yeah, they they do so much damage. Morvanval's got her rockets and her herbs heavy bolter thing, plus and then there's the melters on the all the all the multi-melters on the actual uh battle suits themselves. But when you've when Morvan Vale is leading the unit, they get like bonuses to hit and wound and re-rolls. I think it's I think it's re-rolls on or maybe they have that passive. Battle battle suits are really good. The what what are they c yeah, they call I think they call battlesuits or power suits, whatever they are.

SPEAKER_03 2:33:45

War suits, aren't they? What things are paragon war suits, there you go.

SPEAKER_04 2:33:49

I remember because I have some of them, I've just never built I no, I haven't painted them. I have them. I also have more than Vaug also not painted that.

SPEAKER_01 2:33:55

Um should be in the next army then.

SPEAKER_04 2:33:58

So my my I my pile of shame is terrible. I'm gonna I need to start selling it off because I'm m I'm never gonna get round to any of it. So but we're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about how power how Morvanval and power gone warsuits are really, really good. Especially for killing lights. What I learnt through this through this narrative event is that you will see a th you will sell you some people who bought some something fluffy and absurd off and just something that looks nice and some people bought a really competitive list. Um and I think I came up against more of a competitive list but I learnt a lot from my first game against um the Adapter sororitas. So I was able to get to a very I can't rem uh I didn't attack the exact score um but it was a lot closer. I didn't lose by much this time but uh because I was I was playing the mission and do and scoring my secondaries keeping my distance from the war suits with my knights that were alive just to be scoring objectives, taking them off uh my opponent. Um one thing that did I did lean more into is that I was running the Chaos Knights detachment where Lords of Dread. So I could sticky objectives with a control score of five which is very cool. Uh because and it's which which meant that meant that on the whole chaff units that you use for stealing objectives can't because they haven't got c they can't get to control score six taking off yeah so I was able to lean into that a bit more it was a much closer game I did I th did I but in the end I did in turn five I did kill Mortham Var because I I couldn't I couldn't do anything else to there's nothing else I could do. I couldn't score any more points so I was like I'm gonna try and kill more than vall and my knights I ran my night styrex in this game because after I got my got severely beaten in the previous game I'm like running the styrex this time and then he was able to blast away um Morton Val and the rest of the Power Morrisons. Because it turns out if you're using a Volkite super conductor blaster thing which has 12 sh has 12 shots of Dev Wounds three damage each if you make if you prop and get your sixes uh on the Dev Wounds they just disappear um which is what happened in Master I was able to um actually destroy all of Warnbar and those war suits but I did lose by I I by it was it was it was much closer but it was still unfortunately a loss for the Chaos Knights the second loss of the day.

SPEAKER_01 2:36:21

Ah um it's worth pointing out that so yeah when the games were over we had to both go up to report our scores to our respective uh you know uh our wordbearer uh leader or um imperial um uh aeronautica pilot to report our scores uh we basically got access to uh these cards which were the enhancements um they were either the battle traits battle honours uh later on that you got a relic as well potentially um if you won the game you got uh to pick two cards uh and then out of those two cards you got to select which one you wanted to keep um as so you only end up with one and then if you lost you just got to randomly draw one card um so in a way that was a good sort of balancing mechanic to reward someone slightly for winning but ultimately everyone ends up with the same an amount of enhancements to put on their characters. So some of mine were quite good uh over the course of the campaign uh some of them were a bit dreadful um I got one which could give me a feel no pain five plus which I got on the fourth game uh which I think I either forgot about or didn't really come into effect in the last game um and the uh one has like stealth one can't be targeted outside of 18 inches oh another one that was quite good which was an actual relic which was um in the command phase if I make a leadership test I gain um a CP which was quite fun so that was quite good uh did you get any good ones over the course of the the get of the weekend five I got five throughout the weekend I got what I got I got three battle skills one battle honour and one oppressive relic spoilers at one point I did win a game uh so but what are I what does it get I got one in my first game that was very helpful which was oh yeah I got fortunes favoured which I give to one character which gave them a once per battle four plus invon for the remainder of being attacked which I joke I got actually I got that after game one and I joked that that's all well and good but what if I can't roll higher than a three and then more than Val and her paragon warsuits shot at my knight and I thought it's fine I'll use my four up Invan and I rolled these seven odd dice so I had to make on my four weapon ones and I failed all of them mostly on threes and that's when my my Knight Abominant blew up um which was which was not very I did get a very I got one I was very good especially for me or I found it's I think it's very good for anybody I found it especially helpful though was high strategy which if I get which if I gave it to which gave me one extra CP at the start of the battle for two if I give it to my warlord so I used that one in every game uh because once I got it which is after I lost my second game which I would start a game with three C P which starting a game with three CP is really good because it gives you so it gives you a lot of freedom and ability to do things like counter charge like interrupt uh no it's not a countercharge heroically intervene or interrupt which you can't normally do.

SPEAKER_04 2:39:39

So that was very helpful. And I got another one which I did use in my last game which was terrifying presence which you give to a character and then at the start of the fight phase one unit in combat with that model has to take a battleshock test. And if the upgrade is given to a vehicle um it's a a minus one to the role which for chaos knights is incredibly good because most of but the Chaos Knights um gimmicks are around battleshock tests happening and you failing them. So when you also you don't you have the aura of minus one anywhere it's already minus one I can the this it would mean you make it minus two so that was very good for like stacking on top of things. One thing we have not talked about Phil though is how we I was which I meant to I meant to say during my we're talking about my last mission but I forgot. But now you've mentioned these I can mention it now which was there's something else that we did in order to get access to those and determining whether you've got good ones or bad ones or if you've got skills or honours or relics was while we were given our our special deck which had our missions in each mission also had an agenda yes and if and if you're on the if you're on the video you'll see that I was bringing the cards up. If you're in the podcast like what was that dramatic pause for but it was it was every every mission um every primary mission had an associated agenda with it as well which were then so which would whether you won or lost if you met the criteria of your agenda that would count towards some kind of metagame that the staff were running but also would give you would could determine how good the upgrades or which deck which pile of upgrades you got to choose from. So for example I I got so for example I got one and the only way you the only way you got these was if you met your agenda. So while I lost most of my games this weekend that weekend I did achieve my agendas in all of them because I've been to narrative events before so I prioritised that on and these would this would be important and it kind of was at least if at least for the point when when you some of you may when notice that I've got five of these upgrades and I only have two knight characters in my list. So there's a point where it would be it was less helpful. But each mission had a special agenda so for example I had one for repel the foe which was achieved at the end of the battle you gain one agenda achieved if you achieve one or more of the following option one was if you gain 35 VP or more from the primary mission or you control two or more objectives within your opponent's territory at the end of the game. So if I remember when I scored this one it was because I had stickied the two objectives in my opponent's half of the board and while I was dead at that point. I think I was tabled in that I mean it was not I might have been tabled in that one but I still technically had the objectives so I did still score that one. But that was a nice little extra thing in that each there was it was it was bespoke for each mission although it was all it was always did you get 35 VP on the primary yeah but it's something else.

SPEAKER_01 2:42:45

In all of mine I always scored for 35 uh VP in primary um and then yeah for the last game to briefly talk about the agenda in that one I had to optionally raise banners on three or more objectives but for the very last one you could gain one additional agenda achieved if you raised banners in every objective and I felt one short of that one. So I didn't get the bonus uh agenda card which basically goes towards counting the points as to you know towards which team's winning um yeah so throughout the weekend we were keeping like they changed the lights from a sort of bluey neon glow to a red neon glow like the sort of the trim lights uh depending on whether oppressors or liberators were winning and they occasionally pulled that out. Is that is that why they changed the colour I didn't know why they changed the colour. Oh did you well do you know why uh Richie because um sometimes we would say oh the game the the briefing starts in 15 minutes um we should probably go now and you were like we've got 15 minutes and you would literally rock up literally as they're about to talk um whereas we were there for a few minutes before so maybe that was one of those things you just missed out on.

SPEAKER_04 2:44:05

I I was refilling my or usually refilling my water bottle or chatting or chatting with someone in the like the like the outside area finishing my finishing my my my drink or my snack and then filling up my water bottle and then walk I I I walked up on time.

SPEAKER_01 2:44:22

Exactly on time. Exactly on time. Yes um but yeah I think maybe there were a few times where they did call it out but maybe you missed it or it happened just before they did the announcement and they I have to say they were prompt when it was like you know 6 30 you know 2 30 whatever the time was they started punctual on the clock uh which you would uh uh appreciate um yeah but it wasn't often very clear who was winning or not because I think the light thing we only really clocked by day two uh day one me and Spike were going around looking at the tables to be like well there's a lot of oppressor controlled over here there's some liberator controlled here but they never really outright told us because often they were trying to convey the story via narrative which meant it was all a bit vague and fluffy. It was interesting so yeah game one we all sort of paired off randomly game two the winners uh on the liberators actually it worked on both sides the liberators winners got to fight the oppressor losers and I think the um oppressor winners got to fight the liberator losers um but both times the losers got the defender tables so at least they got the defender bonus which I think was like a balancing mechanic but I was like but ultimately if there's a much better player uh because he won his first game and he's a really good player and the other person is not a good player that's not going to be enough and I felt like that maybe that's what happened. Uh game three what they did is they paired off sort of the I think this is where they were like here's some champions which was like five or six players that had won their first two games of which uh I and Spike for the Liberators was part of and they equally had some champions from um the oppressors and they basically sort of paired them all off against each other but then I can't remember if it was like odd numbers or if they basically just said one team one game is going to be doubles so two people from I think were friends uh doubled up on the oppressor side and basically me and Spike had already at some point said if there's a chance of a doubles game we would so we immediately put our hands up um for that one. So yeah me and Spike uh did encirclement which was our mission against uh Jim and Gareth uh and they were doing breakthrough which was quite hard for them uh Jim had Tau um lots of like broadsides uh Gareth had Chaos Knights but it was mostly it was all war dogs plus a unit of Nurglings a unit of um the Chaos Hounds I think I can't quite remember what they were called Hellhounds plus a unit of um oh was it blood letters that was it blood letters so he had those for deep striking and stuff like that. Before the people in the comments gang we flesh hounds flesh hounds yeah not hell hounds yeah hellhounds imagine a unit of hellhounds like from the Imperial guard uh rock up uh that'd be quite funny uh yeah this was a really fun game um we could have done uh 500 points each uh so a thousand points aside uh but they said if you want to do you know 2000 points and rock or a thousand points each uh you can do um and not to say we convinced them but I wasn't that fussed Spike really wanted to do 2000 points and the other two guys weren't that fussed um and time wise we're a bit worried but we ended up doing 2000 points aside and we finished our game on time so it was all fine. Yeah the breakthrough mission for them was really hard they have to get a unit into our deployment zone like no on the back line of our deployment zone and then I think they do an action and then immediately the that unit disappears but they bank a load of victory points but then that unit's just off the table uh for the whole game of which I think they did maybe once or twice. I don't think they had uh much chance to do it. Uh Spike had a land raider filled with Vitrix on a guard which was his his his mission every time was to roll up into the centre of the battlefield and spill out his cargo Vitrix on a guard um he had one of the new land speeders um from the Armgedon box set and a ballistus dreadnought uh and I want to say that was it can you remember exactly if there was anything else or if there was like a captain in there or something it must have been a character of some kind.

SPEAKER_04 2:49:06

This was his his 4,000 points right yeah he so you had two victory squads in the Land Raider and I believe he had some intercessors.

SPEAKER_01 2:49:15

Oh yeah a unit of intercessors that was it yeah that was it I think he had some interceptors as his sideboard but I don't think he used them in our game at least but yeah he had a unit of intercessors as well um yeah it was quite a close uh game for the it yeah it was a bit uh close for the first few turns but we just sort of eked ahead in fact in the end it was a bit of a smashing it was 81 to 43 um but yeah as soon as as some of the Tau units uh fell and some of the War dogs went down um it sort of swung in our favour but it was yeah it was a really fun match they were great guys um yeah lots of Tau shenanigans um uh but also spike shenanigans in terms of just charging at stuff and then murdering things um yeah it we had a lot of fun in that game and it was nice to do a doubles game as well uh with someone I know so that was yeah good how did your game three go so my game three I got an it really I I I don't know if these primary missions are all the same as in chapter approved or not but I got my mission was breakthrough which involved me getting my units into the enemy deployment zone or just into the enemy board edge uh and then doing an action I think it was oh yeah doing an action to then get off the board yeah was that all you could score did you score anything for holding objectives or was it just that yeah it was an action so fortune yes it wasn't an action.

SPEAKER_04 2:50:50

Fortunately there's the rule of that battlefield I was on which was one of the Glassland ones would be really cool was that all my units could do actions and shoot. So that was that was beneficial. But the scoring was I would score ten I I would get I could score ten VP a turn if a unit broke through um five VP of I got to score five VP if a unit was in like the enemy's deployment zone. Well no within six inches of their deploy uh deployment edge and ten if a unit punched through and then it was also for set for second battle round on was you control one or more and you control within opponent's territory. So basically my I I had to get my army into the other side of the board and it'd basically be on his the edge of his board edge in order to win the game.

SPEAKER_03 2:51:43

Which is really difficult.

SPEAKER_04 2:51:44

It's insanely hard. You say it's really difficult. Um you say it's really difficult. I did get the first term and in this one I was running the Sarasis night which has movement 12. So I was using and I told him this I told him this is my mission and he still deployed everything at the edge of his deployment zone. So I had my both my arm my war dogs at the edge of the deployment zone and they both had a six inch scout and then they'll move so I moved they both both my my war dogs moved forward 12. So they've moved 18 inches up and border at this point. Nice. So I believe one of them I did with the charge on but the other one shot something I think might have blown it up and then charged it or shot it and then charged it to kill it to finish it off. And the Saraster's night just went straight forward it's 12 inches and I rolled the charge and I got like 11 so I was able to get into combat as well. So at the end of turn one my Tiraster's night had rushed up the board torched I think it had torched a heavy weapon squad nearly to death then punched a Lehman a tank commander a Lehman a tank commander which then blew up and took out the rest of the the Lance cannon squad. At that point the well and then my anti-tank war dog had charged into I think it and then blew up I think it blew up either a Hellhound or or chimera or or uh Sentinel or something. But by the end of turn one a lot of things had blown up and I had an Armager and my Sarasis in his both within six inches of his deploy no the the the arm the War dog was within six inches of his board edge the Sarassas wasn't then it was his turn he shot back at me and I made uh he whiffed a bunch and I made all my saves and then I had another turn in which I shot and smashed and attacked him and it was basically over by the end of my turn too. Because he didn't have hardly anything left at that point. Because I was very lucky on my dice and I was just sitting in his deployment zone tanks blowing up everywhere. So we basically called it after like 20 minutes. Wow um I say I say called it it wasn't like it was like it was it was done at that point. He didn't have any he didn't he he didn't have anything left and I felt really bad for him but he he started packing up and I remember saying so I can't remember his name but I felt really bad for him because like I've I mean I'd had two games with nothing going my way and then this time in this case oh everything's really gone my way right off the bat and I'm actually getting to combat and like oh my night's actually pretty good when I'm the one charging against Imperial Fabians and he doesn't and he makes bad saves. Um because I'm so used to playing because I'm so used to playing against Spike or um who has who only has land raiders and he can never fail a save apparently so um so I'm not used to to that actually working out. So I did say to him say we we can have another we can play um rather than just clean up you want to have another game. And because I said we've got plenty of time would you like to do this as we're here and he's like yeah actually let's do another game. So we played another game. We did we didn't um after that was we didn't do the we we just put aside all of the um narrative stuff we sort of step we sort of regular um randomized chapter approved game we would do it hammer and anvil style uh which actually worked a lot better because it meant that there was a lot more angles that he had for shooting at me um and my vehicles so uh and that that second game was a lot more fun because there was a lot of him shooting my my knights to getting them down to nearly zero wounds and then my my I had my Sarasis again charged um in in the first turn failed I completely whiffed though so it got into combat with a bunch of stuff damaged lots of things but didn't blow anything up got shot a lot and then I think I know but then it blew up and I fail I used to oh I'll give it I'll use my stratum so I blow up on a four failed uh because that would have been d6 plus two damage which would be really fun so he blew up but then my um my night abominant which would be meanwhile like in the background scoring objectives then um moved through a wall of a building in order to get in all these other units all these these tanks which are like surrounded my Sarastus knight on one flank and then my it blew Up. It didn't dump it, they just fell and died. And then my abominant moved in and used his ability, which was his the abominant's ability, which is everything can take d3 mortal wounds on a free up within nine inches of it. So I was like, okay, you all um I've moved here. Now I'm gonna roll for every unit, and then everything almost everything took like two to three mortal wounds. One the unit which the Sarasis Knight didn't kill blew up from that. That blew up, which took down another tank and a unit with it, and did a bunch of damage to my um knight in the same process. So that was a lot of fun. There's a lot of knights bl of lots of knights and vehicles blowing up and cascading mortal wounds. Uh so that was really fun, was a really close game. I think I did just um ekat a win that one, but it by the end of it's like almost everything was dead. It was like I at the very end of that, I had a war dog with two wounds left. And that was it. Uh and he had like one guardsman somewhere else running around. Uh but that was a very fun um like little bit of funsi game after the first game. And that was a lot of good a lot of good stories. I mean, any anytime you have chain explosions, that's yes, that's fun in my in my book. Yeah, good. So I mean that was a that was a fun uh two games to round out the day. And he and I d I don't think I have any pictures of it, but he and I forget his name unfortunately, I didn't write that down. But he was a really nice guy, and I understood why he was feeling sad when it's his all his beautifully painted tanks got dis um got destroyed um so quickly. But he was also but they did also come around to say how to let him know that he that his army was nominated for best painted. So after our game, he was able to take his uh Oh, did you not get nominated for Best Painted, Phil?

SPEAKER_01 2:57:42

Oh, I uh I uh you know, mildly surprised, but um yeah, I I I didn't at all.

SPEAKER_04 2:57:50

I shouldn't say your your your your army is beautiful, and it's and it's a shame it wasn't. But my opponent um his his tanks worked really cleanly painted, we're really good. And he was able to take his downstairs to be in the cabinets for nice uh which I think I I didn't go down to check out myself because I was very tired at the end of the end of that day. I think we all were. Yeah, yeah. But he he definitely was able to take his army downstairs to put in the cabinets. I mean they came out and they were asking questions about both of our lists. I'm like, oh have they chosen mine? Uh of course they hadn't chosen mine. Um but I did get a lot of positive comments about my transfer work on my nights, which was very which was very appreciative. I am I am the first to admit I am not the best painter at all. So having anyone say something generally nice about my my painting standard or look I I'm very proud of the transfer work I did on the night, so that was very cool for some for people to notice. So I was very appreciative of that. But that was a good that was a nice um final games for that day.

SPEAKER_01 2:58:45

And let's just win. Nice, nice. I'd take it you didn't win, you didn't get a patch for doing a second game in the same way that uh Spike got in his game two. I did not, no. Yeah, because um Spike in his second game won uh very soundly in like um 20 minutes or something, and the opponent had uh a bit of a uh uh a breakdown to put it politely. Uh so that so they went and they spoke to the judges about redoing it, and then they redid a game, and uh Nullum voided the first game, so they started fresh and they gave um Spike the a new port open um like logo but as a patch as a sort of sportsmanship award uh for his uh which was nice. Uh yeah, so yeah, that was day one. Um both Spike and myself had won all our games. Uh you had won one, uh, which was uh something. Uh game four um was uh I was doing hidden prize. I was playing guy called Dylan with his towel, and he was doing sabotage. Uh this one I got to randomly pick somewhere, and then my opponents uh the opponents got to pick, and basically I felt like I was the only person without an opponent, and then Dylan rocks up and be like, Oh, are you are you free? And I was like, Oh yeah. Um and Dylan, as it turned out, had won all of his games, so he was one of the champions. Um he was rocking a very competitive Tau list. It was uh Farsight, I can't remember the name of the detachment, but basically the closer you get, the more powerful they are. So when they're within six inches of you, they're all minus two AP on top of their weapons. He had the two new Tau broadsides that are like the twins, uh, that are very close combate. He but his his army was basically custody tau, was how he described it. Everything most things have a two-up save, most things have a four-up invulnerable save. They're all T5, I think, in general, some of them are T6. Um, he had a unit of broadsides that are all like flamers. Um he had like one that was like sort of a sniper guy with a big rail gun. Um, and yeah, a couple of like really annoying units that were very good in combat um or very close range shooting. Uh uh, did I go first or did he? I didn't actually write that down. I normally do. Um I think he went maybe I got to go first, I think. But basically I had some terrible dice rolls, I failed a lot of really crucial charges. So I managed to, I think I did an advancing charge with my wardens, which is my my main gimmick to try and get someone early on. I managed to charge the the two twins. I got what I killed one of them and got the other one down to like a c one or two wounds, uh, but it survived. And then I discovered the tower movement shenanigans where they can all like fall back and still shoot. Um if I move near them, they can sometimes fall back. Um and yeah, basically I had a real trouble actually just getting into combat with him, which is what I need to do to be able to kill them, because he has such maneuverability, he can always reposition away from me. And he can, yeah, he can shoot and then he can move as well. So he can shoot and then move further away from me, which means often it's like, okay, cool, I've got a you know, you're you're 12 inches or more away from me, like 14, 15, 16 inches. And it's like even if I move, I'm making a 10-inch charge all the time, and it's not possible. And my advance in charge only works once with one unit. Um, so it's not like I could do that all the time. Um, and I also had so in this one in Hidden Prize, uh, I had the three middle objectives that were in sort of no man's land, I had to do an action on. And on a, I think six plus turn one, it would I would find the prize, and that would make that objective worth more points. Uh, and then each turn you would get plus one to that dice roll, and you would get points for doing the action, but as soon as you found it, you just got points. You got 10 points for holding that thing. Um, and turn one, first uh action I do with my Inquisitor. No, it wasn't Inquisitor, it was my bikes. I discovered the prize, and that was all the way on the far side, which was kind of quite bad for me because most of my army was all the good stuff was in the middle or on the left hand side, not on the right hand side. Um, but it basically meant I was scoring 15 points for the first three turns because I basically um got five points for just holding that objective, but also 10 points because it was the prize. So I was always doing 15 points. I also had in this mission a secret mission, which was uh Nick could place a little drop pod from the the little one-man ones from either boarding action sets. Um or I think the very original, one of the kiltean uh ones that had the rogue traders in, uh, had them as well. Uh and if at the end of the game I controlled it like it was an objective, I could gift that to Nick, and that would help with our um planetary bombardment that we would we would be doing um before the last game. Um and basically it was a whitewash. I was getting slowly tabled. In fact, I got tabled by turn um yeah. Oh, actually, no, he must have yeah, I I didn't have a turn four or five, basically. So I got tabled uh you know, turn three, I think, basically. Um my inquisitor was holding out onto the objective and was the last man standing um holding on to that objective. But yeah, um it was it was ending up a weird point. So uh he had 85 points uh by the end. I had 68, so I'd done okay. But then at the end of the game, he got points because he had done actions on my home objectives. He got another 30 points, so he had over a hundred points, which I didn't think was even possible because apparently primaries and secondaries are capped at 15 points each, but the end of game scoring apparently is not capped. Uh, it's worth noting that Dylan's a very good competitive player. He had played like uh uh 11, 15 games of uh 11th head already, so he sort of knew what he was doing and felt like he was quite a competitive player, although he said he mostly played Crusade, ironically. Um but yeah, he was like, oh yeah, it's uncapped. Not that it made a difference, but it just meant his score jumped up.

SPEAKER_04 3:05:28

Was it a prime uh was it a primary or secondary?

SPEAKER_01 3:05:31

It was a primary, but it wasn't end of battle round scoring, it was end of game scoring.

SPEAKER_04 3:05:37

I mean primary still caps at 45.

SPEAKER_01 3:05:41

In total.

SPEAKER_04 3:05:42

Yeah, I I I I I yeah, because I was looking because it is capped at 15 per turn for primaries and secondaries, but it is also in the because in my last game this became important as well because the maximum the maximum score you can get in a game is a hundred, of which ten is for painting. So technically the highest you can get is ninety, of which that is forty-five primary, forty-five secondary. So you can't you can't get it yeah, you can't get more than I would make it hundred, then, if it's forty-five plus forty five percent.

SPEAKER_01 3:06:17

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 3:06:18

So it's forty five plus forty-five percent. I don't yeah, if you as far as I I as far they've there it might unless there's like a specific card that did that weirdly, but you usually have it's a primary card, and the most you can score for primaries in the game is forty-five. But I don't know. Okay, yeah, it may have been it may have been a weird thing in the cards.

SPEAKER_01 3:06:38

I think maybe maybe you're right, but um it it it didn't make a difference anyway. It was a bit of a whitewash, which was a bit of a shame. I was enjoying my run of wins uh like I had never uh won before. Um, but um yeah, that was a shame. But it was a good game ish, you know, to to lose is is never fun. Um but it was yeah, it was a really tough game, but he was a very competent player, um, and in a way I had terrible roles as it it wanted away, and it was a bit of a tough matchup. Um but yeah, no, it was good. It was good. How did your um game four go?

SPEAKER_04 3:07:15

Game four, I was finally up against Space Marines in game four. Or I say that I I technically actually throughout the entire event, I never played Space Marines. I played very I played and I I never played. I played I played a variety. I played against the Space Wolves. And what I learned about Space Wolves is uh is they are very fast and impossible to kill. That is what I discovered in the game I in the game I played, because he had uh he had taken some t some Terminators that were gonna drop down, they were in they were in orbit. He had a unit of twenty something or others. There were twenty of s there were twenty of something. I don't know if that was Grey Hunters or Blood Claws or something. There was twenty of the uh the um the things. I'm trying to remember, I shouldn't swear. But there were twenty insert your preferred expletive ear of these things, uh led by a wolf priest. And they had some they had some of the upgrades that they'd normally get plus the upgrades that some of the cards they got throughout the weekend, um, which meant that uh they were like they had lethal hits on fives or something, uh, and they ignored AP and then I don't know, so I'm gonna feel no pain. I was like, basically, I couldn't kill them. There was just so many of them and they refused to die. Uh so I got stuck into a fight with them with my uh and he also had um uh a mini dreadnought, which is like the comba the the wolf like a wolf dreadnought thing, had a big axe and a shield. Um mostly it exists to give these really fast moving units plus one to their advances and charges, which they can do uh I think it's one of those moved like eight inches and then advanced and then charged. So I was I was dealing with that from the turn one. And he had uh uh something I've only usually ever seen Spike running the ballista threadlot. Um which was equally because I was like shooting and doing lots of damage. Uh I did I yeah, my night uh abominant was like failing to do any damage to this big blob of space marines that was just I was trying to work my way through and and failing to do so. Uh and then my my war dog, anti-tank war dog actually was uh bossing it through this game in that he was able to like run up one boardside, he punched to death the the wolf, um like the the the legendary wolf dreadnought thing with his shield and all that. He's like I've got my invents, I don't care. Bang! Uh and then he charged into the ballistas and then annoyingly the ballistas made it save because he was channeling, I don't know, spikes lucky dice rolls or something. Uh but it made it saves in combat and then it didn't die and then it shot me at point blank and I blew up. Uh so I didn't win that game, but it was fun playing against um and uh there was this really big like fight in the middle of the in the middle of this ruined building in the middle of the battlefield. And I had a special mission. I was given a special mission by the boss who I was each of the oppressors was assigned a different chaos god and a different thing to do. And I was assigned um Zench. What I had to do yeah, because I was assigned Zench and one group well we I was assigned Zench, which meant we were given we were given a special objective somewhere on the board, which we then had to go and perform an action on. Which oh that's handy for me, because that means I can move on to this and perform an action and still shoot. Um which I was able to do with my big nights. So I was able to I was able to complete my part of our secret agenda uh there. So I felt very good about that. We also had I will I almost felt jealous I wasn't on the corn faction, because the corn faction was their special gam their special secret mission was either table your opponent or be tabled yourself.

SPEAKER_01 3:11:20

Was it? Oh, I do I thought Dylan had that one, but he had one where he was like, Oh, do you have any relics? And I was like, Oh yeah, my um Blade Champion has this um Phil No Pain relic, I think it was. Um no, he had a relic on him, um, and he had to kill that character to um with the relic to complete his secret agenda, which I assumed was corn, but maybe it was um maybe Slanesh or something. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 3:11:52

If I remember uh I thought of I might maybe maybe um I thought corn, it might have been a different it was definitely a point where the corn mission was table was leave none alive, either yours either your army or theirs, either their army or yours. Zench was perform uh a was investigate this this this knowledge for Zench. Nurgle's was and it was all tied to the battlefield run. So Nurgle had to go onto the green battlefields, and they had to have characters either theirs or your opponents die on the on the on the like the bean-shaped, irregular-shaped um terra pieces. Yeah. And then Slanesh, I forget what Slanesh was, but I think Slanesh was something involving characters, which may have been involved characters with relics, that might be what you yeah, may maybe that was it.

SPEAKER_01 3:12:47

But yeah, because we but but weirdly we were on the green tables, so uh unless that was happening later on.

SPEAKER_04 3:12:53

Um in theory, that should have been Nurgle. Maybe it was somehow I didn't do I I might maybe that was the Nurgle one and I've misremembered what the specifics were. I only remember exactly what the Zench one was because that's the one I have to do.

SPEAKER_01 3:13:09

Right, okay. Now fair. Um yeah, I I guess it is sort of worth noting, yeah. So obviously the main guy is a word bearer, um, and there's four chaos gods, and there's like four kind of types of tables, so you could divide up the story quite well with uh each god has to control a different um sort of set of tables to achieve something, I believe. Um, which I thought was quite good, but overall it felt odd that we were on Armageddon, having just had the launch of Armageddon, um, that is talking all about orcs versus the Imperium, and weirdly the previous uh crusade on Armageddon was all about chaos, and this time they've just gone, ah, forget about the orcs, it's really all about chaos and the imperium again. It felt like a bit of an odd narrative, but then I didn't know if that was because Chris's costume was always wordbearers, or you can't really do an orc cosplay and do the orc voice, maybe, so it's just easier to or there's not ever going to be enough orc players, whereas chaos you can unify everyone under the influence of chaos. Um, maybe I wasn't too sure.

SPEAKER_04 3:14:21

I have a s I have a feeling about this that it was meant to be orcs and they're expecting more orc players because but again, orcs haven't had their big codecs release yet.

SPEAKER_06 3:14:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:14:33

But just by looking at the cards we've got, I don't know if this will stay in focus. No, it probably won't. I don't know if you see it there.

SPEAKER_01 3:14:40

The oppressors deck is covered in orcs symbols. Well, that is because it's the Dominatus deck, and in Dominatus, the oppressors are the orcs. Um I think that's just that design.

SPEAKER_04 3:14:53

Either that's that seems like conjecture, not important, not relevant. The of the symbol of the symbol of the oppressors during this campaign, as seen by the cards that you got, because I I only won one game, but it was game three, so it didn't matter. But you've got your your scalps that are in your notebook.

SPEAKER_01 3:15:11

The oppressors they are actually uh designed, so they are scalps. That is true, yeah. Um, so yeah, um game uh five. Um I also um they at this point they were like, you don't need to flip tables. Nick was like, uh Commander Nick, maybe I should call him, was like, go and find tables that are liberators so we get the defender bonus. And I was like, nah, I'm gonna steal another oppressor's sticker and uh claim it for the Imperium, even though it has no real um point at this time. So I wanted to give myself a bit of an uphill struggle. So I found another oppressor control table to to fight on uh because I wanted to flip it. Um we had apparently successfully done the bombing run, um but all that was was Nick saying, Oh yeah, the the fly boys have done their job and we've you know bombed the the hives to ruins and that was it. I was like, oh, is there no is there no gimmick for the mission that involves oh we've you know some random tables take some mortal wounds or something. I was expecting an actual outcome that is meaningful rules-wise from the story, other than them just saying, Yeah, we've we we bombed some stuff. Uh may uh maybe there is, but it's just behind the scenes and it that it's not told to us. But it I would have appreciated more of we've done the bombing run and this is what it means. It might have been it just you know gave us some extra, you know, agenda points or something for the outcome of the overall winner. Um but yeah, and so I was playing a guy called Howie, uh who was a local boy from Wales. Uh he had Tyranids. I was doing Reclaim This World. Uh he was doing a proper challenge. Um, this one was where we both deployed really aggressively. He had um basically a lictor-themed list. Um, so it was mostly lictors or the mini, the new mini lictors, um, plus the uhn queen. So the nawn queen was sort of deployed on his deployment line. And then to my right hand side in one building near an objective, he had infiltrated, I think, two different types of lictors plus two mini units of mini lictors, and they were like six inches away from I guess it would have been had to be nine inches away from my um bikes plus my um uh regular spear squad. Uh so they were there. In the middle, I had the wardens and my captain on bike. Um on the left-hand side, I just had my Inquisitor hang out on his own to look after my home objective. Uh, and then the Ventari were off uh the board. Uh, and then it was all basically decided by the dice roll. I got to go first. Uh, I managed to advance and charge my um warden with Blade Champion into the Norm Queen, and my bike captain had enough movement to just regular move and charge into the Norm Queen. Um, and then everything else, there was a big scrum on the right-hand side against uh his units. He then told me, Oh, by the way, my stuff has fights first, or most of his army has fights first. So I sort of um with my priority, because the Norm Queen didn't have fights first, did the fight down the bottom. I think I just made sure I could take out enough of one of his units to sort of dent it, uh, so his main lick to on its own wasn't too bad. That was a real scrum, and there was a lot of back and forth going. Um, but I sort of eventually won that fight. And then Nick came over and was just watching as we were doing the big fight with the uh Norm Queen, uh, my captain and wardens. Uh the captain went in, did a bunch of wounds but didn't kill it, and then the wardens just rolled a bucket of dice and wiped the Norm Queen out. And at that point, he had lost maybe like three units in the first turn, uh, which was obviously a lot of his army at that point. But we carried on the game. Um, I was scoring uh 10 points or 15 points most turns. Um, he thought he wasn't scoring anything at all uh other than secondaries, but then he realized because his fun was over, he was like hold holding the agenda with his thumb over the bit that said, yes, you score for holding objectives. So we retrospectively realised he was doing like an extra like five to ten points uh per turn. So the game was a lot closer than it he thought it was gonna be, despite it almost being a tabling uh for him, because he had two units at the end which were just able to come up and down, one of which was one of his lictors, which I think I eventually killed, and then the last unit he had alive was the um it was the kill team that uh is like the mixed bag of like kind of tyrannid lictor type ones, like with some of them have crushing claws. Um so it was like a a mixed kill team, and they're really devastating, and they can disappear at the end of my turn and reappear at the start of his. So he could he was sort of constantly bring lifting them up, putting them down, trying to then get a charge on one of my units, and then was quite easily murking a unit. So they were being a bit of a threat by the end, but I think by the end there was this one guy left alive, um, and it was too far out of my way. Uh so that was a 90 to 65 uh win in the end, and I'd like claimed the table for the liberators, uh, which was the main thing. Uh, he was a really lovely chap. Um he does a podcast, um, but I can't remember what it's called, so uh, and it's too far over there to to reach, but I will put a link in the uh description of the video if people want to check it out. Uh I've not checked out myself, so I'll have to do that at some point. But yeah, he was a really lovely chap. The army was really gorgeously painted. Um, it was all kind of greens and browns, and we were playing on some of the green tables, I want to say. So very thematically looked really good uh and it was a lot of fun and was just a blast. Um, and he he uh took the took for losing very well, I thought. Um so yeah, that was my final game. Four wins and a loss. Uh, how was your last game, Richie?

SPEAKER_04 3:21:51

My last game was very interesting. So for my last game, I found a table to play on. I forget what I think it was in the red the spaceport as I hadn't played on there if I remember. And it was gonna be against Grey Knights, and I was like, well, I've not played against Grey Knights, but I can see he's got like the big baby carrier thing. Um, I've not fought against one of those. That will be fun. He fought. Um I was like little did I realise. But I I got in there, I started I was there and I started to play, and then we started to talk about our lists, and then Commandant Nicholas came over came over to speak to us because there was an odd number of players. I guess um one of the oppressors had left or that couldn't be found, so they had too many liberated players, and they asked if it was if I was okay, if it was okay to turn us the game I was playing, but it's gonna be a 1v1 into a 2v1. So into like a doubles game, but it's like me against both of them. And I was like, Yeah, sure, that's fine. Um, because and they've that seemed quite thematic because they were both Grey Knights players. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. So we and they were just trying to do their li redo their lists, and I what I said to them was like, well, so you can use more of your stuff. I've got 1500 I can make 1500 points out of my stuff. Um if you want to if you want to take 750 each rather than 500 each, we could do that. And then they were and then they were like, uh yeah, yeah, cool, let's let's do that then. It was kind of strange because I was like uh in a doubles game, but I had to I kept so I would often forget that they didn't know each other. Yeah. They were just two random people who just come to this event together. But we so we did I had a 1500 point game, well 1450 technically, um, for that's the most I could do by taking all of my knights and then giving them each of my big knights an upgrade of some kind.

SPEAKER_01 3:23:39

Right, plus your sideboard, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 3:23:41

Yeah, which was me with some. So I got to use all of my knights, so I got to use both my styrex and my cerastis. I got to use them upgrade so the cerastis would have a two- I got to give one a two up save, one going back into deep strike, um one uh was I could increase the cost of any c of any stratagem by one CP once per turn. If used be within 12 inches. Um which was interesting, which I thought that would be fun. So I got my got uh and I I was using all of my all of my cards, all as many as I could.

unknown 3:24:12

No.

SPEAKER_04 3:24:15

What I discovered about grey knights, and I just um they told me this before and I they didn't tell me this in advance. Uh not not that it's like a gotcha or anyway. Well, I think it kind of is to be honest, but I they it only because of what grey knights do. The other armies don't. I was thinking, oh, which which of my upgrades should I pick for my winds of chaos? Because I I'd I'd realised if I pick darkness, which means my entire army has cover, that's that's pretty solid. I should stick with that one. I thought, nah, it's a bit of fun, I'll just roll for it. I didn't roll darkness, I got like I got a additional minus one to um leadership tests if you're within the aura range, and also if you fail below half strength, you take you take um D3 Mortal Wounds. I didn't get darkness. Which didn't matter, because what I discovered in the first turn of the game is that grey knights don't care about cover. Every single gun. So as I say so I say when I say sort of a gotcha, it's it's not really a gotcha, it's just like they're it but it also feels because their entire army, every ranged weapon they have has the psychic special right, yeah. So they just ignore the modifiers to boost the skill. So psychic ignores all modifiers, so they don't care about basically they all have ignores cover. So it was actually in my interest to if I'd chosen darkness, that would have been a complete waste because it makes no difference. Also meant as I so it also meant like, oh, I'm gonna hide in this building. No point, doesn't matter, doesn't make any difference because grey knights don't care about that.

SPEAKER_01 3:25:46

Well, I I had a similar situation with the Tao guy because yeah, they were constantly ignoring cover and also had loads of drone markers and um stuff to give pluses to their ballistic skill anyway. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:26:00

Yeah, which I think which I think is a w what it felt slightly weird that they basically all their all their all their weapons have psychic and cover is now such a the the way cover works, which is a key factor to the game, is it it affects hit roles, and then there's an army like I think I referred to them as the the uh night haunt of 40k in that whereas night haunt completely ignore rend, which is a big fact which is a big mechanic in AOS. Currently Grey Knights completely ignore cover just by just by default, so we'll see how that um changes, but either way, um it made the game very um interesting to play against because I'm like, okay, cover's not a factor, how's this gonna work out for me? What I learnt was is that the baby carriers are the scariest thing in the game because the baby carriers by default re-roll everything. Yeah, the Nemesis Dreadnights.

SPEAKER_00 3:26:56

I mean everything, Phil.

SPEAKER_04 3:26:59

I don't just mean the hit rolls, I don't just mean the wound rolls, I mean the damage rolls as well. They just re-roll it all.

SPEAKER_01 3:27:07

And it's not like it's just you re-roll a dice instantly, you re-roll all of them.

SPEAKER_04 3:27:13

Well he told me, I was like, I was like, oh yeah, I know there's lots of arms. Like, it's you can re roll a hit roll, a wound roll, a damage roll. And he's like, no. I re-roll everything. He didn't he didn't quite say it quite that dramatically, it was just very rather, no, it's everything. I'm like, really? That can't, that doesn't surely not. No, rest assured, that's how the um the sorry sorry, the the baby carriers or other the nemesis um the the landmaster in Nemesis Dreadnight. Uh it they are insane um for that purpose. And somehow I managed to not die when one charge came. Um there was a combination of he had all the using all of his revolves and all these damages, uh, my knight was alive on like four wounds. Uh it was my my styrex knight. He did, he did, he took 22 wounds off it. So I was somehow still alive. Uh and then I shot him to pieces in the next turn. Um so that was pretty scary. Not nearly as scary as the the these Terminator things with Grey Knights, which drop in and then they'll charge you, and they've got similar kinds of buffs, plus uh lance, so they're all wounding me on threes or something, or fours or something ridiculous, with rerolls and so they are very they when when you get charged and charged by grey knights, they can be very, very scary. And so that why it was it was that was a very scary game to play against. I was, however, in luck because on this mission, the battlefield we were playing on had the deep strike rule you mentioned from earlier in the podcast. So every unit had the option to deep strike within six inches, uh, but if you did, you'd have to take a battle shock test and uh uh make hazard rolls. Now, you may recall that I rolled um on my winds of chaos to get an additional minus one on battleshock tests. So what happened was turn one, I moved forward, and you could do something and you could you could so someone move forward, has a had some bites, but then all of these all of these um grey knights are deep striking in to get their six-inch charge range, and every single one of them failed their battleshock test at minus two. Which was game-changing because what that meant was that I'd stickied a couple of objectives and his entire army was battle shocked.

unknown 3:29:36

Right.

SPEAKER_04 3:29:36

So there were no additional no additional shenanigans because they can't do they could they couldn't do their uh they couldn't do additional commands, they couldn't do any additional we was, they failed the charge, they're just stuck there. Um and their guns are pretty scary, but it meant that he couldn't take the objectives off me. So even though when they did charge in, they like started my knight started popping like um balloons very quickly once they did get into combat, he kept failing his battleshock test still. So I was still ticking up my primaries, and so the first baby carrier, uh sorry, Grandmaster and my sister at night, um, got shot to pieces um while I was stuck in combat with my with my knight. Uh he wasn't I I tried shooting with all the guns with like the the uh Volkite whiffed. So I had to use the flame on the asheron just to finish it off. The other one that dropped in and killed a bunch of knights, I used I dropped in my own uh my my personal MVP of the weekend, the stalker with Melter and Claw, who he charged in and smashed up that the other Nemesis Dread Knight because it's like you're gonna fail one of these saves. He's like, Oh I was like, I'll I'll I'll reroll the fail saves. Like, I think you'll find your battle shocked. So it's like here take two d6 plus four damage, uh, and then he blew up. Um I found that very fun game, and by the end of it, I had a relatively undamaged Serastis knight in one corner sitting in their objective in their deployments. I moved like walking around claiming stuff, and but because and I was by even though I only had him one night left, I'd still sticky to a bunch of objectives, so I was just ticking up my primary every turn, and the secondaries I score were I was quite lucky to either be finish off this unit or kick uh control objectives in your deployment zone while they and then by like turn four they started then they started passing the battleshock tests. And then in the last turn, I threw my secondary, I think I had no prisoners, so I had to kill a unit, and I saw this unit of like two two little normal grey knights with flamethrowers or some or side cannons or something. They'd been a bit of a pain, they were hiding at the back of the the borders of like well, I'm gonna move my Sarasis Knight down and I'll use my heavy bolter and my 2d6 flame strength eight flamer cannon. I'll kill two space marines. How hard could that be? So is that very hard? Because I whiff I no, I didn't even whi whiffle my roles that much, but they just made all the saves because they were in cover, so they got plus one to that. Well, they weren't in cover. Um, what did they do? I forget what it was. They just made all their saves. Um so and then then they he they weren't battleshocks, they ought to do a re-roll to us to not be dead. So there's one guy left on one wound. It's like, well, that thing, I'm just I I wasn't even looking at the scores too much at this point. Well, this is the last thing I can potentially achieve. This is the last um, I'll try and make that charge. What is it? And I measured it, and it's like, and it was just over it was like 11 and a half charge to make it. So I measured it, and there's and there's and then they said, uh, and then I said, Do you think I can make that? And he looks and he goes, Well, you'll need a 12. I'm like, well, let's give it a go. So I pick up my tabletop tactics dice and I roll them, I get a three. I said, Well, in that case, I'll spend my last, I'll spend my second to last command point, and I'll pick up my two of my chaos dice, and I'll roll them, and they rolled across the table. And they landed two chaos symbols up. So I was like, I was like, I'm not gonna you guys can see that, right? And they're looking and they're like, it looks like a 12, so I made my charge. Nice. And then they said, um and then they said, okay, well, before uh and then they said, okay, in response to that start of the fight phase, I said, no, no, no, I know how I roll. I'm tank shocking you. Yeah. I'm making sure you're dead. So I rolled my tank shock. It's like, okay, take seven mortal wounds. Nice. Or um however many. It was like he was trampled. Then they had their last turn, they drew uh then they they had their last uh before it was the end of their they started their turn, they were debating about what they wanted to do with their units if they were gonna like because Grey Knights can like draw uppy downy every turn. And they debated a lot about it, and then the two of them, and then they were uh and then they eventually decide they were gonna uppy two of their units, and they drew their secondaries, and they're like, Oh, we can score this one, we can score this one, we score this one. And then I'd say like you can't actually score one of those though, because you can't because you have to be on the board to it was the the one where you have to guard an objective, yeah. So you can't so you can't allocate that because you the units you want to do that aren't on the board, right? So you can't pick that and then they're like oh okay. So then they did that, they basically maxed out everything they could in the last turn, as many strat as many of these stratagems as they could. As many of the sorry, as many of the the the tactic cards they could, and then we I added it all up, and then I was like, added it all up, and like, okay, this is what the score is, and I was looking at and I just rechecked it, and that's when I rechecked it, and that was and by my count I had 50 for primary, and I was like, No, you can't I can't have 50 for primary because the maximum gets 45. Nice, yeah, yeah. And the final score we had, um, I forget what it was, but it was basically it was a draw, um, is what the final score was. So at the time I thought it was I thought I I just thought it was uh quite amusing that I made that double six that 12-inch charge in the last term. That actually won that actually made me draw. If I hadn't if I hadn't done that, I would have lost by two VP. Um, but instead that got the draw, and that was a a really kind a really challenging game to play against Grey Knights. Um, but I got all of my kind of Chaos Knights uniqueness of lowering their leadership for Battleshrock really came into play. So it was a really, really fun game um to play against. And my opponent, whose name I've forgotten, but he gave me a really cool um gift of a little tray to put uh 3D printed tray to put dice on for um for your um keeping track of victory points and for command points. He also gave me a special little envelope with some deep history and lore about why his unit why his grey knight force have to be um in Armageddon in well in insert battles uh insert region of the galaxy here because we didn't know it was Armageddon until we got there. But that was really cool. So um that was I really enjoyed that that final game. It was really a really nice, fun way to end uh a weekend of mostly losses.

SPEAKER_01 3:35:59

Yeah, that's fair. How do you feel like um your army performed? Do you feel like um it's 11th edition, you haven't had much practice, or do you feel like the Chaos Knights don't do well in low um you know 1,000 point games, or is it your technical skill, Richie? You're normally a good player though, so I I wouldn't have thought it would be that.

SPEAKER_04 3:36:25

Oh you're so kind, Phil. Uh no, I think I was it was I definitely lost game one because I wasn't sure what I was uh I was up against an opponent I didn't really understand. And I lost game to down uh there wasn't I don't think there's much I could do against a more one thing that's hard to one thing you can't really do with Chaos Knights, especially if you're taking them the way I do, uh, is optimise for competitive play. Because you you can't I mean you I think you can from what little looking around in Reddit I've done is like you take lots of the war dogs and demons, uh similar to what's like one of the guys you played against it. But I just took my entire Chaos Army is based uh Chaos Knight Army is based entirely upon I bought the Chaos Knights box launch box a few years ago, never got round to using it, but we had when we were doing 500 worlds campaign earlier this year, I was like, well I might as well do that. Um plus I had an old Chaos Knight um the Styrix that I've been meaning to convert for years of okay, I'll get that done. So I just basically just using the minis I had um to take to this event, and then I've got the Sarastis as a gift uh um for the campaign as well. So I was just basically using the models I have that were the m not the best painted. Um I don't feel that Chaos Knights are particularly competitive because it's hard to be com it's hard for them to be competitive because you can't you like I said you can't really specialise them. With other with ev I would say with every other army in the game, um you can take good units that are good, you can increase the size of them, you can buff them, you can put characters, different types of heroes with them or support units to make them even better. And especially in this format of event, there are all the various like relics and things you can use to give them additional upgrades. And I think chaos knights don't really benefit from that in quite the same way. So that's not me making excuses, just that's just me just like observing as I took a look I took because before I went, uh many people were saying you're taking the knights to a narrative event, you're gonna stomp everybody because no one's gonna be able to damage you because you've got such high toughness and such high wounds, and that's not really the case at all.

SPEAKER_01 3:38:35

Well, I also think that's what sideboard is for to be to uh counter that.

SPEAKER_04 3:38:40

Uh so I I had a really good time with I have a good time with Chaos Knights because I like play it's it's very straightforward to play with them because you're not having to move lots of models, you've just got four you in some ways it's I suppose it's similar it I imagine it's somewhat similar to how it is for you playing as custodies because you've only got a you've only got a few units that you need to uh uh really understand what they do. So you're not having whenever I've played uh re small recently with orcs, or if ever I'm playing whenever I played Darko for A in Age of Sigmar, we've got so many different units to remember and understand, that can be a bit complicated. But running as Chaos Knights, where essentially I had three data sheets um because two of the units were the same. Uh it was very straight it made it a very straightforward um game to play, so I enjoyed it. I enjoyed that because it was straightforward. They're a very different they're very different, they're very they're very different kind of army to play with, especially when there's missions with like multiple um objectives objectives to handle, which is why I took the oh do you think the list you're supposed to get a thousand points, which is Lords of Dread, so you can sticky objectives much easier and can control the battlefield. So I found it fun I found I still found it fun in that sense. Although whenever I came up against some like really optimised list, it's like, yeah, I've got no charts here. It's like, oh, this is gonna completely destroy me. Okay. Yeah because it was fine. It I thought it was fine. I and I don't if I was ever gonna play competitive for the game, I wouldn't do it with Chaos Knights right now. I d at least not with the way I've got them. I don't think take lots of the big knights is in any way the way that they're gonna be good in that sense. But they do look cool. And I enjoyed I very much enjoyed painting them and I very much enjoyed the opportunity to be actually putting them on the table because that was kind of fun. I got a hand so I got some good some some quite good screenshots um when I remember to take them. And like I said, I got some nice compliments from people like walking by saying that they like the transfer work.

SPEAKER_01 3:40:39

So that was nice. That's great. Um yeah, I mean, even with my army, it's like I like uh I just enjoy 40k. Like I know Tim and Dan are a bit over it to an extent. Um but there's something so sort of visceral about 40k, and I I I think in part it's because I've really converted up my army and I've put a lot of time and effort into the army itself that I'm really like invested in it. So when I'm playing them on the tabletop, it's sort of like a payoff for the hard work of painting them and converting them, but also I'm really invested in that army, and I feel like they play as the the law it kind of dictates. So running them as custodies as these things that are just gonna kill stuff, it feels very uh yeah, rewarding for doing that, and it feels yeah, like they're doing what they're meant to be doing, sort of thing. Um which I feel like even though I think AOS is a good game, it I still don't have that what was it, Ludo narrative dissonance or whatever. It's like it's like, yeah, I I the the the believability of 40k is just so much more stronger when I'm playing a game of it than it is with Aegis Singh, at least like you know, you are playing over ruins, and it's like cool, I'm trying to get this, you know, custom objective of this uh trying to get this drop pod or stop this relic having having something done to it, or even in the last game where I was like, Oh, I've got to do an action to raise banners, that still felt quite narratively, you know, narratively driven. So I enjoyed all of those uh elements to it. Um and yeah, in terms of the overall campaign, um, so we had like the wrap-up uh speeches. Uh Chaos had had sort of semi-succeeded in doing its um um rituals, but the chaos just for the record, I I did my part.

SPEAKER_04 3:42:31

I did that's what I was saying. I did my part.

SPEAKER_01 3:42:33

You did your part, you won your last game. Uh I also won my last game, but I didn't do the final agenda, so I missed out on that um sort of extra thing. Um, because I you could have got won an extra agenda, which I mentioned earlier, um, because I didn't get to do raise the banners on everything, because basically I uh weirdly, the big fight on the right hand side with all the lictors is the one that I hadn't um raised the banners on because there was this big massive fight, and then eventually uh the tyrannit had had won that fight and then sort of gone on elsewhere, and I had sort of dominated the rest of the table elsewhere, so I missed out on that uh bonus um uh yeah, agenda card. Um, but yeah, so so yeah, Chaos had sort of semi-achieved it, but the chaos champion that had been chosen had been converted into a chaos spawn. Um so I think the idea is actually the Imperium had won, but they've just won rubble because all the hives have been destroyed, uh so to speak. Uh so yeah, the Imperium got to go huzzah uh because we had won. Uh then there was a bunch of um prizes given out. Um it sound it felt like um like half the prizes Nick got to dispense however he saw fit, and half the prizes Chris got to dispense how they saw fit. So one, you know, David for being an orc and wearing green paint got a prize just for his cosplay. Um the two or three guys that turned traitor from the Imperium side to the traitors to sort of fill the numbers, they also got prizes. Um and then the sort of the champions uh of each faction also got prizes. So I think Dylan maybe got a prize for being like the best uh mercenary player because I think he had either won all his games or won all but the last game. And so they were like the prizes that were given out, and then there was the antagonist and protagonist prizes, and the painting ones were given out downstairs as part of the main ceremony that happened. Um, I think I would have liked it, if we can talk before we go on to that bit. Um I would have liked it if there was like a team certificate. So the Liberators won the campaign, all the Liberators should have had little certificates, say well done for winning, and likewise if the Chaos had won, they should have got it, because that's the sort of thing you would have gotten at a Warhammer World event. Um I'm not expecting trophies for half the players, but a little paper certificate in one of those kind of crappy uh cardboard frames uh would have been nicely appreciated and is the sort of thing historically we got from campaign weekends. Um but otherwise it was fun. It was it it was narrative-ish. It didn't feel feel like there was a super strong narrative theming throughout there was I I got one secret mission and I got to do one doubles, uh, which I guess was nice, but I sort of volunteered for the doubles one. I would have liked it maybe if there was, you know, everyone got to do a doubles game, because that felt like it was such a random thing. Um, and I would have liked it if there was maybe more sort of secret missions. It kind of felt like Chaos got to do more of that um throughout, but I don't know what your sort of takeaways of the event was. Mine was overall very positive, um, but it was sort of like a fun normal game of 40k with a bit of set dressing and cosplay.

SPEAKER_04 3:46:07

I thought I I I enjoyed it. I was on the the topic of like the the certificates. I think that that's a cool that's a nice thing, but then they'd have to make like loads and then maybe not use them so I can I can't paper. Yeah. Well, it's still got to be a good thing. I I I guess they're not going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 3:46:27

Um one for both.

SPEAKER_04 3:46:30

I mean I think what I think one thing that should be that should be clarified is that when we say there were prizes given out to these very they didn't make great various categories for like best cosplayers, those who switched sides, or some I think what's the person who who who lost the most got an uh award or they gave all those various awards. The prizes was just was for lack of a better phrase, a bunch of stock they scrounged from the shop.

SPEAKER_01 3:46:57

Um possibly it was mostly like toy figures it was some it was stuff they scrounged from somewhere to give away.

SPEAKER_04 3:47:05

So it wasn't that they weren't like trophies or um not that it wasn't not that it wasn't appreciated and the nice gesture, but it it it wasn't like they weren't like awards or with like oh you were on this or that on it. It was like they had a they had a table covered in stock they'd scrounged from the shop and then people got to and they gave us uh gave part of it away to people, uh which was still nice they did it, but that's it it was it it didn't feel like there was a oh like your faction did this, here's some awards to the faction, or there it wasn't like a like you got like you did the best for the Nurgle or best for Zench or it was more we we're gonna we're gonna mention audibly individuals here who did some good things in our eyes or did or did certain met certain criteria and weren't it was given out on vibes, I would say, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 3:47:55

It was oh you you were a bit sporting, you get something, uh you did a bit of cosplay or felt like you were in character maybe more than other people. Um and out of cop the cosplayers, I think there was maybe like 10 out of the 60 or 10% of the people I would say were in cosplay, like not a huge amount at all. Um, but props to them for doing it and you know wearing it all weekend.

SPEAKER_04 3:48:20

I was saying on the I I quite I enjoyed playing the games. I enjoyed the table, the tables were nice. As I said, I love the windows. There's so much natural light in that room, it was really nice to be playing in. Uh I w do feel they could have done maybe more for the missions themselves to feel narrative focused, because they didn't really other than like the preamble, it was more it was like a preamble, and then you guys are gonna be doing this mission we told you to do. And then the and then you go to a table and your opponent is doing the mission they might have been told to do.

SPEAKER_01 3:48:58

It other than there's little agency for you to do something that affects other than obviously winning the game, but you can't say, Oh, I want to sabotage something, so put me on this mission, or maybe there's uh yeah, other than being one of the champions, there wasn't a time where you could go off and do something different from everyone else.

SPEAKER_04 3:49:23

It it felt a little bit loose in that loose in that sense, so it couldn't there was each they had the tables that which you could stick on the this is controlled by this people this time, uh, or the all these people next time. I thought they could possibly have done more to be like, we're fighting over this area, these are the people we're gonna send to attack, and then people would be sending to defending what defend it, which they sometimes sort of did. Um, but it felt more like we were there was we were playing some games of 40k with some games of 40k, which were fundamentally still games of 40k because whether uh I don't know if we were supposed to be not using secondaries or not, but differently everybody must be.

SPEAKER_01 3:50:04

I think you were meant to, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:50:06

I mean, maybe we were maybe I mean it was on it was slightly unclear how we were supposed to be playing, uh, but by the end of it, everyone was playing by the after game one, every everyone was doing secondaries, so one assumes that was how we were to play it. We're essentially playing a some like playing games of 40k, but your primaries weren't set up in a way that they were designed to be balanced as they are in regular 40k.

SPEAKER_01 3:50:30

Yeah, because of the dispositions, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:50:32

So so that was kind of potentially kind of could potentially be really strange, especially as like um as a nightmare, it's like here's your j here's your mission, which may be completely impossible for you to even try and do. But then you had the tables which were interesting, that the tables had their own special mission parameters, which I thought the most interesting one was the one where you could everyone can deep strike, everything can deep strike if you want. Um I thought that was really interesting. Or up to half your army still, obviously. Um, but I thought that that was quite interesting as a different mechanic to to play. Uh other ones were were like every unit gets a five up invent. I'm like whoop-dee-doo. Um for me, as as with my knife. So I thought that was quite interesting, and then there's like the defender bonuses, but the the attacking defending side of it didn't always feel that that was as like entwined correctly. Where they took all the people who lost their first game on the oppressor's side to play against someone who won their first game on the Liberators side, which immediately feels okay. Why did you do that? But they've made them all made all of us because I was as I lost most of my games. I was part of the oppressors who lost. So I went to a table where I would get a buff for being the defender. But that still felt slightly odd that you've that's based off one game, okay, everyone who's lost a game is now going to be playing playing someone who's already won. So it's like we're we're putting the.

SPEAKER_01 3:52:07

Me and Spike did joke about oh, which of us is gonna place play Richie now and do him in.

SPEAKER_04 3:52:14

Well, that was the way I thought it as someone who I as someone who's like previously been to like more competitive tournaments, like you would never put the winners, you would never mix up winners, winners queue and losers queue. But that's exactly what they did, uh, which I thought and I don't know how the results all went, so I don't I don't know if that was I don't know how that works or not. I thought they could have been more to be make it clear you were the defender or you're def what you were defending and why. But it would that in some ways that this is all like things that I'd like to see the next time, which reminds me I should ask you or Spike to send me the the survey because I didn't get the survey.

SPEAKER_01 3:52:47

Oh yeah, I'd still not filled that out. I keep it.

SPEAKER_04 3:52:50

Well, if you can send me the link, um I could because I didn't buy I because I bought my Spike purchased my ticket. Um and I paid him back before chat gets good. I paid him back for that. Um and I can prove it if he's if he if he s says I didn't. Uh but I would like to give my feedback because this is more like old things for next time kind of stuff, because otherwise it was some like really enjoyable games of 40k. Um the the the tables were really nice. It would have been nice if there was more like narrative thematic elements to it. Or like I've I realize I've been yapping for a bit, but I remember one thing I did was here because you talked about the uh more doubles games. In the rules pack, it said about how you should bring different size lists in case for a thousand points if you're doing a thousand, but and then you got your your uh additional resource so you can you can you have basic basically your sideboards, but it also specifically said you should bring a 500-point list so you can play in doubles games, but it looks like that only happened once for four people.

SPEAKER_01 3:53:53

And that was your game someone dropped out.

SPEAKER_04 3:53:57

My game was my game didn't I yeah, I suppose my name was.

SPEAKER_01 3:54:00

You're right, one official game that was designed specifically to action beer doubles.

SPEAKER_04 3:54:06

There's only one game where it specifically and even you guys then but then you guys just played it as a thousand points each. That's true, yeah. So it was one double is that was a two thousand point game um rather than the five hundred points each. So it was kind of odd that we were told to bring five hundred point lists specifically for no reason. Uh that was I thought that was a bit essentially essentially for no reason. Um to be in it but but otherwise it was I I really enjoyed the games. I liked that we got these cool cards for how we played the missions and it it was a night it was a night a nice, interesting environment. I felt it it I would like it if the next time there could be more for a way of feeling like you're part of the narrative. Uh which I did somewhat feel in a way is like when I got my especially I think the only real time I really felt that was when I was given my Zench mission to do an additional thing, but otherwise it felt more like I'm just going to find an empty table to play my game. I'm finding where there's a table I can play against rather than like you're being sent to attack here uh or defend here, which didn't happen quite s I've and I do feel that they might have been intending for that because there were times when they'd set when I it felt they were telling um the players to you guys are defending, go to these tables to defend, but then people didn't necessarily actually do that either because they didn't want to or didn't understand the exact instructions. So I think some things might have been I feel some things might have been lost in translation a little bit, but it was fun.

SPEAKER_01 3:55:41

Yeah, no, that's true. I I I would say there was a few things that I had seen either from the Warhammer World Grand narrative, which was always supplementary to the ones in America or the American ones. So the American ones, the rooms are much more themed, and like it feels like each room is bespoke to a different setting. So one is jungle, then they've got loads of like trees and foliage around or camo netting and things like that um in each of the rooms in terms of set decoration. Obviously, we had our little gun turrets, which were cool, but that was kind of it. Um, I also got the impression they used to there was like a bit more uh back and forth like in character with the uh people, and I think I was expecting more kind of characters in cosplay for us to interact with, not just Nick and Chris. I was expecting maybe a couple of other supplementary characters to be coming and speaking to us in character. Um, because I'd seen that at some of the other events. Um and then lastly, uh, because I think it was like the day before um someone had posted this massive board that they had designed, and they said it would it was designed for the grand narrative in America, and it was this like battle barge that had crashed, and it was some of it was 3D printed, a lot of it was scratch built, and it looked really impressive. So that to me, in my mind, that was the level of custom boards I was expecting, like actual custom terrain pieces. Uh, so each board was individually thematic. Ultimately, what we had was all the tables were ruins, and the the theming was the colour. Do you have a red board versus a yellow board or a blue board that is technically representing desert or landscape?

SPEAKER_04 3:57:26

It's only with the green boards that had like a real distinct vibe.

SPEAKER_01 3:57:30

Yeah, that one had um yeah, the the sort of trees in which made it feel a bit more woody. Um, and then the blue sort of city ones had some of them had like the antennae radio station bits on a little bit, but I think that was like one or two of the tables. But mostly, and then as you said, some of the tables had like some of the orc terrain on, but I don't think I played on any of those. So for me, it was five games on different coloured ruins, which wasn't terrible, but it wasn't quite elevated to the level I was expecting it to be, and what it is in America, I I would say. Um, but from a sort of practical point of view, it was f fine, I thought.

SPEAKER_04 3:58:13

I I would add on that that there were it did feel multiple tim now that you're saying this is making me remember that they did it felt like they said multiple times the idea that the real grand narrative is in America. And because I was saying, oh, that who's got tickets to the grand narrative in America? Like that was the real one, and this is like Oh, you should buy tickets for that one. Yeah, and the the what the I because I hadn't I wasn't I'm not familiar with the grand narrative as in America as much as you are for how you're describing the different rooms and the more like staff and um people in cosplay for that. So that me will make makes it feel more like this is like the what we came to was like grand narrative light. Yeah, I think they almost I might be misremembering what we've got Chris he's he called this event the grand narrative but then corrected himself. It's like no, this I'm pretty sure this was a grand narrative.

SPEAKER_01 3:59:07

Yes, no, it's called the grand narrative, but I think maybe he was saying the actual grand narrative was yeah, maybe in America.

SPEAKER_04 3:59:14

I don't yeah, that which was a bit which was a bit strange thinking um about that in hindsight. I do one thing I do what I do want to say like I all I feel a bit for the people putting it on the like the rul rules-wise, because I remember because people had to sign up for this six months ago, I think they weren't taking a lot of it. Basically in 10th edition. Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of the game mechanics like that they either didn't the organizers I assume either didn't know about 11th at all or weren't allowed to say anything about 11th at all in terms of the rules pack. Because the rules pack did change very like less than a month before the actual event. Because originally there was uh there was like references to crusade you can use crusade rules, or yeah, you could use very spec specifically from my perspective, it referred to how you could you that I was what a a list I was considering taking was a Dark Angels list, um entirely Deathwing, because I liked the idea of having a Deafwing dreadnought leading the list, which you could technically do using the in the Maelstream of War supplement, they had the Crucible of War to make your own custom characters. And the rules pack originally said you could do you could totally do that and they were allowed. Then like a few weeks, maybe a month after uh 11th came out, they updated the rules pack and basically said, Yeah, that's not a thing. They removed all of that.

SPEAKER_01 4:00:42

But it sounded like if you wanted to check with your opponent, you probably could do it.

SPEAKER_04 4:00:49

I I did get an email back from the events team saying that, oh yeah, you can if you want, uh, but it's up to you and your opponent if they uh accept that. Which I wasn't then prepared to spend nearly a hundred pounds buying the parts to convert up a dreadnought, and then just think to place someone who might say no. Yes, or then they might feel uncomfortable that I'd done that or feel that was too because I originally I was thinking of doing that because oh, this is gonna be very like leaning into the narrative, like create your own army features of 40k, and then it feels like 11th condition came up and they just threw out a lot of what they or or or had to throw out a lot of what they were imagining and envisioning doing to then have to work within this new framework.

SPEAKER_01 4:01:30

That's fair, and I guess they maybe just pivoted to well, there's dominators, so let's run it with that rather than maybe a more bespoke campaign that they were expecting. Also, it's like most people there had barely played any eleventh edit anyway, so they probably didn't want anything too overly complicated because most of the people there are like casual players. So that's t totally understandable.

SPEAKER_04 4:01:54

What what I would prefer if they do it what I would have preferred, um And if they do another one, what I'd love to see them do is to do more just more interesting missions. Or just more bespoke missions. Because w when we earlier this year, when we played 500 Worlds, all the we it was like when you're you're you're playing a different type of game. It's like there's no secondaries and s uber balancing or stuff. It's like here's a really interesting kind of mission to do a class, like a a uh an asymmetrical mission of a store or a narrative component. Uh so I'm hoping that's something they might be able to do in two iterations of the yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:02:32

They would have almost been more. I think a few people had said they'd rather just do the primary and not the secondary, for example. Um, or as you say, yeah, the 500 Wild One would have been a bit more thematic because ultimately, yeah, you've got your agenda and it's like you've got your primary, which is tangentially linked to um, you know, storming a beachhead or defending a stronghold or whatever it might be the mission is, but they don't but the missions don't really feel like they're playing that way. Um it doesn't feel like the attacker's attacking or the defenders defending really, um other than like the defender bonus maybe. But you know, in 500 Wilds, I'm pretty sure the attacker goes first because that's the rules. Whereas in this it's chapter approved, so you just roll off, so you don't know. And to be fair, I think two of my games at least were one on the dice roll of who goes first based on how we deployed. And it would have been very different if they had gone uh the other way, I think.

SPEAKER_04 4:03:33

Um I would love I would like to see them do more um because they've got uh access to a plethora of different missions from the campaign packs they released this year. It does feel uh a bit a bit of a shame that they've just all now been ever all everything that came out this year in terms of campaign like narrative campaign books has just been like ushered into the covers to never be seen again.

SPEAKER_01 4:03:56

To be forgotten. Yeah, like they could have used or lent into some of that a bit more perhaps, but I guess maybe they want to go with the Dominatus uh stuff. Although ironically, the reason why they gave us the agenda deck is because they were saying, Oh, we yeah or the um why I got secondary missions is because they were like, Oh, we don't think you know, not everyone will get hold of it or be able to buy them. Because in a lot of places, like the chapter approved was out of stock unless you bought Armageddon. Oh, yeah. And and a few people were like, Oh, I've got these cards now, but I literally bought chapter approved, or I literally bought Dominatus for this weekend. Well, the the rules pack did say you should bring it.

SPEAKER_04 4:04:34

Yeah. And to bring both the rules pack literally says you should bring both uh both of the decks, and you literally didn't need the Dominatus deck at all. So it would be if I if hopefully no one went out of their way to buy that deck for the event because the rules pack said you did.

SPEAKER_01 4:04:51

Um yeah, I think I I one of at least one of my opponents uh did basically. I think I was like, oh, at least you can now play it, I guess. Um so uh yeah, I g I guess so. I think overall it was good though. It was a good weekend of playing games.

SPEAKER_04 4:05:09

Uh we haven't even talked about the most important thing that I mean that it if the someone will be talking about this for a long time, I imagine. And is that Spike? Yes. And you doubled up with.

SPEAKER_01 4:05:31

How well did he do at the event? Uh so he had um won his first four games. Um in the last game he failed to disclose if he won or not, but I did see him shake Nick's hand uh when he was recording his results. So I was sort of positive that he'd done quite well. Um and then he was like, oh well, you know, let's go downstairs and watch the ceremony uh for the awards.

SPEAKER_04 4:05:53

He he was very nervous that he didn't get he was very nervous all of day two because he'd had like an uh an unbroken wind streak, yeah, going into day two. And then he was a bit he was a bit ups uh slightly concerned andor uh uh upset that he hadn't that he didn't win it, he did he didn't get any kind of prizes when they were giving them out after the doing the debriefing.

SPEAKER_01 4:06:15

Yeah, and it was quite funny. I think at lunchtime he was getting you to work out the percentages of uh the number of other players that would have gone four and one, and if he wins five and oh, who else would have been five and oh, which is quite funny. Um but yeah, he didn't get any prizes upstairs. Uh but downstairs they were giving out I think the painting awards and uh for the grand narrative and the protagonist and antagonist award. Uh so one went to the Imperium, one went to uh a chaos player. Um and yeah, uh Spike won the Antagonist Award. No, sorry, Protag Protagonist Award, um, which I thought was very fitting because he's an Ultramarines player. Um so yeah, well done, Spike, uh, for winning that.

SPEAKER_04 4:06:59

That was uh because because they did them they did the like the the narrative debriefing where they gave all the prizes and that's mentioned. And then we all went downstairs for the overall ceremony.

SPEAKER_01 4:07:10

Whamma opening, yeah, ceremony. Which included the AOS and the 40k GTs, but the grand narrative one they did first actually, because I guess they're building up to the 40k one, which was the very last uh one. Um, so yeah, he got a cool trophy in a case, um, which yeah, it looked very nice. And so, yeah, the fact that he won that for his first like major event, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 4:07:34

No, it's very it's very it's incredibly well deserved, and I'm told it is pride of place on the mantelpiece at home and without having to explain why.

SPEAKER_01 4:07:45

Is it even more um of an achievement than his first newborn?

SPEAKER_04 4:07:50

No. I've I mean I'm I'm gonna say no, um, because logically he shouldn't feel that way. But his new his first newborn isn't gold plated.

SPEAKER_01 4:07:58

So No, exactly, and you know, that's why I'm okay about it. I thought what was interesting um is that Chr Chris, uh the guy who's around Grand Narrative, basically said these awards are going to the persons or the people that embraced the sort of the narrative and the theming uh the most, but I think actually they just gave it to the two players from each faction that went 5-0. As far as I'm although actually the Chaos guy didn't go 5-0, he went 4-1 because Spike played him in the final game and obviously lost to him. But I think he's the one that did the best overall um for his team. And I guess in theory, it's like they're the people that have contributed the most to their team in terms of uh winning games, which means like flipping the tables and things like that, um, which does make sense, but that's not necessarily the same as the person that embraced the narrative the most. Although, to be fair, you know. Spike did. Spike had you know us kneeling um at one point when we were declared either champions or for the doubles or whatever. Like at one point he was yeah, he he did sort of embrace the narrative despite the sort of lack of cosplay. And cosplay is not the be all and all.

SPEAKER_04 4:09:14

I I have heard I've heard tell he will cosplay at the next one.

SPEAKER_01 4:09:18

I mean I would as well. I think uh now I've sort of gauged the bar and what it's like, I'd be more inclined uh to do it. And I did think about doing it for this one, but I didn't want to do a half-hearted one. Although, shout out to a Gene Steed a cult player who did like a terrible buttons. He was a fantastic cosplay that was just you know cardboard that had been painted. It's like the sort of thing you would do as a kid, but sort of just works because it's so lo-fi, it looks really good.

SPEAKER_04 4:09:49

He was robbed, he should have won an award for that. Uh yeah, because he wore it the whole weekend. Yeah, it was like it was it was like the jeans of the like kind of mantle that the all the jeans to the cult um models wear, but he's uh made of cardboard and painted. It looked it looked it looked um rubbish but also cool, and he wore it the entire event. Uh when they s when they gave out prizes for best cosplays, I thought it was a I thought they robbed he was robbed. If you're listening to this, whoever you whoever your name was, um you were robbed, mate, and you should have got that. I that's what I think.

SPEAKER_01 4:10:22

Yeah, I kind of wanted to play him because he looked like he'd be a fun guy to play against, but I think he lost all of his games, so he probably wouldn't have enjoyed playing against Custodians.

SPEAKER_04 4:10:30

I was telling you who I wouldn't want to play against. There was the I don't know if they were admec or chaos, but he had what can best be described by me as a weird gimp mask on. He had this like face mask with like a claw thing uh in his mouth.

SPEAKER_01 4:10:47

Um I think that was uh did it say Garriff? I think he was um yeah, I think that was the Chaos Knights player, the one with the sort of the chainsaw.

SPEAKER_04 4:10:58

No, you're thinking that you're thinking of someone else. He had like a he had like a uh a mask like the guy from the one you're thinking of, he had like a gun with a little mini chainsaw on the end of it, and he had like a mask like um the guy from uh Mad Max um the the the new one. Fury Roads. Fury Road, where he's got with the bad guy and that. No, there was a guy who it was like some it was like some black face mark completely black with like a ring of spikes, like a like this.

SPEAKER_01 4:11:26

I wanna say that was maybe Ricky who had the weird Xenos thing um army because I don't know, I saw a few times in the group sayings, I was like, it weirded me out.

SPEAKER_04 4:11:37

Don't like that at all. Yeah, that's wouldn't want to play against I wouldn't want to play again, I wouldn't want to look across at that for an hour and a half.

unknown 4:11:43

No.

SPEAKER_01 4:11:44

I don't I don't think any I think a lot of the time they just wore it for the briefings like the masks and then took them off of the games. Um to be fair. Um so yeah, well done Spike for winning. That was very cool. Um overall, I'm sure we would both go back to do the grand narrative uh again. Uh would you cosplay is the question, Reggie.

SPEAKER_04 4:12:07

I considered it for Chaos Nights, but then I was like, what would I what would I wear? Um I don't know if I would take Chaos Knights again. Um I was I I was considering it it where when I was considering taking Dark Angels to dress to well, I say cosplay.

SPEAKER_05 4:12:21

Just wear a robe.

SPEAKER_04 4:12:22

I'll wear a purple dressing gown or a white dressing gown to Well, I would I would I'd probably I basically I would I'd kind of go as like a watcher in the dark kind of vibe.

SPEAKER_01 4:12:32

Carry a big book.

SPEAKER_04 4:12:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:12:33

Uh walk on walk on your knees, put put your knees in shoes and walk around.

SPEAKER_04 4:12:40

Maybe not that far. I think if you it'd be if if I was taking like spaceman was like guys like a space moon attendant or something, that'd be Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:12:48

I I liked the idea of uh just wearing a red robe and being like an Inquisitor and like you know, some boots and uh you know wear some carape sort of ch chest piece. I I love the idea of cosplaying as a Thunder Warrior and getting loads of sort of plastic medieval armour and spraying it gold or something, but even that feels like a lot of effort and a lot of stuff to wear uh for a whole yeah that's what I'm more that's what I'm more I would be more concerned about.

SPEAKER_04 4:13:12

I've got to wear this for the entire weekend.

SPEAKER_01 4:13:15

I w I want something practical that I can sort of sit down in and you know not be sweating so much for the whole time.

SPEAKER_04 4:13:21

Yeah, so I want because I as as much I I thought the the the guy in the orc um body like green body paint was really cool, but it was not quite so green by the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 4:13:30

Yes, I think he bought some sort of s to top himself up with. Um as you said, uh it was fading when he was as um playing games, I think. Um but yeah, I mean that was a good time. Um we are well over two hours of chatting with this, it might get edited down slightly. Um is there any sort of final thoughts that you want to say? Uh final thoughts.

SPEAKER_04 4:13:53

Here's what final thoughts to say. Restaurants close way too early in Newport. What's that about Newport? We got there the first night, it's like what was it, half eight or something? We started walking we started walking around trying to find someone that was open. Everywhere's closed, kitchens are closed. What was that going on?

SPEAKER_01 4:14:10

Um everything closes before nine, uh, and the game's finished at eight, so there wasn't much of a turnaround time.

SPEAKER_04 4:14:17

Yeah, so you were quite limited on where you could go to eat other than the hotel itself. There was a business, it was like a like a business part with some um fast food. Which was fast I'll say mid-fast options.

SPEAKER_01 4:14:30

Yeah, like a taxi ride away.

SPEAKER_04 4:14:32

Yeah, but we did we did we did go to a very nice Italian that um one of us found to go to. Yeah, well done, Richie. Well done. That was very good. Thank you, appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 4:14:39

Um yeah, I can't remember what it was called.

SPEAKER_04 4:14:42

I wouldn't be saying Fratelli's, I think it was called um in Newport. Really good. Really, really good food there. Um I had a good time.

SPEAKER_01 4:14:52

I liked that this has been not only a um a grand narrative review, it's also been a bit of a food restaurant uh review as well. Um and you know, lunches and stuff. Um yeah, uh yeah, props to the team for doing the grand narrative, it was good. I'll be sure to fill out the feedback form and give them my advice uh in terms of how to improve it. But for a first one, not bad. I definitely like to see it be bigger and sort of better um for the next one.

SPEAKER_04 4:15:21

Do we we have you did you talk about the shop in the section with Tim? Um I I'm not really like a huge amount. Like I was just saying, say I quite I like that they had a store there, so you could buy stuff, and each of the box each of our like gift boxes had a £10 voucher.

SPEAKER_01 4:15:38

We talked about that because Tim was disappointed with it.

SPEAKER_04 4:15:41

Um I thought it was quite nice, but then it was it was a cut slightly weird shop because nothing had a label on it, so you had no idea how much anything cost. That's true. Yeah, but also they didn't really have anything special. I think I might that might just be from my perspective, because I'm used to going to events at World Hammer World where they have everything. Whereas at this I felt like it would have been cooler if they had looks like t-shirts on display, but if they had like some special merch available other than because they had like, oh, here's the event miniatures. Well, I'd g I got them with my pack. So what am I gonna buy that? It would be I think it would be more interesting if they had like more interesting, rare stuff available or more event exclusive stuff.

SPEAKER_01 4:16:22

They did have stuff you know, a warlord or warhand titan for sale. They had some Forgeworld stuff if you wanted to splash out big for some reason. Um yeah, I sort of know what you mean. The lack of pricing didn't help because I had to go and ask someone what something costs, and they were trying to run it up. And I was like, no, no, I just tell me how much it is, first of all. Um because I don't want to do anything. I want to know if my voucher will be valid for this purchase, first of all, um, before anything else. Um but overall it was good. Although I like like we were saying, and I mentioned this in the Tim section where we talk about AOS, uh, there was a distinct lack of like new Necromanda stuff there, it seemed, even though Necromunda was out. And I don't know if I just missed it because it was in a different shelf, but uh they were promoting it in any way if it was there.

SPEAKER_04 4:17:13

It I felt like a missed opportunity to not have new Necromunda there in any capacity. Even they're not even demo tables or whatever. No like demo tables or anything. Well, I I can only assume that they like for security, they brought loads of stock from from somewhere and had that for all in the world, maybe, and then they put that out for sale. And if it wasn't there on the Thursday night when they set it up, it wasn't gonna be there for the rest of the weekend. But it did it did feel like a slight missed from my perspective, like a missed opportunity to not have the stuff that's just come out there or something more about that, because especially in between games it could have been it. Because they're like the hobby, the the hobby challenge, which looks like hobby challenge, which is good. But anyway, time is time. Great event. Look forward to the next one.

SPEAKER_01 4:17:59

Yeah, well, thanks very much, uh Richie, for joining us. Um, and yeah, thank you everyone for listening. Um, yeah, let's get on with the next part of the show. Transitional noise.

The Hobby Challenge

SPEAKER_01 4:18:15

So I wanted to talk about my time at the Newport Open over in Wales in the other sections of the podcast or in other videos. If you're watching this in a mini sode, uh there'll be separate videos you can check out. I was talking to both Tim and Richie about their times at the AOSGT and the Grand Narrative. And I came an extra day early. So I got to spend Friday doing my own thing, and I didn't actually expect there to be anything to do other than just to sort of maybe wander around the gaming halls and see people play their games. But it turns out there was, which was the hobby challenge. So, yeah, I'm going to talk about now my time doing the hobby challenge and what it was like, and revealing the miniature that I got to make as part of that hobby challenge. Uh, so the hobby challenge was basically a £50 entry to basically build and kitbash a completely random miniature. It cost £50, uh, but as part of it, uh I will quickly demonstrate. As part of the £50, you did actually get one of these, uh, which was a huge box full of um random bits and bobs, mostly um I politely describe it as tat. Uh, it includes stuff that I mostly don't need, so things like stickers, a book, which was actually quite useful, like line ruled uh book with a pen, uh, a bunch of other stuff. You also got access to uh a lanyard uh for when you were gaming, but you also got access to a £10 voucher. And if you register for either the Aegis Sigma or Grand Active or the 40k event, you also got one of these. Uh so I had two, basically. Um, if you want to see a full unboxing of that, you can head over to Patreon next week, uh, or maybe by the time this video is out. If it's a mini sode, uh it'll already be out. Uh, but yeah, I'm doing I've done a little unboxing and vlog of my time at Newport, which is going to be a Patreon-only video. So you can see that there. Uh, we talk about it also in more in-depth in my time with uh Tim and Richie in those segments of the podcast. Uh, within that was a £10 voucher though to spend in the shop. So I used my £10 voucher on the Hobby Challenge. I asked politely if that was okay. They said yes. Uh, so the hobby challenge cost me £40. It then gave me a second one of these, um, of which I could then use that £10 voucher in that one on something else, uh, which is what I did. Um, is that hacking the system? Possibly. I don't know. It seemed fine and they were cool with it. Um, but the reason why they give you one of those boxes is in the standard version, there is like a foam strip with lots of holes for you to put your paint um paint pops in, and there's also a water bottle holder as well. If you had the premium one, there's a collapsible uh water cup as well. But when you go to the hobby challenge, so you spend your £50, or in my case, £40, you get a golden wristband, uh, which I also have some white, hold on. Okay, maybe it's not golden, it is uh fluorescent uh yellow. Uh it says hobby challenge on it. So you get given that that's strapped to your arm. Uh, you can then go off to the corner of the uh convention hall where the hobby challenge is happening. Uh, you're greeted by several lovely staff members that will induct you into the hobby challenge and tell you what is going on. Basically, there is a narrative of there's a space Hulk, uh, and on it there's a signal that is making some kind of noise, and the space marines are investigating the signal, and they're attacking the space hulk. Try and reach for signal, and you know, maybe you have a space marines, or maybe you have orcs, but you are encouraged to create a diorama representing what is going on. Uh, there is a big pile of uh orcs and space marine characters that you can select from. So you do get as part of your £50 a whole miniature. Um, I selected uh orcs for a change, even though I obviously collect space marines. The vast majority of them I already own, uh, with the exception of the um Phobos librarian I thought was quite interesting and I was tempted to get. But in terms of going with the theme, I was like, oh, I'll go for this. Uh and yes, I was technically meant to have built this and assembled it then and there, uh, but I just didn't get time. It's worth noting now that the hobby challenge goes over the three days. So Friday, uh, which was only really gaming for people in the grand tournaments, uh, but I was taking part of the grand narrative, which was Saturday, Sunday. The hobby challenge goes over the three whole days. Uh, that's why you get wristband, so you can come back on the other days and continue the hobby challenge. But I knew I was just there for one day, so I didn't get to quite complete the hobby challenge as intended, uh, but I still got something quite interesting out of it, I thought. Uh yeah, so you get three days. You're meant to assemble something, uh diorama of some description, and then uh they will spray it for you, and then you can carry on painting it. And then there's a competition at the end. So I can't talk about the competition bit because I completely missed out on that because by that point I was taking part in the grand narrative. But honestly, some of the results were phenomenal. I'll talk about that maybe a bit more towards the end of the video. But yeah, you get to pick a hero or a villain, maybe. You get to pick a character model, you get access to the standard kind of gunky plastic glue, a mold line remover and clippers. No knives, obviously, for safety reasons, which was a little bit annoying because I have a ton of mold lines that need um kind of cleaning up on my model still. And in part, I think that was because I was trying to rush it. You also got access to a base. Now, without wanting to uh preview my model too much, um, you can see here a round oval base. You can get one of those or a large square um base, sort of like for a large monstrous creature in the old world. So you could have a square one. Their staff was sort of pushing you towards the square ones because it gave you a slightly larger footprint. Um, but because I, you know, play 40k and Asia Sigma, I thought a nice round thing would look better, so I went with that. And then you get access to a giant long table full of sprues, completely random sprues that they topped out throughout the course of the weekend. Now, I was chatting with some friends while the initial um, you know, I think it was like maybe 9:30 it started. There was a peop, loads of people huddled around. Uh, the staff member gave the big speech about the narrative. Uh, everyone grabbed their stuff, and there was a a sea, a big tidal wave of people rushing to the sprue table and literally just grabbing handfuls of stuff and taking it off to a hobby table to assemble. Um, at which point I was looking over, going, I kind of wanted to do the hobby challenge, but it feels like there's not going to be much left of decent sprues. Um, and I looked around and I was like, hmm, it feels like slim pickings. I spoke to them and they did say they would top up the sprues over the course of the weekend. So I went and paid my money and then joined like half an hour behind everyone else. But to be fair, I did get slightly shortchanged because all the decent sprues, the really good ones, um, were all taken. There was one person that built an entire Corvus Black Star, like an entire kit, uh, in addition to the other things that they were building, and they were just sort of sotting on the Corvus Black Star. Um, one person built an entire Leviathan dreadnought, uh, another person had a cool Age of Sigmar um ship um faction terrain. They were building that. I managed to score one piece of that that I found uh later on. And uh yeah, there were a lot of complete kits in that very first uh section that people just managed to get swaves of. Um and the whole point of the diorama is you are building up your from your base uh a scene of some kind, you're creating some terrain, and then you're filling that terrain with some models. Uh, but my problem is there were no sort of full sprues for models, and uh and then sometimes when they were giving you top-ups throughout the weekend, they were literally snapping sprues in half and sort of chucking them down. Um, but in doing so, it kind of meant I never had a full kit to assemble anything. I had you know half of the bodies of some Astra Militarum Krieg, um, and then I managed to maybe get um some Goliath gangers, and I think I had most of like for a couple, but yeah, I I I really struggled with um getting some decent sprues uh to build characters, which is ultimately why I sort of decided to just opt for building a cool terrain piece with the time that I had. If I had the other two days, maybe day two, I would have had access to some better um sort of character infantry sprues to go alongside my orc um war boss uh in mega armor. Um so uh yeah, that bit was disappointing, uh, but they did do top-ups, and some of it was thematic. So at one point, uh the guy stood up on a stool and was like, uh, you know, the space marines are coming, drop ships are landing. Uh, and basically they gave you loads of sprues for drop pods and I think terminators and then some elite uh space marines, or maybe the elite space means came later with a second sort of narrative drop. Um, so there were uh some really cool sprues. There was the uh kind of company command squad for space marines that I saw floating around. Uh but again, as soon as that happened, everyone ran to the tables, and I sort of got up dawdled along. Some people were just busy hobbying, but it's like, oh, I wanted to see what the sprues were. And uh yeah, I couldn't get in there. And by the time I did, um, you know, the locusts had left, and uh there wasn't uh much else uh left of interest other than the generic sprues. So that was a little bit frustrating. Uh, once again, you've got to be pretty quick on these things. Maybe I just needed to be a bit more cutthroat, to be fair. Um, and throughout the day, they're coming along, checking on you, asking you what you're doing. Uh, I can't remember his name, but one of the guys is on uh Warhammer TV. Um, I think he's one of the painters. Uh so he was there getting involved, which was nice to see. Um, yeah, they would come around and ask, but they would also make sure to put sprues back. They were very keen for you to not be hoarding stuff, which makes sense because a lot of these sprues are really good. They would uh basically say, the sooner you put sprues back, the sooner we will put new sprues out, um, which was good. Uh, however, some people did hoard a lot of sprues. Uh, one person who did an amazing orc kind of diorama. I mean, the the the speed that some people built their kits was phenomenal. I had spent an entire day just building a very kind of intricate terrain piece. Other people by that point had built uh a full diorama and were practically finished painting it by the end of the day. Uh it obviously it sort of was like a 12 hours in total because the hall closed around nine, if I recall, or maybe eight. I think it closed at eight. Um, and yeah, I was kind of hobbying until then because uh Tim and Dan were doing the AOS GT, so they were gaming, so I was sort of waiting around uh for them at that point. And yeah, some people had completely kind of finished by that point, uh, which was quite impressive. Uh yeah, and there was this lady, she was doing this big um, it was a bit of Necromonda terrain. There was a lot of the Ash waste Necromonda terrain being used by everyone because that was the predominant kind of generic scenery sprues that were going around. Um, she was doing that and then had like this big sort of squig-off head um or kill rig sort of monster bursting through. Very impressive. Uh, but what I did notice is she was using sprues and then sticking them in a big bag. And I was like, oh, are people taking sprues home with them? Is that that how this goes? Uh I wasn't sure. Um, but it turns out no, at the end of the day, she put all the sprues back um onto the table. And it's like, okay, cool. That actually meant uh for everyone else, we didn't get access to any of those sprues. And so some people did hoard stuff, which was a bit unfortunate. You know, no shade to them, maybe they didn't realise. Um but the staff were going around for most people saying, please put sprues back. Um so the end of the day, I did a bit of a sweep sort of last minute and did sort of manage to find some quite interesting sprues that I could quickly clip some bits off of uh to use on my kit. Uh yeah, there were some bits where it was like the the the Goliaths and the um uh that's where I sort of noticed the Necromonda Gang stuff was uh uh people would clearly use that. So I was like, oh, there's a few little bits here and there that I could use. Um so that was kind of cool. Uh yeah, phenomenal what people were building. Uh it was very interesting. Uh to me, it for £50 was completely worth it. Um I got to build a terrain piece, uh, which I guess I will reveal now. Um, because like I said, I didn't get a chance to um assemble him. Uh again, noting the downside before I do the reveal, um, there's no instructions for anything. You get sprues and you're just meant to kit bash stuff. Um, but if you wanted to assemble something correctly, um one kid I saw doing the Leviathan dreadnought, he was well, it was a redemptive dreadnought or Leviathon, it was one of the two. Um he was basically looking up the instructions online um uh to do that. And um so I guess the inspiration is just stick stuff down, don't worry about it being correct. And that's what I was trying to do. And normally I'm very meticulous and slow builder. Uh this would normally take me about a month to do, uh, but it was fantastic having access to a bunch of sprues that I didn't have. Uh, creativity off the mark was uh a real struggle because you've got a blank base and some random bits, and you're like, none of this really fits together, none of it goes. Um, but I wanted some kind of multi-level platform, basically. I wanted a bit of height to the model, I didn't want to be flat uh on the ground. Um, and I had like a piece of a drop pod, uh, a piece from the Aegis defense line, and a piece from the Ash waste hab blocks, uh, which formed the basis of the rest of my kit. So, yeah, here is uh my uh kitbash basically that I created. It was sort of like a kind of Necromanda-esque hab block. Uh originally I had the idea that the the Ork would be in here fighting a bunch of people, sort of trying to invade his home, I guess. Um, but you can see down here you've got the drop pod piece upside down, uh, then you've got the Aegis defense line up here, and then you've got sort of Hab block uh flooring, and then some of the walls. Uh and I'll switch camera modes shortly um to uh give you a bit more of a tour uh of what's going on with this. That's the model that I uh got to create. Um, but yeah, I was focused mostly on clipping stuff off, sticking it down, not worrying about mold lines and cleaning them up too much. Um, although some I did, but other times I'm like, I'll just stick it down. I don't have much time. Um, I want to create something interesting. Um, and yeah, so a lot of it was bulking out with shape, and then a lot of my time was spent detailing the insides um and finding interesting things to add on to it to tell a bit of narrative and and tell a bit of uh story. Uh it was disappointing we didn't have access to a knife because that had been really useful. There were times I was shaving things down and trying to turn something into something else uh to make it work. Uh, and yeah, I just didn't really have the tools I would normally use. Uh there was no super glue as well. Uh so this kit is, as you can see, it's quite spindly. Um, there's like two main sort of um poles forming the foundations. This piece here is stuck on via hopes and dreams. Um, there's basically two pieces uh holding it onto the side, and then obviously I've got a cable thing that also I guess helps support it, but that's just all plastic glue. Um, so I need to put some super glue down to try and strengthen some of those supports. Uh surprisingly, I've been using Tamiya Extra Thin Cement for a long time now. I haven't used the Games Workshop one, and I almost forgot how good it is. It's like this industrial strength, thick plastic glue, and it does sort of weld the pieces together in a way that I think is actually a lot stronger than uh Tamiya Extra thing. So um, yeah, I think I've got some somewhere, and maybe I need to use it for these like much larger uh constructions. Obviously, for things like infantry, the Tammy Extra thing uh is really good. Um, but yeah, I was surprised that the regular GW glue was pretty good. Uh the clippers um I've used before and I thought were very good. Uh this time around, maybe um it was this way beforehand. Maybe I had done it. Um, but after a while I noticed the clippers uh weren't very good uh and were a bit misshapen, and that might have been because I was just clipping some very thick bits of plastic um to cut them to shape uh because I don't have like a hacks or anything. So maybe I broke the clippers uh games workshop. Um but maybe they were like that and I didn't quite clock. Um I then went back and swapped them over for another pair, and I noticed all of them being slightly bent at the end. So um yeah, the hobby challenge, uh you're lacking in some tools, and yeah, the clippers aren't quite good enough for uh cutting big bits of sprues or big bits of plastic, um, especially when you know if you wanted to cut up a you know a floor tile or something like that. Uh yeah, but overall, a really fun experience. I'd highly recommend it personally. Uh I think we're doing one of the I think it's Epsom maybe, one of the events um that they're doing, one of the opens in November. I'm hoping to do. I'm quite tempted to actually not do the AOS GT, which everyone else wants to do, and just do the hobby challenge again. And if I had the chance, I would have happily paid £50 every single day, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, to make a cool terrain piece or or make something. And like I said, I ran out of time, so I didn't get to make it the diorama that it was meant to be. Um, but I was all happy with just this, and it has so many interesting and unique, cool bits on it. Um that I could not make this at home. Uh so for me, for this to cost £50 or £40 with a discount code um was phenomenal. Like this is totally worth it, basically. Um because I don't have these sprues. Like to try and even buy all of these bits off of someone like bits and kits or even like eBay would cost way more than than £50. So for me, uh the price for omission was worth it. Obviously, you couldn't just you know take a load of stuff back with you, but they did sort of say um pretty much you could as long as it was attached to the base, they were happy for you to take it. So, likewise, the guy that built the Corvus Black Star, I think, was um gonna be stuck down to another bit of a diorama later on, but potentially he could have you know just taken it off afterwards and ran it as a Corvus Blackstar. Um, you know, well done him. Uh so yeah, uh I think there is an element where you can get your money's worth and build some full kits if you're lucky. That's not really the intention. Um, and like I said, when they were giving us the sprues, there they were at times just like folding them in two to chuck onto the table, which I don't understand quite why they were doing. I think it's to stop you just being able to assemble a full kit. Um, but in doing so, sometimes you know, the uh a really interesting bit I noticed was damaged, and I was like, oh, I really wanted that bit, but it's now bent um and misshapen beyond all use. Uh that's a shame. Uh, and then other times you're like, uh, this is really cool, uh, but I can't find the corresponding part that I need uh to assemble the whole thing because they've clipped it, they've they've split the sprue in half. Um, especially when it came to uh building like the hab block, uh, this pole here, uh, and like the there was like an uh a male and female connector to it. Um, I really struggled uh to find the corresponding part. So uh you've got to just sort of make do. And I yeah, I spent ages just the initial setup trying to work out what I wanted for a layout, these like platform ideas, and then just spent ages looking for parts not I could use to assemble to get some height, and then something that could connect to another thing to make it work. So, yeah, I I think that's all I can say overall on the hobby challenge. Let's switch cameras. Uh, I'll do a bit more of a deep dive into the actual kit itself and where I think parts came from, um, and sort of talk you through the diorama itself. So I've switched cameras. Sorry if you're listening along on the podcast in the classic sense because this is going to be a bit more visual uh medium. So head over to the YouTube channel if you want to watch along, which might be a bit easier. Uh so I'm basically just going to describe the model, uh, what I've done and where some of the pieces are from and sort of my general thoughts and processes as I've gone about it. I also need to apologise for my somewhat messy desk in the background. Uh, this model is so big, it's actually really difficult to film um without it showing a load of the the the background, basically. Uh, if anyone's got any tips on how I could better improve this, please do uh just let me know. Uh yeah, so we've got uh the base, uh of which I mentioned there's a upside-down bottom of a drop pod, uh, which I had to shave away loads of the bottom to get that to sit flush. And likewise on the other sort of platform, I've got a an another sort of piece from Ash Ways. You can see where I've clipped off some of I think it was like sort of large like piping that went all the way around. Uh, I didn't like that. So I clipped that off, and you can see where the stress of the plastic's been discolored. So I probably do need to uh file that down or add in some kind of rivet detail. Uh, likewise at the top here I've got a similar thing where there was again just a bar going along, and I didn't like that design. So clip those off, probably need to tidy that up in some fashion. Uh, the larger platform was much easier to mount because I believe all of this was from the Ashwase kit uh to mount the bottom of the platform. The smaller platform, which is using uh a base plate from the Aegis defense line, this is just a mash of stuff that I used to get the right height. You can see here this awful like sort of score cut line where I just had to try and trim things to make them fit. Part of it, like the column, was from Ash Ways. Uh, no idea what the other bits are. I think this uh underpiece, which you can just about see here, uh, is from like an orc tank, I believe. And again, it was just trying to get things to fit and be the right height. This is all a bit fragile, so I think this is all gonna need reinforcing with some super glue, and likewise with this uh plate with the drop pod that you can see isn't even fully glued down properly, so that all needs fixing. Yeah, so the main construction was this smaller platform, which is the Agus Defence Iron, the larger platform, which is made from the ash waste-like flooring, so that's sort of standard. You can see I've done a ladder going directly to the main platform. I think in an ideal world it would actually be going to the mini platform, uh, but it just wasn't the right height. And because of the dreadnought drop pod uh piece being a different shape, I couldn't fit the ladder going down directly because it would be clashing with the edges of the drop pod. So it's odd that you go up to the main platform, like the home, uh, rather than the entrance way, is the way I've been thinking about it. But maybe this front platform is a bit more of like an observatory uh or sort of lookout platform, or maybe it's where you know people come and go via small craft or something like that. Maybe there's a different excuse for it. So those were the two main features. Once I had got that down, I added in the walls, which is again ash wastes with these uh arched uh doorways on each uh facing. Uh one is complete and the other two are half open. In an ideal world, again, I probably would have cut these flat, and ideally on this side, on the right hand side, I would like to cut that arch off purely because there's more access to this kind of observatory lookout tower. Uh, but I didn't mind it on the left hand side. I've managed to find, I think it was from Cities of Sigma, this kind of arch wooden piece, which I've managed to kind of fill in. So it still has this kind of archway symmetry lining up with the back piece. And originally this was more of a diorama. And I loved the idea of this you're sort of looking at it specifically from one angle. So I wanted to give the illusion that there was something else there. So I created this doorway. The door, I think, um, yeah, I'm not sure what kit it came from, but I had to meticulously actually cut it out. So it could have been uh Sectum Mechanicus, could have been Ash Ways. Um, had to cut that piece out and find a suitable plane backing to mount it to, which I did, uh which had its own sort of rivet details in, so I stuck that down. If we look round the back, you can see that back piece here uh has some detail on, but it's quite ugly, it sort of just stuck on. And originally I didn't really care about that too much because it was a diorama, but then as it evolved, I decided to make it sort of terrain feature in its own right, so I decided to add all this extra kind of gubbins detail to the back, which I'll I'll go into in a little bit more uh shortly, um, which is why it has these rough cuts because you know I'm using clippers, I've got to cut this out, and then I sort of sometimes I was literally scoring, especially on this side. I think I was scoring with the clipper end so I could try and snap the plastic to get a bit more of a flush cut than just trying to cut into thick plastic, which is quite difficult. So, again, this probably needs tidying up, hiding a little bit more, and blending with the main ash waste wall, um, which I will hopefully do. But it gives the illusion from the front of a door that is going somewhere. I guess maybe in this case, perhaps it's just like a safe, um, which is why there is no back. Uh, and then the handle again can't remember where that came from, but I added that on. I don't think it was designed for that piece, but it was just sort of a happy coincidence. Then I started fleshing out some of the detail, such as this piping conduits here, just seem to happily fit in, so I stuck that down. Uh, likewise, there's a little control screen there, and then on the other side, you've got some sort of piping, like large generator, added some extra grews to that. Uh, this piece I was really happy with. These are the cannonballs from the cogfort. There's a few elements of the cogfort in here, um, and I wanted to really use it somewhere. Ideally, I wanted maybe one of these platforms to have the cannon on it itself, but I only had half of the cannon, so I never got to fully use uh that piece, sadly. Uh, but I just wanted to flesh out this room and give it some life. Um, this piece in the middle, the bottom piece, was from the ash waste and was meant to be uh stuck down there, and I think because you can increase the column going upwards. Uh, but then I found this little uh piece here. I think it might have been from a I want to say it was Caradon Overlords or maybe uh dwarfs uh kit. Can't quite remember. Um, but I stuck that in, and now it feels like it's maybe display panels, some kind of maybe generator, power generator for the entire hablock. I thought that was a good bit of detail. And then some extra details I did is um I took one of the railings and I cut it in half and attached it either side of the doorway to give it a little corridor and a bit of a focal point. And then I also found from the Adeptus Arbeit's uh kit uh from like the loudspeaker floating drone, like the servitor, I found these little speakers that I attached above the door. So it feels very like secure. Maybe this is an alarm system for the actual doorway itself. Uh and then I kind of went on and constructed the right-hand side, but I did go back to detail a bit more of the inside and top of the wall. So let's talk about that now. Um, these little bits of nodules here, uh a grav plates from I think it was the repulsor or one version of one of the grav tanks from Space Marines. Basically, I wanted some way of like making this top bit and um feel a bit more finished, and I had the roof, but it didn't really fit very well. I don't know if I was missing pieces, but the way it stuck on just looked odd and it sort of enclosed the uh the terrain piece a bit too much, uh, or even if it was a diorama, it looked a bit too enclosed with a roof. So I tried to add on elements that made it feel like it was constructed, all giving hints that maybe there's a roof, but we're just not visually showing it, so you can look into the piece a bit more. Uh, likewise, I had some more railings that I attach to the very ends on both sides here and here, which just gives the illusion of some like rebar, um, some like internal structure, just to help blend those edges, give it a bit more of a constructed look. Uh, but like I said, this one on the right-hand side where that archway is, in an ideal world, I'd probably cut off some of that so I have greater access to the watchtower. So the watchtower, again, uh I had this idea of lots of multiple levels, um, lots of different depths. And we do have that. Uh, so we've got the lower platform, the main platform, and then higher up from that is the watchtower, and then slightly lower down from that is what I'm calling uh you know the toilet space. Um, not sure what it's really meant to be uh right now. In a way, maybe it would be enclosed, but again, it's just a different level, and we can look at that in a bit more shortly. But in terms of the watchtower, I had this idea, I had this piece uh which I think is from uh the cogfort. I'm not 100% sure. Likewise the roof, but I've looked at some of the cogfort images and I couldn't see the roof on the cogfort itself, unless it's an alternative build. I'm not entirely sure. But I like the idea that the piece was strutting out and upwards, so I just had to find a way to attach it. I think this is more ash waste pieces, which I just cut and kind of glued it in place, and then that wasn't enough to support it, so I reinforced it with some more uh ash waste pieces and like kind of girder bits. Let's see if you can see that on the camera. So again, no super glue, just plastic glue, a lot of patience to try and make it fit and work. Like I said, stuck together via hopes and prayers, uh, and it has reasonably been secure. Originally I had a piece up here holding this in, but I didn't like it, uh, so I removed that. Uh, then later on, I found the cable, which I really liked again from Ash Ways, uh, to reinforce this piece. Uh, and if I could get hold of a second cable, I would do it on this side as well, going down to the left-hand side down here, uh, but I don't have one. If anyone has a cable that they'd like to send me, uh, hit me up in the comments or on my Instagram. So I created that. Um, there was a big hole here which I had to fill in, and I just found something roughly to shape uh that I could just make work. Again, it looks very rough and really rubbish at this stage. And maybe I don't need to care so much. Once some paint's on, it'll probably be fine. But there are a lot of visible gaps, a lot of sort of visible edges. I think I would like to go in with maybe some extra plasticard, um, sort of bent at an angle just to kind of cover the gaps, sort of hide the edges a little bit. I think I would like to do uh this piece here is some armor panelling from uh it is some of the um frontieris terrain. Um, when you have the full walls, the like the full Hablock uh from Frontieris. Uh that's one of them. Uh potentially I will add that to the other side as well, because I did keep one of those spare to place here, but I feel like I might need some visible space to actually uh fit models up there. Uh so maybe I'll leave it off for now. And I don't necessarily mind it being a bit asymmetrical, so I'm not too sure about that. And again, this is a ladder uh that I've cut up to then support the roof, which was very good. Um, and then the top, if I zoom in slightly, it's a bit difficult to see. Um, this piece was my original antennae going up, but then that's since snapped off. So that piece is missing. So I need to try and dig that out of the bag I was storing this in when I was uh bringing it home to try and find that. Uh this one though was from the admec, I think Scorpus destroyer. Uh and then I just it was already designed at an angle, uh, but I just shaved it a little bit more so it could fit on and be vertically upright. So I like the idea that there were these two antennas because this is like a sort of lookout warning station. Um, so yeah, I had two, I need to fix one of them. Uh, and then I found the Sigmar Bell, which I think is just from a terrain kit, and I liked the idea that there's like a warning system. So I stuck the bell on. Uh, then later on, I found this kind of cool little sort of radar piece, um, like satellite dish. Uh, the front of it is from just the very middle of a sprue. So this isn't actually an actual piece, it's just like um where the injection plastic goes into the sprue itself, which is why it looks sort of damaged. But I think once that's painted up, um, I think that would look really cool as a satellite dish. And then there was another random mounting. Again, it doesn't all quite fit together, but I made it work uh and made it stick on. So that worked. So you got this idea here's a lookout. There's some sensor dishes uh trying to detect things. If something goes wrong, someone can ring the bell. Um, one of the other hobbyists gave me this lantern piece. She sort of came up to me or um towards the end of the Friday and just said, Oh, I think this might suit your little, I think she called it like little house or something. Um, and I was like, Oh, thanks very much. And then I realized it could, I was sort of looking where I could put it on the model and it would uh fit in this little hole here. So I just sort of um trimmed down as much as possible the ends so it could fit in, hopefully. Um, and again, lots of plastic glue just sort of melting it all together uh made it work and it fits in quite well. If I look uh sideways on, it's not quite vertically down, it's slightly off. Again, this is sort of thing I would have made sure I didn't uh make that mistake when if I was building at home, but because I was sort of just rushing to try and get everything done, uh it's yeah, slightly off to one side. So I might try and fix that um or just have the narrative that there's some wind uh gusting it to uh one side. Uh likewise I added on some extra detail here. Uh I think this was like a flamery um uh backpack detail from maybe a guardsman perhaps um or some terrain. So I added that on as well just to flesh out some of the things. And like with all of it, it's all about detailing and gribblies um to try and make it feel a bit more lived in and realistic. Uh so from the front piece, I've got these two little like vehicle lamps. There's another like sensor, which probably comes from like a space marine, um, some some railings uh felt like that fitted in nicely, so I added that on. If I had more of those railings, I would love to sort of decorate the whole thing in railings, but I only had the one, and I feel like that kind of works. Uh this piece here, I can't remember what it was from, uh, but it was one of the very last pieces I stuck on before I ran out of time. Um, again, it just sort of looks like uh it fits in there and it just adds some extra detail and some asymmetry. I don't want this thing to look symmetrical. I think symmetry is the sort of the death of design uh when it comes to especially kits, especially sort of a necromoned terrain piece, which is sort of what I had in the back of my mind uh when I was creating this. Um and I just start sort of stuck it down there and I thought it looked good. Uh as you can see with the stairs, they're a bit wobbly, they don't quite exactly line up. I've got the Astra Militarum symbol there, which I kind of want to cover up because I would like this to be usable in maybe other systems, other games. So I want it to be a bit more agnostic, so I might hide any kind of imperial uh symbols. So I'll probably uh cover that up with like some dirt and sand uh to sort of blend it in a bit more. Uh likewise, you can just see here I had some um handlebars. Again, I think it was from maybe like the Honor Dujune crawler or the Scorpex destroyer, um, which I just added to the underside, uh, like grab handles. Um and again, it's just to give this feeling of like hanging debris, uh detritus, and again, just detail, um not just on the top, but also on the bottom. So when you're looking at it from different angles, I had some ropes, which again I think was maybe from the cogforts. Um maybe it was from something else, I'm not sure. Um, but yeah, I just use them and I cut them to sides and um just had them hanging down again just to give you the feeling that this thing's being tethered down. Uh, you know, it's not giving really any structural support, but it could do a little bit. This one's not fully glued down, so I need to fix that one. Um, and I only had two. If I had more, I might have used more. This one's yeah, quite attached, so that's good. Um, so yeah, all of those elements just doing some world building and also detailing. Uh, then it came to one of the last things I did was this sort of what I'm calling the you know the external toilet, but maybe it's like an escape hatch. I liked the idea that um there was a little lever that I could put in there. Um I can't remember what this basket was from, actually, now come to think of it. Um but I've added on some extra bits. So again, this piece here, I think, is the same sort of radar dish uh that we see up here uh at the back. So you can see that's the same piece, uh reused twice. So I'm pretty sure that's some kind of satellite dish. Uh, and then I'm just sort of focusing on the back because I liked the detailing uh of it. And then, yeah, this is from the Escher Cutter, uh that's like part of the engine block. So I just stuck that on there, and then there was another little greble that I stuck on that one. Anywhere there's like a sort of overly flat space, I wanted to fill it with something else. Uh, likewise I added on the archway here, and then I had another bit of detail which I added on because the arch ended there, so I needed something to fill that gap to get the right height to sort of maintain that shape. And likewise I had this cool little almost like a sort of a weather vein or uh my post is ready to collect sort of sign that can flip back and forth. Maybe the toilet's in use, who knows? Uh yeah, so I just had that in and I sort of stuck it there, probably upside down. Um, likewise I had a little lamp again because this is like a lookout thing, you might want to see what's into the distance, and you've got these lights also facing in that direction as well. Maybe this is a signal lamp, maybe that's what this is for. Maybe you are maybe you are down here pulling this lever back and forth to operate the signal lamp to send a warning message to someone else that someone is coming from the watchtower that you've spotted. Uh so maybe that's what this uh really is, some kind of signal messaging uh area of this platform. Um but yeah, I like the idea of it. I like the idea you had to go sort of go and sit down in it. It wasn't on the same level. Again, multiple stories, multiple levels, everything sort of asymmetrical and sort of higgwidy-piggwidy for want of a better um British turn of phrase. And then it came to, like I said, detailing the back section. And originally it was a diorama, so I didn't really care about the back, but then later on, I sort of just wanted to fill it up and sort of turn it into a standalone terrain piece that you could look at 360. Um, so there's a engine piece, I think, from one of the orc drag races, potentially, some other bits of uh detailing, some like little grabby bits from um I think the more Ashway Snecromunda stuff, which has been really versatile and really useful in this uh kit. I think ideally I would like to maybe get a pole or maybe some kind of flag to be waving. Um, I think that would look really good, and also add a bit of texture, like fabric, not just all metallic. I think that would be good. Um, then I've got a kind of heatsink here, which I wanted to add on because I thought that was a cool piece, and again wanted to sort of bulk out this sort of back piece and hide as much as possible this like fake back where the doorway is. Uh so I wanted to add in some extra detail to it. Um, this piece was added on, the heatsink was added on. These two, which now look a bit more like a fuel tank of some kind, was actually two orc uh bombs from I think the jet, the the scrapjet. Um, and I uh assembled them, carefully cut them as much as I could with only just uh clippers, um, and then obliterated it with the mold line remover to scrape it down to be smooth, so I could then glue the two pieces together to create this uh like fuel tank, which I'm I'm most pleased about. That was quite a nice idea that I had. And again, the actual mountings fitted on quite well because there's a few little mounting points for the bombs, and it just was a bit of a happy coincidence that it fitted all neatly into that back piece. So that was a cool little element. And here you can see those grab plates at the top, just adding in some extra detail to that roof. I feel like here and here, maybe like these extra sort of blank top bits, maybe need some extra detailing. Wherever it's potentially just rivets and bolts, I think would be a good shout. And there's something I'll probably add on when I get some time. Uh, then there's a sort of astromilitarum uh stowage uh piece. I'm not too precious about leaving that Imperial Aquila on because it's so small. I don't mind it as detailing. Um, whereas on the flooring is obviously a bit bigger. Uh and then this piece, uh I can't remember where that was from. I think maybe uh one of the space marine uh vehicles, perhaps. Um I think it's probably upside down, and I just bolted it on again, just to fill out that detail. Obviously, if you look from the side, you can maybe see some gaps and edges. It's not really the end of the world. I've got some putty that I could probably fill in there just to blend it in a bit more if I wanted. Um, but I think overall it worked uh quite well. And it's just all about sorting through loads and loads of bits, finding something that fits, often going back to the sprue table, spending ages just milling around, looking occasionally. Um was it? I did borrow a few pieces from the guy next to me. It was uh I think it was around here. There were some bits I needed to reinforce. There was a strip here, uh, I think actually it was this these strips here. Uh, they were from um a sprue. I believe these are the sides when you are doing an old world movement tray. You can assemble the movement trays to a variety of sizes. Um, you can like cut down the main base plate to whatever sort of size of uh formation that you want for your unit, and then you cut the sides to size. Uh and basically I noticed I was trying to hold this. On and it wasn't just gluing in place. I needed some extra reinforcement. The guy next to me, I noticed he had them, so I sort of politely asked, Oh, do you need them? Can I borrow them? Um, and he was more happy to supply them. Uh and I only needed two. In fact, this one actually at the top is just some spare sprue. Like you can see there, that's just a piece of sprue that I cut to size just to reinforce on, because uh this middle piece didn't have quite enough contact points, but I could stick this sprue piece to that piece, and then that gave me a better contact point up top. So some of it is involving just actual sprue from uh you know leftover uh bits, um, just to try and bulk out some of the connection points. I can't remember if I did that at all here. I don't think I uh yeah, I did there as well. You can see a couple of little snippets uh just in there on both sides. I needed to create a bit more of a ledge for this piece to sit into, basically. And you can see some sort of ugly pipe work that sort of ends to nowhere. Uh again, I probably want to add some detail there, maybe to blend it with this piece a bit more or give a bit more storytelling. Um ideally the piping would sort of bend into the piece so it actually goes into it, but yeah, I'm not sure how I can get away with that. So maybe I'll create a little box for the pipe to go into would be probably a better shout, I think. Which you know I could just make from green stuff or plastic hard or something. Um and yeah, that's a nice bit of detailing you can sort of see inside into the engine uh piece. And there's like a little ledger, so there's a lot of detailing here that just works in and of itself and doesn't need more doing to it. Um, where there are elements where there's like you know, these bits, I could maybe put some lights in there or candles, or I could add something else into it because it definitely looks a bit plain. But I think once it's painted up and weathered, you probably wouldn't notice. Um so yeah, that is my hobby challenge final, I guess, terrain piece, or slash diorama without the the miniatures. Um, it definitely has a bit of tidying up uh to do. Um, like especially here, you can see the mold lines and things like that. And it just definitely needs a few bits like this gluing back down. Um, this piece needs reinforcing. Uh, maybe I need to either hide that piece or hide at least the fact that you can see inside it. Maybe I just also need to not be so precious. Likewise, you can see it's a bit wonky and things like that. Um, but I think it was a great experiment to just get stuff done, just stick stuff together, not worry too much about uh how seamlessly blended it is, or about the mold lines, or does it look a bit ugly? Um, and just the speed of it was phenomenal getting this done. And like I said, um there were many people that got something as big as this built with even more detail on and probably got it painted or started painting it by the same time I was um doing this one. I spent way more time adding in all these little Greebly bits, trying to find the right pieces to tell a bit of a story, set the scene. I think most people just got the major elements done and shoved it all down. Um but they th those are all phenomenal as well. So yeah, uh at the end of the day, I'm really happy with how it um you know got done. I think I'm gonna sort of add sand and rocks to the base to sort of blend it all in, or maybe just loads of like junk and rubble so it could fit maybe more on a necromancer board. Um, but I wouldn't mind it being in a sort of a deserty setting for a sort of an ash waste uh sort of vibe. I think both uh would work. Uh really pleased with how it came about. Uh I feel like I've I've rambled on for far too long uh now. And if you would like to win one of these boxes that I was talking about during this event, uh filled with goodies or tat, up to you to decide. But there is a lot of stuff in there. Uh, you can win one of these by heading over to my Patreon because I got a whole one spare, minus the £10 gift voucher, which is only eligible at the uh Newport event. It wouldn't have been available to use on the Warhammer World website, for example. So I haven't done you out of one. Uh but yeah, I'm gonna give one away over on my Patreon. And if you also want a full unboxing of one of these, that is also on the Patreon as part of Transitional Noise. Um, if you're watching on the Lookout Ser podcast, that will be in a week's time. But probably by the time this comes out as a mini sode, uh that video will be up, I would assume. Um, so yeah, or keep an eye out for it at the very least. So, yeah, that was my brief look at my hobby challenge terrain piece, I guess. Uh let me know what you would have created uh down in the comments or drop me a message uh and let me know what you think of a hobby challenge in general. I guess I would highly recommend it. It was probably the most fun I had over the weekend and sort of most value for money, I think, out of everything that was on offer. Obviously, I enjoyed the grand narrative, but that just felt so much more satisfying and it was a thing that I could take home with me and I can play in future games. Uh whereas the grand narrative, fun as it was, just leaves me with lovely memories. Thanks for watching. We will now get on with the rest of the show. Transitional noise.

5 Star Review

SPEAKER_01 5:14:12

Time for the five-star review, and I think I've run out of official five stars from the various places of iTunes and Audible. Uh, but there are actually a few over on YouTube, uh, so I'm gonna go with those. Uh this one is from Odin Strand 8755, and this comes from episode 243 over on YouTube. Five-star review. I have been listening to Lookout Sir since pre-COVID, and I'm happy to say that this podcast is as much of my hobby as painting and gaming is. The enthusiasm for the hobby and passion for details, be it colour markings on Kriegsman or helmet designs on space marines, is just what makes this podcast one of the best of its kind. I was apprehensive when Phil was left running the show on his own, but I'm happy to admit I was wrong. The video format has become my preferred way to enjoy the show. Keep up the good work. Uh well, yeah, thank you, Odin Strand 8755. I'm glad to have dispelled your worries about doing the show on my own. Obviously, I'm now joined by Tim and Richie on occasion, which really helps and also allows us to have a bit more of a conversation and isn't just me talking. I guess the video format, I'm glad people are enjoying. I put a lot of time and effort into that, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in the outro, but I'm glad you're enjoying it, and that sort of works a little bit easier when it's just me on my own talking to a camera, I think, uh in video format than just listening along in podcasts, where I think having several people chat away uh also works really well. So, yeah, thank you very much for your five-star review. Greatly appreciate it. Uh, and if you too would like to be like Odin Strand, 8755, you too can leave a five-star review on iTunes, on Audible. You can uh leave a five stars, I think, on Spotify, but you can't leave a message, so obviously I can't read those out. Um, I'm only going to read out five stars on YouTube if they're on the Lookout Sur video uh podcast episodes themselves, not the I don't really want to do it for mini sodes, and I think there was someone that left one over on my Beyond the Tabletop uh and then I lost it and I couldn't find the comment again. So again, I'm not going to read those out. Um so yeah, try and put them on the actual Lookout Sur episodes themselves and not the mini sodes, uh, because the mini sod people won't get to listen to the five-star review, so it'd probably just be confusing for them because they're they're two separate things. Uh, if you would like to support the show in other ways, there's a few ways that you can go about it. One, spread the word, be an evangelical prophet for Lookout Sur. Tell your friends to give it a listen, send them the podcast, show them some Lookout Sur videos, whether that's a mini sode or the actual full Lookout Sur podcast, whichever it might be. Like the video, subscribe, subscribe on YouTube, subscribe to the RSS feed for the actual podcast itself, whichever ones you want to do. Uh follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Like and share all of those sorts of posts that I put on there. That sort of low-level hanging uh engagement is uh greatly appreciated. It helps sort of spread the word so other people can also enjoy the podcast. If you would like to support in other ways, you can also buy some merch over on Red Level, link down below. You can also uh join us over on Patreon, and that really supports the show the most. Uh, and you will be rewarded with some bonus content. There's episodes of Transitional Noise, which is a new format, basically a bonus lookout, sir episode. Um, the next one coming, as I've already teased throughout this show, will be all about the newports open. It's a vlog that I've done that I will edit together and maybe do an intro or voiceover, I'm not sure yet. Uh, that will be coming the week after this drops. So Fridays is the new time I put out an episode, and the other Friday, uh, the off Friday is when I will do a transitional noise if I get to do one. It's not gonna be every week or every other week. That would be a bit too insane. I did do it a few weeks in a row, I think, uh, when there was some extra content I needed to put out. Uh, there'll be one uh for the following week, but there might not be another transitional uh noise episode for a few weeks. I'm gonna try and do one a month if I can do. Um again, more of that in the outro, I think, where I want to discuss the logistics of you know running the show and things like that. Um I think also I put together some B-roll sort of vlog footage of my time at Salute, which was I think April down in London. So I'm gonna try and include that as well because I want to do that as its own transitional noise episode, but there were sort of more relevant things to do for episodes, so that kind of got lost and uh left by the wayside. So hopefully I'll get to include that as well in that episode. Uh, you can watch along the transitional noises um either in video format on the Patreon platform or you can subscribe to a special RSS feed so your transitional noise episodes plug into your lookouts uh episodes and it's all a bit seamless, so you can listen to them in addition to the Lookouts episodes if you're listening along on audio only podcasts. So, yeah, that's all I've got to say. Uh thank you very much if you listen this far on the show. That's always greatly appreciated. And if you have listened this far, you'll probably hopefully stick around for the outro transitional noise.

Outro

SPEAKER_01 5:20:16

It's time to get cozy and settle in for the outro of the episode, the extra bits that you don't get if you watch the mini sodes. Uh, and I think I would start off with talking about what I've been doing with the show as a whole, what the mini sodes are. I think I've talked about them before, but I sort of want to talk about what I envisage, the logistics of them, and sort of how I'm using them to kind of grow the channel. So Lookout historically has always been an audio-only podcast. And prior to Dan leaving, we had toyed around with uh doing mini episodes, cutting down the main segments into more bite-sized chunks, because not many people want to listen to a three-hour show all in one go or throughout the week. Some people want to listen to a 30-minute video. So we did occasionally toy around with those things, but we still kept it predominantly audio only. But now it's just me on my own. I decided to shift over to video format to try and get a bit more traction over on YouTube and see if I can make this a bit more of a success. In an ideal world, I would happily do this as a full-time job. Uh, I'm currently doing it almost as a full-time unpaid job because I put out Lookout Sur as a full-length audio podcast. I put it also out as a full-length video on YouTube. I'm then splitting the segments out into mini-sodes, uh, which uh go out on the week when the podcast isn't sort of scheduled to release. So those mini sodes come out in the following week in between every fortnight, basically. So currently, and on average, it's about three mini sodes, I'm calling them, uh, per episode, because that's roughly the format of the show. I'm trying to do shorter segments rather than one or two hour long segments like we have historically. Ideally, I think it would be more beneficial to have smaller segments between 30 and 45 minutes. Uh, if you've listened to this show, you'll know that's not the case. Uh, Richard and I talked about uh the Grand Tournament for about two hours. So definitely not a mini sode when that comes out, but it's shorter than the full-length podcast, whatever this will come to. I don't think it'll be a five-hour episode, but it's not going to be, you know, a three-hour one either. So I've been putting those out. And then in addition to that, I've been putting out uh shorts over on Instagram to try and promote those mini sods and promote the show uh as a whole, which is also quite time consuming to do. And this week I'm also going to be doing and editing the Patreon exclusive only content, which is transitional noise. I think episode four uh now. So a lot to do, a lot to produce and edit. Uh the video editing takes sort of the biggest chunk of time. Uh, when it's a solo video with just me, it requires a lot more editing than when it's just myself and Tim or myself and Richie because that's a bit more conversational. So there's a lot less to edit out um to keep it sort of smooth flowing. Uh but when it's just me, there's a bit more work involved and a lot of re-listening back to the episode to make sure it's a bit smooth. So it currently takes a long time to produce the show uh and is taking up a lot of time. And currently I sort of freelance here and there uh for my general living, uh, which I've sort of talked about on occasion. Um at some point I probably do need to get like a full-time job to pay the bills and live my life. If that's the case, uh the number of videos or what I'm producing for this show will drastically go down to make it feasible. Um, because uh how Dan managed to edit the show together when he had a full-time job, I just don't know. Uh the way I do it takes a lot longer, but that that's me through and through. So I think in part because it's video, it takes a lot longer than audio, stuff like that. Uh so if you are enjoying the show, all it is is a bit of a shout out to you. Please consider backing me over on Patreon because I would like to consistently be able to keep putting out this show. Uh and if it gets to the point where I have a full-time job, uh this will not say it will stop, but it will definitely um I won't be putting it out quite in the same way. It'll be shorter, for example. Maybe I won't be doing the mini sods. The mini sodes are really an experiment to try and grow the YouTube channel uh for people that aren't really interested in podcast format. So I'll see how that goes. Um and it's an experiment I'm gonna put a lot of time and effort into for the next few months. And if it doesn't really get me anywhere, then maybe I'll stop. Um so far, uh it's been hit and miss. Uh the episode on the Warhammer Heroes blind boxes did very well, uh, the others less so. So who knows why that was? Uh maybe it's the thumbnail, maybe it's the topic, maybe it's just you know the luck of the algorithm. Uh what I would like to ask of you, and it's not to say come join me over on Patreon again, um, no, it's to say, what can I do to improve the show? Uh is it the camera? Is it the audio? Is it the format? Is it um something else? I don't know. Is it the topics? Uh one thing I would also like to ask is would you like to see me review the orc codex? Uh historically, we always did codex deep dives and reviews of every single codex that came out. And I think Dan and myself got a bit burnt out last edition doing all of them. And there were times when we said we would stop doing that. Um, but it was sort of easy content because it was the new thing in the zeitgeist that people would probably want to talk about. So that's why we talked about it. Do you actually want that in the lymph edition? I'm trying to cover maybe a bit more topics to a bit more Age of Sigma. I appreciate it's not as popular. Um we will be doing that cromanda. I'll talk about that in a few minutes when we do the hobby section of this chat. Um, but in terms of 40k, do people care about codex reviews? Because if not, I won't do them. Um, I might do one or two here and there when it's codexes specifically for my army. Um I'm kind of curious about the York Codex, purely from the point of view it's going to be the benchmark for future codexes. I would like to see what's in there. Um, I've heard that they've done things like um The Beasties, which is pages detailing every single unit in the game and a bit of a law description, which is fantastic. That was my biggest criticism of the last uh lot of codexes. So thank you, Games Workshop, for listening. I don't think you really are, but I appreciate that you put them in because that was something I wanted to see. Um, so yeah, I'm tempted to do a review purely from the kind of the format, more than the fact that they're orcs. I'd like to hear from you if you would like that. Uh, likewise, any random topics you would like me to cover, please do let me know down in some comments or reach out to me either on Patreon or Instagram or Facebook. Uh, ideally, Instagram is a lot easier than Facebook, personally. Uh, so reach out to me in some way and let me know. I will probably do an open post on Patreon asking this question, asking for feedback in terms of how to improve the show and asking for topics to talk about in the future. That will be open to everyone that is a member. You can become a member on Patreon for free, um, but the free people don't get access to the Patreon exclusive videos like transitional noise. Um, but I'll keep that open. Similar to when I started going solo, I did a poll about the sort of general formats people would like. That was open to everyone uh because I sort of want to collate all the information in one place, uh basically. So I will probably do that and put that out at the same time I do this post. So head over there first, and if I haven't done one, just message me some other way if you would like to reach out. That would be greatly appreciated. Uh so with all that sort of boring admin of the show out the way, uh, we can talk about some general hobby stuff that I've been up to. Um, in general, I haven't been doing a huge amount of hobbying uh because there's been the new port open, which has taken a lot of my time, and then I've been sort of um, you know, just chilling out since doing that. I think when you do a weekend away gaming, you need a few days to sort of decompress and unwind. And while you're maybe infused to do hobbying, you're not that keen at the same time. But I have done some hobbying. I've been carrying on with my ogre iron guts um and making them nautical themed. Uh so I've got one here, which I've uh basically scratch-built out of only adjust the lighting here. Um, if I do the lighting down a bit better, so yeah, you can see him there uh with a scratch built out of plasticard and styrene a anchor, because you know it's it's nautical themed. Um, and then it's textured with Tamiya Putty to give a nice uh metallic uh sort of uh cast uh iron sort of look to it. Uh so that was one of them, and then the second one I did using a more sort of traditional Japanese style anchor uh was this guy. So he had a hammer. Originally the other guy had um like a big sort of halberd sword type thing. Uh and then the third guy just built Aziz because he looked really cool. He was running the running pose. I want to Finish off this guy a bit more. I think I'm going to swap out that cleaver with rope. So I have some rope hanging down from the anchor and he's holding it. So it looks like he's just literally pulled the anchor out of the ship. I think that'd be quite cool. So that's what I've been doing for Age of Sigmar. Also, you'll notice in the background I bought Necromunda because Spike, who uh couldn't join us for the show, I did ask him if he wanted to join us in the grand narrative chat, but he was too busy with work he's away. Um but he's running the Necromunda campaign. He ran the one I joined last year, uh, which we sadly only got halfway through. Um but we're we're doing a new one. Uh this time it's a similar kind of gaming group. It's a lot of Spike's friends. Uh Richie's involved, he's going to be co-arbiter alongside Spike. Uh Dan's actually joining, um, not the podcast, sadly, uh, but he's joining in with the Necromonda campaign as well. He's doing Cordor. I think Richie's doing Esher again. Spike is doing Chaos Corrupted, uh, and I am doing Chaos Hellets. Uh, so I bought the Outcast book because that's where Chaos Hellets are, and then I bought the box set because it's the most value for money in terms of getting the rule book and the cards, um, and some of the scenery pieces I'm super excited uh about, even though you don't get a lot of scenery in there. But I thought that would just be but easier to do than try and buy everything separately, which ends up being a bit more expensive. So I I I got the box, I've yet to look through the rules, but I'll be doing that over the next few weeks. If people want some sort of general videos on Necromunda, yeah, let me know. Um, so I'm looking forward to that. So there'll be some hobby focus on that. I've got my helets from last year, which I mostly painted up, but still need to do a bit more work on them. I've got sort of the base colours down. Uh the familiars got completely painted because they were nice and easy and a joy to do my little murglings. Um, but the rest of the models basically need some washes and highlights and some extra detailing on them. Uh, and then a couple of things maybe need a bit more work. But for the most part, they're kind of ready to go, and that's why I've sort of stuck with them. Uh, as tempting as it is to sort of build some Vinuga Life minis or something, I just don't think I'm gonna have time. Uh, because as I've said, doing all the recording for this podcast takes up a lot of my time. So, yeah, that's sort of it in terms of hobby stuff. I've still got a stack of Age of Sigma terrain to build and sort of convert up. Um, I'm potentially going to get around to converting up my boarding actions terrain that I've talked about for a really long time, uh, and sticking that down onto actual tiles, maybe even the zone mortaless tiles. I might attempt that. Um, so I can use it for both boarding actions and necromunda. Um, and then I can detail it with my little hobby challenge house that I created. Um, so stuff like that. I've got to do my airbrush is currently out of commission because the compressor is damaged and um is starting to rust on the inside, uh, which is a shame because it's relatively new. So it's currently boxed up and is going to be returned to Hyundai, who are the makers, uh, because it's under warranty still. Um I'm still waiting for them to pick it up. But in the meantime, it means I can't do any airbrushing or painting. Um, so I'm gonna focus on just kind of building and creating stuff. And as the weather is slightly cooler than it has been over the last few months, maybe I can have some friends around so we can game, either play some major sigma or maybe more 40k. Uh fingers crossed, uh, some of that will happen over the next few weeks. Um, but yeah, in terms of hobby roundup, that is pretty much it. Um I've sort of said all I can say about the sort of production uh logistics stuff of the V podcast. I'd love to hear your feedback. Please do let me know what your thoughts are. And yeah, overall, this has been an interesting video talking all about the Newport Open. I did actually plan to film some other stuff talking about other topics, um, but I think the Newport stuff's just so overrun that this will just be a Newport exclusive uh podcast episode. And basically my hobby finance audits will be happening in the next episode instead. So keep an eye out for that while I go through just how much I've spent on Warhammer this year so far. Uh, spoilers is a lot more than I thought it was going to be. So yeah. Uh look out for that in two weeks' time. Uh, thank you for listening, and I will see you all soon. Bye bye now. Bye bye.