Last weekend, me and 5 other First Founders hit the road to Wales to do something a little bit different..
Normally, the only 40k I really tend to play is either practice for a tournament or playing in the tournament itself.
Last week was different as not only did we leave the safety of our own gaming club, but we also took part in a two day narrative event.
I’ve always preferred narrative play over matchef play, so I was looking forward to this event.
The event was held at Firestorm Games in Cardiff.
If you’ve never been, Firestorm Games is an awesome venue, with a large space for gaming and a huge range of stock from lots of different systems and manufacturers.
I was quite jealous that we don’t have anything like this closer to home. If we did, I’d be there all of the time!
For the actual narrative event itself, the games were split over the two days with 2000pts, 1000pts and 3000pts games being played on the Saturday and 2x 2000pts games played on the Sunday.
There were some fantastic looking tables, with not a single L shaped ruin in sight which was great to see and play on.
In all of my games, there were no complaints about lack of sight blocking, players got into the spirit of it and used the scenery to help tell a story.
On one table where there is a Wall of Martyrs Trench Line, it made sense that my Imperial Guard were defending that side of the table from an on coming Tyranid horde. It also made sense that my tanks could cross the trench lines without issue to meet the foe head on!
Without knowing how the weekend narrative would play a part in our games, each of the First Founders set a personal aim for their general before the weekend began. This was great as it influenced our play as we tried to achieve these aims. It also meant that it didn’t matter whether you won or lost, as achieving your personal aim was the interesting bit (at least for me).
As I was taking Iron Hand Straken, I made it his goal to try and kill the biggest thing on the table, or at least to get a decent kill count, as he has been there, seen it, killed it.
A highlight of the weekend was seeing Straken charge a 5 man Stealth Squad unit, single handily slay 4 of them before consolidating into a Stormsurge (that had just 1 shot my Baneblade!) and after 3 rounds of combat, remove it’s last 8 wounds!
Then he headed towards the Tau’s home objective held by an Ethereal and Fire Warrior bodyguards. He managed to kill several of them before the cowardly Tau ran away, leaving him open to being shot in the back by a Riptide on the other side of the board!
As a nice change from normal 40k, only primary mission rules were in play for the event. I found this quite refreshing and it kept the games close score wise.
I’m not going to give a blow by blow account of the games that I played, but here are some photos from the games. Unfortunately, there are no photos from my second game as I was wiped out very quickly. Angron, a war dog and a Brass Scorpion are not fun in a 1000pts game!
There were lots of great looking armies at the event and all of the players were really friendly.
All in all, it was a great weekend that resulted in a victory for the forces of Chaos. Booo!
I can’t complain too much, since I lost every game and therefore did not contribute to a successful defence for Team Imperium…
I did however, win The Last Chancers Award for having the worst unit at the event: My Baneblade.
It was a very poor showing for a great model. It destroyed very few models, and was removed from play very quickly in most games. I need to get myself a Tech-Priest Enginseer to give it some more survivability in the future.
There’s a rumour that there might be another event next year and all things being well, we should be returning. The Imperium must be avenged!
Table Standard 