With tenth edition almost upon us, I found myself thinking about which were my favourite games of 40k since I got back into the hobby back in late 2018.
Fortunately I have recorded (almost) all of my games here on this blog, so I spent an entertaining half hour reliving my very favourite batreps. My criteria were:
- I was one of the generals. This sounds obvious, but I've seen any number of cracking games that I wasn't actually directly part of: I've Stylus's Skypehammer campaign to thank for most of those.
- The game was close. With one exception the results of the below were in doubt right up to the end. I've had many such games on this blog, including an amazing one against Kraken's Nids where my Purge/Khorne Daemons won on the very last roll of the game and a cracking game against Stylus's Scourged where my Space Wolves scraped a draw due to hero Sergeant surviving, and very nearly pulled a technical win out of the bag.
- Narrative factor. Kraken in particular has a gift for both creating improbably cool narrative missions that play out with significant tension (despite appearing to be completely unbalanced) and, on top of that, writing up tremendous stories in the batreps.
- X-factor. Sometimes there's just something about the game that makes it stand out for me.
As well as the ones mentioned above, there were so many cool battles, including a narrative series featuring my Ultramarines culminating in my first participation in Weekend at Burnies where they faced the Word Bearers. That would probably win for my favourite series of games. I also can't forget my very first proper games at Woffboot against Kraken, Stylus and Kasfunatu...in person!
However, the top five are...
5. Be'La Dancing with Bludteef: Orks vs Daemons
This game was in person against Kasfunatu and featured my old favourite Ork Warboss, Bludteef. The game went back and forth (with many a pause for tactical discussions) and neither of us knew who was going to win. In fact, the victor changed from the end of the game, to the next morning and again on writing up the game, which showed how close it was.
4. Monster Mass: Tyranids vs The Purge
Kraken wanted to test the then-new Crusher Stampede rules and we had (another) great game full of tactical decision-making, skin-of-the-teeth dicerolling and, perhaps for the first time, Cultists were MVPs for my army.
3. Winter of Content: Black Legion vs Death Guard
At my second Weekend at Burnies earlier this year I was unexpectedly paired against Winters in my last game of the weekend. Both of us were unbeaten up to that point and it turned out to be an extremely close game on top of the wow-factor of playing against the famous man-in-the-hat.
2. Fight them on the Beaches: Scions & Marines vs Tyranids
This one really should be top of the heap as it had it all: a crazy scenario from Kraken that still managed to produce a game that went to the last dice-roll, a fantastic narrative write-up and even some special effects thrown into the pictures!
1. Unto the Breach: The Purge & Nurgle Daemons vs The Scourged & Tzeentch Daemons
Having noted the above, I'm sure Kraken will forgive me for picking this one as my all-time favourite. Stylus came up with an extended narrative mission which was absolutely sensational to be part of. Kraken was was my co-pilot in this game (against Rapid and b1llybob) and although the result was a huge loss for us, this was an epic game where my warlord Gormenghastly made his name by killing well over half the enemy army by himself.
I'm amused to note that Gormenghastly features in three of the top five battles (and Bludteef in one of the others) so I do clearly like a game with my own named character.
Things like this make me extremely grateful to Stylus and Kraken for letting me be part of this blog and for encouraging me to appreciate the narrative side of the game: they both well know that left to my own devices I probably could have drifted to a more competitive approach to 40k, which would have been an awful lot less fun: thanks guys!
Ghormenghastly's original demise was still my stand-out moment from the whole Averment campaign, I don't blame you for picking that at all!
ReplyDelete9th might be ready to go, but before showing it out the door, you're quite right to point out all the fun we've had with it. Good times!
That Skypehammer was one of my favourite battles too (despite not playing in it, I moved all the pieces around).
ReplyDeleteThough I'm happy to see 9th Ed disappear into the Warp, the overwhelming majority of games I played were enjoyable ones. I think the lesson from your top 5 is the best fun can be had when we make up our own rules.
That’s a great roundup! I am impressed with how many to the wire games you can pull out the archive. I am not surprised that most use woffboot rules!
ReplyDeleteThanks gents! As I said above, I am constantly impressed by the ability of both Stylus and Kraken to come up with interesting missions that aren't straight out of the book. To be fair, most of the games I've played have been as GW wrote, but it's also true that the ones that have had custom/narrative rules have generally been a lot more fun. They haven't always been equal (the game that killed off Stylus's Purge and let my own join the Black Legion was deliberately skewed) and we've had a few that didn't work as intended of course, but I think the hit rate has been very good. And of course, this transcends whatever notional rules whatever edition we're in demand - as Winters says, play 40k your way. Anyone reading this thinking that they couldn't do as well as Kraken or Stylus should just try it and build that experience. As long as both players are genuinely out to have fun then that's what will happen.
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