Ah, it’s finally time to sit back and reflect for the Badman Chronicles again. A nice little update for the good readers of Goonhammer on one man’s hobby journey. Cover what’s happened since the last time I wrote one of these. Let me check this calendar right here to find out when the last time I got an update out was…
Oh. It’s been a few months, huh? Well I can only hope that there hasn’t been that much that’s happened since then, maybe it was a quiet few months…
A whole new edition of Warhammer 40,000 you say? Well then. No time for a leisurely stroll down Warhammer memory lane here, we’ve got to hit the ground running.
The past few months have been very busy for me, mostly in good ways. This has not kept me from slamming hams or getting in some nice hobby progress, don’t worry about that. But it does mean that if I were to exhaustively cover everything I’ve done in the hobby since the last time I did an update like this, I’d be writing a novella.
Instead, I think this is a good time to look back at those hobby goals I set for myself back in January, and see how those are going, and what’s coming up for the rest of the year in my hobby world.
Looking back on my 2023 Hobby Goals
Alright, what’ve we got?
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Paint 4000 Points
Okay well yikes this one was much easier before they changed the points on everything.
According to my hobby tracker I keep, I’ve painted 53 models this year. Most of them have been Chaos Space Marine Black Legion models, in order to make sure I was fielding as many painted models as possible for the crusade league. Out of those Chaos Marine models, the Forgefiend I painted most recently is my proudest. I got the OSL just right I think on the plasma bits, and used thinned down Baal Red contrast paint to get the exposed fleshy parts just right.
I’m also happy with my Accursed Cultists, but here’s a tip: don’t listen to the episodes of the “Hardcore History” podcast discussing the nightmares of the Pacific theater while painting body horror stuff. Not great for ye ol’ psyche.
I’ve also had some time to step away from the black power armor mines since last I wrote. I got some Blood Sisters done for Age of Sigmar. Flesh was a great pallet cleanser after painting all those marines. So reasonably, I went right back to painting no flesh and painted Kataphrons. Good job, me.
I also painted a Tyranid Warrior Prime to test a scheme idea for my Tyranids. The colors I used for this are based off the Houston Astros, and the blue flesh is going to be my first real forays into the airbrush world. Lastly, I painted a Custodes Guardian to test a purple scheme, which came out killer. It’ll be sec before I can really paint more Custodes, but I’m looking forward to it when I do.
For now, its time to go back to painting lots of black power armor, as I paint up all the new Chaos Marine hotness. Speaking of which…
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Play 60 Games
I’ve already played a little over 40 games this year. More importantly, I’ve played seven games of tenth edition so far. Six were with my Chaos Space Marines, and one was with my Drukhari. The Drukhari game was fun, though shooty Drukhari will take some getting used too. The Chaos Marines are just a blast though. I had very high hopes for the army when I first wrote about them in the faction previews here on Goonhammer, and I was not disappointed even an iota. Chaos Marines have so many neat tools and excellent units, and they hit like a runaway train. Even in the games I’ve lost with them, I’ve had fun.
I won’t cover all my games here, but I will cover my favorite game of tenth so far. Which really wasn’t much of a game at all, actually. I lost real bad. It was a beatdown. A throttling. The Warhammer equivalent of playing Street Fighter with a buddy and they perfect your ass.
But boy I had a great time.
It turns out, Warhammer in good company is a great time, and my opponent T is great company. He’s a lovely dude with a positive attitude, and one of the best players I know to boot. He also plays Genestealer Cults.
My dummy brain before this match thought “Oh, the problem with Genestealer Cults is the blips. I hit really hard with my Chaos Guys though, Ill just push through him and get to the blips, easy peasy. So I played very aggresivley for much of the game, and tried to make sure I kept up a ton of early pressure. Which I did manage to do, even putting T on a bit of a backfoot when I deep struck all my obliterators on his side of the battlefield. I had hoped that by doing so, he’d have to spread out his forces to thin to deal with everything.
That’s when I learned that I do not, in fect, hit harder than Genestealer Cult dweebos when they come out of deep strike.
It was a massacre. I wish I could say I had anything in me to rally the game back, but I could not break up the combo. T was inflicting great Warhammer violence upon me, until by the end of turn three I had naught but a squad of four Obliterators left on the board, against a whole bunch of GSC goodstuff.
In a competitive setting, I would’ve politely conceded here, tallied the score and gotten a beer. We were playing on a Monday afternoon though, I had nothing to do and all day to do it. It was time to do the most painful thing I could to T at this point: refuse to concede, and force him to play this game of Warhammer 40,000 out.
I had some lucky rolls, and fortunately Obliterators are pretty durable in their own right, so I managed to survive the game with a single brave Obliterator left that even scored me Assasination points with an Overwatch. The highlight of this Badman Blaze of Glory was when we agreed that T did not need to waste the time to set up his 20 man Neophyte squad, because we both assumed the Obliterators would not survive the shooting. When the last brave Obliterator still stood though, T shrugged and said he’d have to charge the Obliterator to try and plink off the last wound.
I was absolutely delighted to tell him that he has to set up the Neophytes to do that, and my heart grew three sizes as I watched T waste time daisy chaining out the models in the formation we both agreed on only for him to fail the charge anyways. It was a total waste of time. Loved every second of it.
If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that the best way to deal with losing to your friends at Warhammer 40,000 is to be a pain in the ass about it the whole time. That might be a terrible moral. Ah well.
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Be an active participant in the local crusade league
I was! And it’s well documented here in this series. I didn’t really get to talk about the finale too much, as it happened during the hiatus, but a big props to Rob, Norman, and everyone else who helped put it together down here in Houston. It was a great time, and it ended up being my farewell games to ninth.
You can read a bit more about the event in detail here, but basically I could commit little bits of my roster to different planets connected by the portal my very own Malioch Soulbinder had schemed into existence. My first game, I played on Varghast with my Warpsmith, Helbrute, and Obliterators. On one half of this battlefield, Norman’s Chaos Knights were trouncing through the defenses of the Sons of Ash monastery. On the other half, my half, there were ninth edition crusade Votann. I gave them everything I had, but I could only delay the inevitable as the buffed up murder machine Einhyr Champion single handedly rolled through my brave, spiky boys.
The second and third games, I was back on Parasbine, playing on the side of T’s Genestealer Cults and supporting the workers uprising against Kephistrone. Turns out, Malioch Soulbinder is more than just a powerful Chaos Lord and exalted Daemon Prince of Slaanesh: he’s a union man.
Under my guiding hand, definitely no one elses, we claimed the city for the Genestealer Cults and maybe Chaos too, if they ever pick up my calls.
Like I said before, this event was a blast, and I’m really looking forward to GHO this year for more narrative goodness!
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Get back into Age of Sigmar
I not only played Titanicus this year, but I also played Age of Sigmar! Wow!
I’ve been evangelizing the game as much as I could to my pals, even if I don’t get to play it very often, and my friend Connor finally liked what I was saying enough to get a game in with me. It was my Daughters of Khaine versus his Kruelboyz, just after the last Battlescroll update dropped, and it was an excellent time. Kruelboyz can get a pretty nasty little gunline going as it turns out, but I was able to use my big block of Blood Sisters and Morathi effectively enough to break through his lines and win the game. It was his first game of AoS ever, and mine after not playing since New Orleans Open, and we both walked away from the table impressed with the game and excited to play more.
Also, the models remain absolutely cool as hell.
The Rest of the Year
I’ve got two events on my radar I’ll be prepping for and discussing in these articles. The first is the GHO Narrative event, and the second will be the Warzone: Houston GT. I’ll be bringing Chaos Marines to both of them, and I’m looking forward to making some Dark Pact’s and doing some big damage. I’ve also got a Necromunda Campaign coming up, just in time for the new rulebook to come out and I can finally make my own Escher party car out of this Ridgerunner I’ve kept around for the occasion.
Hobbywise, I think I’m going to focus on Tyranid stuff after I get through this next wave of Chaos Marine painting. Maybe the new models will be out by then, they look stunning and I can’t wait to paint them.
And that’s a wrap for this edition of the Badman Chronicles! Time to get some more Chaos Marine games and hobby in to prep for the GHO narrative, and decide what I’d like to bring. Something spiky, probably.
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