Roundtable: The 2024 Grand Narrative

The 2024 Grand Narrative is now in the books and as usual, we had a host of Goonhammer authors there to play in the event this year. In this roundtable we’re talking about our experience at the event - what we liked, what we didn’t, and what we want to see next year.

Today’s Roundtable

Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones
“Contemptor” Kevin Stillman
Jack Hunter
Condit
Chase “Gunum” Garber
Craig “MasterSlowPoke” Sniffen
Quinn “Lhyon” Radich
Dan “FromTheShire” Gates
JD “The ArmorOfContempt”
PierreTheMime

TheArmorOfContempt and TheChirurgeon

Let’s Start with the Good. What worked for you about this year’s Grand Narrative? What did you like?

TheArmorOfContempt: I attended the Grand Narrative in 2022, and there were quite a few things that I enjoyed far more this time around. First, the location was great. Flying into Atlanta I was able to quickly make my way from the airport to the convention center using the MARTA (Atlanta’s Rapid Transit System). The convention center itself was easy to get around and allowed access to plenty of food options for lunch and dinner.

The inclusion of Kill Team was the deciding factor in getting me to come, and I was not disappointed. Each Battlegroup consisted of ten players, nine of whom were playing Warhammer 40K, and only one playing Kill Team. This had the effect of showing up to your designated play area with a table set aside specifically for you, and then finishing your games an hour before your teammates, which provided ample time to explore and socialize.

The final showdown with the Lords of War versus the various Kill Teams that survived their final mission was a really cool and fun idea that was marred by poor execution as it required the Lords of War to actually play Kill Team, something they had little experience in. Additionally, it was pretty clear these final showdowns were not playtested in any way, and were largely vibes-based with Imperial Lord of War winging it.

PierreTheMime: The layout and organization of the event was definitely smoother for year three, with the faction briefing “shows” being centralized to a main presentation room instead of scattered across the convention halls, which made it easier to plan around. The actors and support staff in both the presentations and game rooms were incredible to interact with, you could tell everyone involved were enjoying themselves and improvising dialog and scenarios to entertain the players/audience.

The integration of Kill Team into the Narrative was well-handled and the payoff was hands-down the best moment of the event. As someone who was worried the KT players might be an afterthought, it looked and sounded like they were having a great time.

The event “swag” trinkets and tokens that the Vox Localum and Lords of War were providing were impressively detailed and substantial. The Chaos Undivided pin provided by Zar Tahyed is fantastic and I will continue to wear it proudly.

the completed Wurrzog Device

TheChirurgeon: I thought the shows this year were solid (Zoggit’s death being the best moment in them), but I very much missed the faction-specific briefings in different parts of the venue. Those were among my favorite moments last year, and they did a much better job catching me up on what was actually happening in the story and with my faction battlegroups than a single Lord of War Briefing for the general audience did. The costumes were once again on point, and the big, escape room-esque doodads were visually stunning. And the venue was also very solid - easy enough to navigate, with enough cool stuff to do in the general vicinity and easy access to alternative hotel options if you wanted. Timing-wise, playing six games in three days remains the perfect pace for a Warhammer event.

Also I’ll second the Chaos Undivided pin being a fantastic trinket to receive. Zar Tahyed gave one to Bryce and he wore that thing the rest of the event.

“Contemptor” Kevin: The vibes were right. Even if some of the game rules were… awkward, the sheer energy and enthusiasm that most everyone brought helped overcome some of the bad taste caused by the incredibly awkward rules. This year I went hard into the Discord to create a character and play him, and I think that helped set the stage and vibes for meeting new people and new friends. Folks wanted to go above and beyond for this event, and GW should be applauded for creating a community that embraced that spirit.

MasterSlowPoke: The venue is great - being able to just walk into the Peachtree Center for lunch in less than 5 minutes from the game table is amazing, and there’s plenty of other restaurants and stores within walking distance. The majority of the Vox Localums and other characters provided a great help on getting the rooms running well, even when they were forced to be split across multiple rooms. The terrain was far better this year - I was lucky enough to never play on planet one tree hill in any of my games, and there was no magnetic filament anywhere I could find. Four hour rounds, twice a day, is a leisurely pace that allows for optimal socialising.

PierreTheMime: There was a great deal of player-driven plotting and scheming and I was here for it. There are different ways to play the campaign event but this year made an active attempt to get more face time with Vox actors and make dark deals/pacts with players along the way. Apparently the Votann players spun up their own Discord to discuss internal matters involving contracting. I’d love to hear more about that at some point.

Jack: My favorite part of this event is always just being able to hang out with my friends. On the west coast it’s quite a hike to get to events with the rest of the GH crew (most of whom are on the east coast or in Texas), so I generally only end up getting to see them for this and the Tacoma open. Absolutely the main reason I come, followed by the relatively casual pace of play. Six games in three days is just about perfect to keep me enjoying playing while not burning me out or killing my feet.

What did you think about this year’s story and the characters?

TheArmorOfContempt: The characters were all very fun, with the Warboss and his Grot being the obvious standouts. Additionally, all the Lords of War were suitably involved throughout the weekend making appearances in each location multiple times a day. While I read all the Vox Localum profiles it would have been useful to have them introduced during the first briefing, because it was hard to identify many of them at first sight.

The story on the other hand didn’t seem to distinguish itself much from what I experienced in 2022. The addition of the MacGuffins was cool, however allowing all the factions to activate theirs did make it feel like things were rather pre-determined. The only one that seemed to do anything positive for its faction was the Chaos one “revealing” the Nightblade. In that respect one could say the actor’s reaction to opening the MacGuffin was the difference in story-telling, but none of it really seemed to match with the feeling that the Imperial faction had been winning.

PierreTheMime: After all the twists and turns of last year, I was surprised by how straight-forward the plot remained throughout the entire event. There were some ups and downs in the horserace for the faction macguffins but overall it was pretty clear that everyone was going to get their thing. Compared to year two the story was fairly tame, though each of the Lords of War were interesting enough to ensure this wasn’t a concern. Considering what they had on hand, I assume the Zoggit plot point was planned well in advance but it was still a magical moment. The player-staged memorial/shrine was incredible. RIP Zoggit.

Lhyon: Well, they weren’t going to show off all three shiny boxes and then not open them, that was clear from as soon as they were introduced (and they weren’t about to print out new copies of the final mission without the gameplay effects of said inevitably-acquired artifacts, either). The plot was fairly on-rails because of that, with everything else being more or less window dressing to set the stage for how things would break down following the last mission. In light of that, the outpouring of player support for Zoggit was the absolute highlight of the narrative experience. Everyone’s going to show up for a loveable grot, of course, but the veneration given to him shone as the most player-driven part of the experience, and wound up being more memorable than any of the top-line campaign results.

The Vox Localums (Vox Locali?) felt rather irrelevant, though. The Canoness seemed poised to take on a larger role if the Imperium didn’t turn things around, but the momentum they got from having the favorable mission role in Round 3 rendered that a moot point. None of the others seemed to matter, and it seemed odd that the corrupted Imperial noblewoman accompanied the Chaos faction leader on stage on several occasions but never had a speaking part.

MasterSlowPoke: This was definitely the weakest of the three stories. There didn’t seem to be any visible effect that the players had on the story, nor was there all that much interplay between the factions. I get that all three boxes have to be opened, as they spent all this time and money on the props, but it would have been better to drop the key hunt angle, and just have the boxes get worked on over time. Last year we had some displays showing the relative control each faction had over each area, this time there was none. I had no idea what was going on with Ice World Rorgan, and if I had any affect on it with my two games there. The finale focused a lot on what was happening with Tsorin and Vedik, and it wasn’t until many hours later that our group finally realized what those nouns were - they were the planets/systems the UK Grand Narrative were fighting over.

“Contemptor” Kevin: I suppose it was a twist that there were no twists? I thought the Rogue Trader and the Word Bearers Dark Apostate were appropriately acted and while generic, there’s only so much they could do in the dinner theater briefings. The Rogue Trader’s personality and actions were explored more in-depth on the Discord, in which the various Imperium players debated whether or not they (1) were on the up-and-up. This constant questioning I think did enhance the Rogue Trader’s storyline. Overall it was probably less *interesting* than last year with a full Imperium civil war, but it did push the role of the Discord. The Vox Localum also participated in the Discords, but not until the event started - by which time I wasn’t paying as close attention to the General channels because I was scrambling to get to my games, do my Administratum Homework, find out where the rest of GH was, or catching Pokemon.

The Rogue Trader explicitly refused to provide pronouns when asked, offering a large paragraph of florid text when someone asked, in character, what were their pronouns. However, the Lords of War Briefing used they/them pronouns and so that’s what we are using here.

Jack: I felt the story was entirely unremarkable. This isn’t to put down the immense amount of work all the characters put in - performances across the board were great and this was the most involved I’ve seen the Vox Locali in being individual characters (even if their individual stories didn’t go anywhere in the larger narrative), but it didn’t feel like there was anything actually happening in the story. We’d get a briefing, go play a mission, come back, and surprise surprise all three factions got one step closer to opening up their macguffin. One side winning didn’t change anything other than perhaps the actual words being spoken - if you lose a lot you get told to actually read your mission briefings, if you win a lot you get congratulated and told to get back out there.

Running a simultaneous event in Nottingham was interesting, but again it didn’t feel like it did anything - our final briefing mentioned what was happening there (assuming you knew Tsorin and Vedik are Nottingham), but that never changed anything for us. This is probably all at least partially because of the need to have all the mission cards pre-printed and not wanting to waste money on having a bunch of alternates. Given that there’s a Kinkos in the building, I’d be interested in them doing lower quality printouts for the missions that they can produce in between missions depending on the outcome of the previous round.

TheChirurgeon: I fully believe there was a branching story with different outcomes possible, but if the end result was just the same, bog-standard, boring-ass “the Imperium narrowly wins, but at great cost” ending, who cares? The actors were solid, and doing the best they can with the material they’ve got and the constraints they’re working within. But this is one of those times where I wonder if they gave themselves a little too much freedom and should have focused on a small number of likely outcomes with clearer hooks for players to grab onto. The Vashtorr turn last year felt mostly plotted out beforehand but it still was cool for the Chaos team to push for, because Vashtorr was an unexpected agent in the mix.

Warhammer 40,000 Grand Narrative: 2024. Credit: Jack Hunter

What didn’t work well this year? What should they work on improving?

TheChirurgeon: MasterSlowPoke may not have played on planet One Tree Hill but I was not so lucky, and most of my games had massive, open shooting lanes, a handful of sparse scatter terrain, or both. There was definitely a lot more terrain this year than in previous years, but with nearly double the attendees and tables, it seems like they once again didn’t have enough to go around. Some of those tables were absolutely dire.

TheArmorOfContempt: Communication, as ever, was spotty. Discord is great for communication over time, but terrible for in the moment announcements. There needed to either be an actor dedicated to passing updates in a “town-crier” fashion, or speakers in the rooms that the people running the events could use for public announcements. I was pretty on top of paying attention to Discord, and even I missed a lot of stuff.

Missions and maps continue to be a letdown. On the Kill Team end this wasn’t game-breaking as the game is fun on its own, and most of my games were pretty casual. That being said none of my tables either had Gallowdark or Volkus terrain, nor did they use the cardboard unfoldable boards (that make measuring Drop Zones and objective placement MUCH easier). If you were lucky your Kill Zone would at least look cool, but in most cases they just felt like extra terrain was tossed on there by someone who has zero conception of how Kill Team is played.

Lastly, how fame and infamy work continues to be unclear. It wasn’t even clear if Kill Team players were eligible for either, or if we could gain any.

MasterSlowPoke: Fame and Infamy have been an alternative track that Brandt’s narrative events have been trying to get to work ever since like the Nova Narrative 2013 or so, and it’s always been a little wonk. In this event, they announced, via Discord, shortly before the first game that your Warlord has to find a random spot on the board with a token on it and do an action. On a 2+ you get your choice of Fame or Infamy. If you fail and were going for Fame, the Warlord dies. Infamy, the nearest friendly unit dies. I think that this is fine enough - the idea is that it’s something you as a Warlord are doing for vanity that actively goes against the mission. Dicking around, potentially out of position, and risking a valuable unit for a minor objective accomplishes this. I think the penalty may be a bit too harsh, as Chase found out in round 3 when an errant roll of a 1 derailed his plans against me. It is also decent at filtering down the number of people who get all six Fames/Infamies - you only have a ~⅓ chance of getting six 2+s in a row, although Infamy hunters could attempt the roll again I guess. Someone on day 3 told me that a successful roll also gave your character their choice of Crusade Relic, although I have no way to confirm if that was a real rule or just bad rumors.

“Contemptor” Kevin: Having had a few days to reflect and recover from the experience, the thing that bothered me *the most* from the Grand Narrative is that they had the mission rooms split between floors LL2 and LL3. This meant that if you had a cart (like I did), you would likely need to take the elevator to get to the rooms between rounds, and this just didn’t work for me.

Other things that still bother me: I *love* the use of the Discords for roleplaying and getting to know the various strangers who-could-become-friends along the way. Those are awesome and effective. What those Discords are not good at doing is GW communicating with us about faction-specific goals for the event: When “Scrapcode” would give us an in-game task (the fame or infamy rules, or the game-specific tasks), they were just dumped into the General channel where they would get lost amidst the roleplaying and other questions. These Discords need some sort of announcement channel, imo. The Vermillion Protocol is not enough to give game information.

Lastly, I’m salty about the Tarot cards. They were a different size and shape from last year’s set, and as someone who wants a full set I am quite disappointed.

MasterSlowPoke: The art on the cards was also just different pieces of John Blanche art. His art is obviously incredible, but on small cards, it was very difficult to determine which stylized black, white, and red angel was Silence and which one was Astartes, with the only real way to do it was to read the tiny text on the bottom of the cards, often requiring you to move them as they were blocked by the holders. At least they usually went in the same order, so if the person you played next to is at a table you’re usually playing next to them again. The unique art and color schemes from last year’s were far superior.

TheChirurgeon: The cards were too damn small. Very difficult to read and impossible to tell apart at a distance. They needed to be printed at full Tarot size, or on like, 4x6” cards. Tarot cards are a cool idea, but they have to be readable, and it’s just not possible to distinguish between two pieces of John Blanche art in low lighting at a distance of three or more feet. That said, I'm still a bigger fan of letting players do more to choose their battlefields and opponents. I really liked in Albuquerque where defenders would pick tables and attackers would pick matchups, similar to competitive teams event. It both gave us more agency and also let us pair players more along the lines of player skill and matchup.

PierreTheMime: I am honestly very surprised they still haven’t worked out their audio volume/balance for their presentations. In particular I feel bad for the folks that were in the back of the crowd as I assume Glitcha the Psykamekk was impossible to hear initially with such low volume.They almost got there at the end by applying a microphone to the costumes built-in speaker but it was a rough start.

I do agree that the communication of the fame/infamy tasks were difficult to pick up, I had to show quite a few players as time went on. In that same vein there were a few confusing communications throughout the event that caused player/staff delay and some that may have just served no purpose? Like there was a specific message out about reorganizing your forces for the last mission that I assumed served some real faction/personal goal so I made a point to juggle models around my list and make sure I did the task. What was it for? Nothing as far as I could tell, the Vox Localum never asked me if I did it and it was never mentioned again.

Totally not the fault of the Narrative itself, but the lower levels of the convention hall had lower ceilings and because of that heated up to sauna levels with all the people packing the rooms. Hyatt, please turn the AC down.

Warhammer 40,000 Grand Narrative: 2024. Credit: Jack Hunter

MasterSlowPoke: During round three we had to delay the game start to get the defenders an updated mission sheet, and when we finally got said sheets it turned out that what was on there was the same exact mission, except for having a different name. Same rules and scoring.

No idea why they did that.

Lhyon: Communication was a little better than the first year back in New Mexico, but there were still several mission/campaign specifics that were inconsistently presented between rooms.They need to make sure that everything with any direct mechanical or narrative consequences - faction directives (vague though they are), side objectives like fame/infamy, and so on - are explicitly and evenly communicated to all players. Doubly so when it’s some sort of individual bonus handed out to players. I’m led to believe that I could have used the Teef given to me by the Warboss for some sort of in-game benefit? I overheard the Imperial faction leader giving some sort of mechanical bonus to another player between rounds? There needs to be some sort of documentation - cards, perhaps, that could be returned to a Vox Localum upon use - both to make sure that both sides of the table understand these currently-undocumented bonuses and to help remind players that they actually have access to them.

MasterSlowPoke: This is kind of an unpopular opinion, but I’d like to see a unified Discord channel next year, with roles limiting us from seeing most of the chats of the other factions. The only public channels would be the announcements one, where only Scrapcode can post, and one very open general chat that would mostly be for trash talk and unreadable spam of “for the emperor/death to the false emperor/waaagh”. All the others would be locked to your faction role. It is kind of annoying that I can currently only see where people in my faction are playing - if after I’m done I want to find where the chaos goonhammers are playing, I need to text someone or just wander the planets to find them. An announcements channel could show that, and would honestly make it way easier for whoever runs the Scrapcode account to do their job.

PierreTheMime: I agree merging the Discords might work better for general announcements, as well as cross-faction call-outs and other general hobby posting. It is the internet and mingling opposing factions might rear some inappropriate content, but the narrative team has been very good about keeping things civil. It would also make finding/connecting with other faction players you enjoyed a lot easier.

I think this was discussed last year, but I would really recommend the organizers consider a color system for matching players by skill level/experience. Just a little colored green/yellow/red dot on the lanyard players can select to indicate their level of play. Given that pairing is random it’s difficult to adjust playstyle to an inexperienced player without yourself feeling a bit disappointed that a big chunk of your day is spent either restraining yourself or utterly ruining your opponent. It’s not going to be a fun time for one or both of you. This way, you can pretty confidently swap tables within your group to match where you can or have a more open expectation of where the game is going to go and discuss it. There’s no shame in changing tables if it’s going to mean everyone involved has a better day.

Warhammer 40,000 Grand Narrative: 2024. Credit: Jack Hunter

Jack: The terrain was mostly good looking, but not very playable. Ruins without footprints are annoying to work around, the scatter terrain doesn’t actually do anything other than make moving larger units hard, and there just isn’t enough of it. Particularly with some of the weird deployments they use, I ended up on a lot of very open boards. Deploying most of my army in the center of the map without any way to hide a substantial fraction from my opponent, who’s guaranteed to get the first turn, is not a recipe for a fun game. But hey, at least none of it was ferrous so I’m not going to be picking black glitter out of my bases a year+ later.

Organization was also a bit lacking - the best way for me to check the schedule was to look at Administratum where we’d copied it in from the original player packet, which is an extra headache when I also need to check discord to see what room I’m supposed to be playing in. Even just adding what time the game starts to the “Your next mission is in whichever room” message would’ve helped a lot. They should really move to having an announcements channel in the discord, both for that information and for explaining things like the fame/infamy mechanic.

TheChirurgeon: I am absolutely begging them to add terrain footprints next year. Not only does it shore up a lot of issues with more sparse terrain, it makes for easier games with clearer building footprints and movement lanes. Hell, mission three literally references area terrain, and there was none of that on our table. If you’re worried about breaking immersion with clear plastic terrain bases, then just spend some time and energy making area terrain bases that look nicer. It’s not a big ask. Use the warhammer old world movement trays.

What did you think of the custom missions and Crusade rules they had this year?

TheArmorOfContempt: I hated trying to use the Crusade rules in 2022, and happily I didn’t have to mess with any of that bullshit since Kill Team had just lost its narrative rules. I am not opposed to those kinds of rules at something literally called the Grand Narrative, but honestly there is just need to be custom campaign rules generated for the Grand Narrative exclusively.

The starting missions for Kill Team were rather uninspired, but the final missions were more interesting, and culminated into the final showdown with the Lords of War, which as mentioned above was a great idea that didn’t completely live up to its execution.

PierreTheMime: Hoo boy. There’s definitely going to be some thoughts on this subject.

I had a fine time with them, but some were clearly keyed to put some fingers on the scale and I understand if there’s some feelings around that.

TheChirurgeon: The missions were just bad. I liked the effort, but they needed another pass or two. Too many of them had confusing objectives, mission rules, or both. About half had no objective markers on the table to start the game, while one just never had them. Half of them more or less came down to winning the roll-off, which is never a good thing. There are some good ideas in there, but the execution wasn’t there. The missions also lack narrative theming - while they’re evocative, it’s not clear at all why I’m doing this particular mission, or why it matters. This is an area where I think they need more than six missions, and need to put some thought into how missions tie to warzones.

The printed materials were high quality, though - I'm always a sucker for high-quality, printed stuff on cardstock.

Warhammer 40,000 Grand Narrative: 2024. Credit: Jack Hunter

“Contemptor” Kevin: There were some interesting choices made for the custom missions. I only wound up doing four of the six (skipping Missions #4 and #6), so I’ll discuss what I did like and didn’t like.

I had gone into the Grand Narrative expecting a more traditional Warhammer event - there are objectives on the board, and I have to hold those objectives in order to win the game. The Grand Narrative cleverly subverted that by having us either 1) Not do objective play or 2) setting up objectives and *then* scoring them. This, of course, means that my entire army’s plans are out the window.

For Mission #1, I think it and the “twist” were actually fine (even if I should have picked a different set of Agendas going in). It offers a set of buffs and trade-offs that were worth thinking about. What was not OK was how this was presented to us: When presented we were basically told “Finish the turn, pack up your stuff, and go to the Lord of War”. Which considering we were on the top half of Turn #2, was really really dumb. This cost us maybe 15-20 minutes or so where we were trying to figure out if this game was *really* supposed to be over and if the result was supposed to be a 0-0 draw.

MasterSlowPoke: The table next to me literally did that, put both their armies back in their cases, and headed upstairs looking to report to someone who wasn’t there. They came back half an hour later, tried to re-rack as best as they could, and continued their game. Our local vox also was not aware they were supposed to record if we got any units exfiltrated back or not.

“Contemptor” Kevin: Mission #3 was another that a lot of people seemed to have a problem with. Since my goals while playing were, uh, completely unrelated to actually trying to *win* the Mission in favor of a personal narrative, I more-or-less completely missed the fact that the thumb was on the scale for my side and got creamed by Condit.

Mission #5 I feel was one that was won or lost based entirely on the roll-off, which wasn’t a great feeling.

My main issue with most of these missions is the terrain - one of the big selling points with the Grand Narrative is the ability to bring Legends units and big tanks that you normally wouldn’t have in these games. However, many of the battlefields were densely littered with scatter terrain built for more “normal” 40K deployment styles. This meant that the odd deployment zones (a la Game #5) flat-out prevented me from bringing my Large Green Resin Son.

Also, any Crusade rules that allow an Astraeus to have *Precision* on guns are deeply silly.

TheChirurgeon: “Normal” games of 40k do not generally consist of a bunch of scatter terrain. That’s not great for anyone - it kills movement lanes for big vehicles without blocking line of sight to provide real protection. These tables weren’t evocative of a standard game, either casual or competitive.

“Contemptor” Kevin: Oy vey.

Yeah, I felt like the sheer amount of scatter terrain on the table was designed to prevent me from having fun.

PierreTheMime: Agreed on the scatter. Accept that terrain bases and clearly delineated cover is where the game is going, competitive or not. Even if you want to get narrative with it and talk things out, it’s very messy to say who is in what cover with just a wedge of a building somewhere.

The problem with the twist on Mission #1 was that it was communicated poorly and some of the staff just didn’t really understand what they were meant to instruct so a lot of players halted their game, left completely, or wasted precious time figuring things out. It was a neat idea but the execution was very muddled and not a great way to start the day.

I liked the idea of random artifacts (gears) scattered around the board, but if we’re enforcing that we need to be sure the Vox Localum restock tables from game to game. Some players took them (either to hand in at the end of the mission or not). A few games in too many tables were completely missing them, denying players their chance at fame/infamy unless they realized it and talked it out. I turned in all but one of mine (which the Vox told me to keep) and I used it twice to help seed the board on the next mission because there wasn’t enough.

Not everyone achieved them both obviously, but handing out an Antiquity and Legendary relic in missions one and two back-to-back was a weird choice. My Warlord was an unkillable relic-laden monster going into mission three and there were meaner places I could have applied them.

TheChirurgeon: That was absolutely what happened in my game round 1 - we were tied 0-0 as I kept getting shot off the table by Guard tanks, then I got new orders, fled the table, and… just kind of lost as a result. Left a bad taste in my mouth. And like, I get that winning isn’t the important part of these missions, but the key lesson this gave me was that I should have actually ignored the new orders in favor of scoring points and trying to win the game. You can't tell me not to care about winning but then also strongly incentivize me to only do the thing associated with winning!

Warhammer 40,000 Grand Narrative: 2024. Credit: Jack Hunter

MasterSlowPoke: I kind of get handing out a legendary relic early. No one ever gets to play with them usually, especially after only 5 games of leveling up.

Except, I guess if you’re Lhyon in 2022 with those super-busted Ynnari rules.

Lhyon: The Crusade relics and battle traits were wildly overtuned, a problem compounded by people not being required to roll for their Crusade updates and the significant variance in player Crusade participation that always happens at events like these. The victor bonuses were also incredibly inconsistent, ranging from quite good (mission 5, for all its other faults, had mission rewards given to both players based on their own primary scoring and as a compensation if the opponent scored primary in the last round) and frankly insane (the potential for a free legendary crusade relics from mission 2).

The Mission 1 “twist” was poorly executed, given that it arrived based on actual time elapsed instead of progression through the game - a slow game could have easily ended in an extremely underwhelming tie if the switch in orders occurred before either army had the chance to properly commit. Additionally, the twist had no direct impact on game scoring and actively impeded your ability to score. In our room, we were told that the sudden extraction was now the only objective that mattered, which was patently false given that the win-loss was still tracked and still determined by the original scoring categories. As a bait-and-switch, it didn’t ensure that any bait was taken… and didn’t actually switch, either. I’ve played my fair share of Crusade missions with first turn specified before deployment (and tried my hand at writing a few, too), and the deployment map for Mission 3 was fundamentally unsuited for that format, especially when combined with the inconsistent terrain coverage of the narrative tables. Hiding two units in the ruins was a fun mechanic that went some ways towards mitigating that problem, but “two units” gets you vastly different results between armies. Using a specific points value instead - as well as a deployment map where the defender could more reliably hide units - would have delivered a more balanced experience.

Contrary to some, I think the drop system of mission 4 had more potential than the set-up for missions 3 or 5, though it needed a few more iterations. Units should never be allowed to deploy within 9” of an enemy units, and 1d6 mortal wounds is a wholly inadequate price to pay to impose a “go first or die” check on your opponent with some armies or matchups.With more consistently dense tables and some tweaks to the deployment - a blip system, perhaps? - I think a revised version of this mission might have legs.

As for mission 5… well, there’s no better way to sum it up than with my accidental illegal deployment. Seeing what might vaguely pass for safety near the edge of the board, I deployed my Striking Scorpions within the forward half of my deployment zone. This put them within 9” of the enemy deployment zone, which is forbidden for units with the Infiltrators deployment rule. For the heinous and blatant infraction of deploying an infantry squad within my deployment zone, my shame is profound and eternal.

MasterSlowPoke: Too many of the missions really only had the first turn roll off be the only important roll of the game. After rounds 4 and 5, I just had to ask people if they went first or second to see if they won or lost, with few exceptions. Mission 3 didn’t even have a roll.

Even disregarding the abysmal balance of the mission pack, I don’t think that the missions and custom tables really did much of anything to actually help tell the story of what is going on. Why are we both running away? Why are we just dropping in randomly and then scrambling to put down beacons in a specific area defined by our faction? Neither were really explained by the pre game briefings. I’d have preferred that each planet had a unique mission to do that gave some context on why we are there. Fighting over an Ork Kill-Sphere sounded cool, but it was no different from fighting over Random Jungle World.

PierreTheMime: I love the idea of Crusade rules and bookkeeping, but after a full day of slamming hams my mind is not in the mood for referencing documents and working out math, Administratum or not. Early in the morning between a quick cup of coffee and running out the door I made some basic rolls for traits, but there simply wasn’t enough downtime for me to appreciate the experience. I understand the appeal if you run a weekly/monthly club Crusade campaign; by day two I determined I was just going to toss cool things on my Warlord and mostly call it a day. Keeping track of who has what slowed the game down to a degree that I’d rather scrap in favor of seeing the end of turn five. Throughout my six games I found a number of players who were of the same mind and were fine with just playing the lists as-is, so I know I’m not alone in this.

Commander Dante by Craig "MasterSlowPoke" Sniffen

Commander Dante by Craig "MasterSlowPoke" Sniffen

MasterSlowPoke: Mission 6 being a relatively normal mission was a breath of fresh air after 5 rounds of wonky scenarios. I hope next year’s pack is more like that one, as it was an interesting way to do a narrative mission, even if getting to teleport a giant squad of Inner Circle into 5” charge range is a bit much. At least that was restricted to only be usable after turn one.

I think a bigger discussion to be had is if Crusade is even appropriate for events like this. It is a ton more to keep track of in game and way more post mission homework for very little narrative benefit. Space Marines are veterans of hundreds of years of war, but they reduce the number of missed attacks they get by half after one game? I just don’t think it’s great for telling a story.

“Contemptor” Kevin: I would argue no. In addition to the event Crusade things, we were still able to take the Leviathan and Pariah Nexus crusade stuff PLUS our faction crusade stuff. At the very least this is two additional books to buy and bring in order to maximize your options if you're in for the bookkeeping. Something much more simpler, like what NoVa has started to use (with its emphasis on buffing the Warlord) would probably work better. Crusade-Lite, maybe?

PierreTheMime: There were significant differences in power between the three faction one-use-only relics for mission six. As a Chaos player, getting Sustained 2 and Devastating wounds sounds great except when I just don’t roll sixes on those hit/wound rolls and I get literally nothing (which is what happened to me). Many characters already had Dev wounds by that point if they didn’t just have them naturally so it wasn’t a huge benefit. Similarly, for Interlopers a 3+ invulnerable save sounds great except when you suffer Devastating wounds and eat the dirt anyway (or just fail). The Imperial relic was the final obvious thumb on the scale of faction progress. Pick up a unit, deep strike it 6”, and charge? It surely is a mystery how they managed to turn things around…

Jack: The only mission I really enjoyed was number six. The mechanic of needing to keep your warlord in the middle-ish of the table to score more points was interesting, felt like something that would happen in a narrative, and still kept to core 40k mechanics of scoring from objective control. I didn’t love the relics, as the power of them varies wildly (the Imperium relic is unsurprisingly incredibly strong, while the Chaos relic was almost unusable to me with a shooting army), but they didn’t really hurt my enjoyment of the game. Most of the other missions, however, were trash. I’ve already talked about mission three, which barely felt like there was any point in playing the game.

Mission four had some potential to be interesting, however deployment being completely precise turned it terrible - it was impossible to actually screen anything, so a shooting army will end up with a melee army in its face instantly - taking 1d6 mortal wounds is not enough of a penalty to be able to deploy 4” away and get a first turn charge. It’s especially painful with things like land raider redeemers, as you can’t really screen them off your good units, and then your only choice is to cross your fingers that you can actually kill it if you go first without moving whatever unit it’ll destroy on overwatch. I was presented with the choice of eating overwatch or letting deathwing knights get a short charge into my crisis suits - neither option was good, but there hadn’t been any counterplay that would’ve prevented that from happening.

I think the Vox Locali were also not as well informed about the missions as they should’ve been, particularly the first mission. Because it was the first game of the event, and we had such long rounds, neither my opponent or I was playing tremendously quickly, so when the objective change happened we were in the top of turn two. I’d scored, he hadn’t, and we were told to go turn in our scores. It was reported as a 15-0 win for me, and we then were directed to the main conference room for a briefing, at which point we were sent back to finish out our game. The actual mission cards were just adding the extraction as another thing you can do, but reading on the cards you keep scoring the primary mission, so we played it out and then were told that scoring didn’t matter and all that mattered was the score at the arbitrary point the objective changed. Definitely a bad taste in my mouth.

There was also some confusion in mission three, as there were things being done based on arbitrary time rather than game progress - at one point part way in we were told that we should be on turn two, however our game was progressing slow and we were still in the shooting phase of the top of turn one. The Vox Localum said that until tables had reached turn two you got an additional +d3” on your charge move. Great for speeding up the game if your objective is to make the attackers win, not great for feeling like I had any control over the game, as my opponent was getting a big bonus because they’d played slowly. Later on in turn four/five extra Imperium players were allowed to deep strike in as reinforcements if the Imperium player felt they were losing, and the arrival of a full strength custodes terminator squad took a hard fought game where I was maybe going to eke out a win despite the mission into a laughable loss and completely ended whether I continued to give a shit. I’ve heard this didn’t happen in the other rooms, which if so is added feels-bad.

As a final note, I think that custom or not crusade rules are a mistake in this kind of event. Even at only two games a day, it’s too fast paced to do your homework and absorb what buffs units have, which leads to dramatically slower games as you try to keep track of what buffs each unit has. It can also throw any sense of balance right out the window, particularly with the strong custom rules (and even more so if one person got the message that picking up the fame/infamy relics gives your force an actual crusade relic). As much as people like the power progression, I think doing that by starting the weekend with a couple lower points games (maybe two at 1k, one at 1.5k, then the final three at 2k) would give that same feeling while not requiring the bookkeeping or balance destruction.

TheChirurgeon: See I disagree there, if only because there aren’t any Crusade rules that aren’t tethered to one of the two campaign books - Leviathan and Pariah Nexus. This was something they needed to make, but they needed to do so with more care and a few separate tables for different unit types to avoid creating the “everyone gets precision on all their guns” issue they created. I’m not wild about a ton of power progression, though - I think they should have looked at replacing the agendas with some that handed out less XP and not given out legendary relics for blowout wins in round 2.

I do agree on points progression, though - we started with smaller game at Albuquerque and doing three 1,000-point games on day one wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Overall, how did you feel about this year’s event? How did it compare to prior years?

TheArmorOfContempt: As a whole, this was an improvement over 2022, especially the venue. However, I was a bit disappointed that there weren’t more changes after two full years. On the plus side I couldn’t really think of anything that felt worse, which is always good. Despite my complaints I had a great time, and was not bored at any point.

PierreTheMime: This’ll be my second go and while it had its warts I had an incredible time meeting incredible people and having a blast doing ridiculous things, maniacally laughing, and putting flies everywhere I could. Shout out to one participant who offered to assist me, took a large helping of flies and gleefully spread Nurgle’s love around the event.

Although this is a player-driven event, it is a huge credit to the Grand Narrative team to take our suggestions post-event and work to implement them. This year we had defined rules around our special mission actions instead of vague phrases which made for a lot less frustration determining how to perform well. I definitely have some inputs for this year and hope we see some minor adjustments in future.

As I mentioned a bit above, I found year two more narratively interesting but I’ll definitely be back for year four to seek sweet, dark vengeance for the betrayal perpetrated by Threnn the Apostate!

“Contemptor” Kevin: I think this event was *mostly* improved from the 2023 event, now that GW is getting more used to what the Grand Narrative should be and the community itself creating a culture around the Grand Narrative. I think that certain things could be smoothed over, and I think there needs to be a bit of a rethink as to how the custom missions should work for events like this. I also continue to think that Crusade isn’t the right system for the Grand Narrative - it is still too complicated and some of the more flavorful agendas were simply disabled by the way the custom missions were constructed. That the big Grand Narrative was incompatible with parts of Crusade is something I hope is…not a problem for the 2025 Grand Narrative.

Why on Earth did they 1) Change the Style of the Tarot Card from the Arks of Omen-style to John Blanche Art and 2) Why did they use a completely different style for them? Why not make the two sets compatible for those of us who go to Warhammer events year after year? Easily the most disappointing thing of the event.

Commander Dante by Craig "MasterSlowPoke" Sniffen

MasterSlowPoke: Storywise, 2023 was superior for sure. Terrain was definitely improved this year. This year’s missions and crusade pack were a big disappointment. The tarot cards felt rushed compared to last year’s premium deck. The player and battlegroup engagement and enthusiasm was way higher this year and that was quite fun. The layout was a little more well done - most of the battlefields were on LL3 and we only had to fight the elevators a few times. It did make us feel more separated from the World Championship though. I think the Vox Localums really brought their A game both years, but they had a little less to do storywise this time around - I liked seeing their costumes get more battleworn as time went on last year.

TheChirurgeon: It’s always tough to grade this event. I had a great time, but for everything I thought they improved on from prior years, something else took a step back. There needed to be more stuff for kids to do and stuff between games, and the terrain situation needs to be addressed. It’s pretty clear that while there was more terrain, doubling the size of the event at the same time meant there still wasn’t enough. And the missions need a rework, and to be more varied. Give me special rules for battlezones and cut down on the ones you’re doing for missions.

Credit: Craig "MasterSlowPoke" Sniffen

Final Thoughts

“Contemptor” Kevin: For all my complaining, I had an absolute blast. The Sunday of the event was the single nerdiest day of the past ten years for me (if not more!), and while I’m *still* exhausted from the adventure it was incredibly exciting. I got to meet new friends (Curie!), see dear friends, got most of the shiny Pokemon I was looking for (damn you, Rock Star Pikachu), had four games with excellent opponents and great vibes, and just overall had a blast.

Oh, I also did square dancing with Rob. I can’t say I was expecting that.

TheArmorOfContempt: I guess the real question is, would I recommend the Grand Narrative? The short answer is yes. I had a great time, and with the World Championship going on in the other room it really does feel like the capstone event of the GW Open series that it is meant to be. In this regard I am a strong supporter of what Mike, Zach, and the others are trying to do even if it still feels like there is a lot of improvement to be done. You definitely get the feeling that this is a labor of love by the events team, and something they are very proud of. With all this being said it is hard for me to imagine myself attending this event if I didn’t have a strong group of friends to hang out with. The Grand Narrative’s greatest strength is it seems to be an event that is going to have a very wide geographic reach, and thus I am going to see the greatest number of people I know from all over the world at it.

Commander Dante by Craig "MasterSlowPoke" Sniffen

MasterSlowPoke: Someone asked me if I would recommend the Grand Narrative to someone who had to fly in from over 7+ hours away. I definitely would say I would recommend going at least once to anyone interested in Warhammer. It’s a unique spectacle that can’t really be described adequately without going yourself. The sheer size and work put into it really does take you out of the real world for a weekend. However, if you’re going because you want to feel like you’re making a difference in the story of the event, I’d temper your expectations. Going alone I could see it being a little disappointing if you didn’t have a wonderful crew of nerds to hang out with after the dice are rolled, although the forced friends you’ll have by being paired into a battlegroup could help with that. If you have the capability to go to the next one, I still recommend it, even if the games themselves may be a little frustrating. I may sound a little down, but I still had an absolute blast and will be signing up day one next year.

PierreTheMime: The Grand Narrative is the ultimate “make your own fun” event. There is the basic level of participation in six special missions, but if you really want to get the true value of the event you need to take a deep breath, leave your dignity at the door, and get weird with it. You’re not here for competitive matches (though you might find some if you try), you’re here to wallow in the other side of the hobby pool. Be that person who swears vengeance and hunts other players across the tables. Make dark pacts. Hunt down heretics. Talk to all the actors and join in the evolving story as best you can. Toss in some costuming and/or arts and crafts. Hand out special trinkets and treats to others. You may just find that you’ve become someone's favorite memory years down the road. I made it my mission to “do all the things” this year and aside from going 6-0 I can confidently say I did as much LARPing as I could manage. I will be back.

Jack: Is it a perfect event? No. It’s definitely got its fair share of warts. That said, I’ll be back next year. I’m hopeful GW will learn from the issues with the missions and general organization they had this year, and the vibes are always great. I think it’s best if you go with a group of your friends, though you can still have plenty of fun going alone - in that case, lean into the discord in the months leading up to the event to make sure you’ve got some people to hang out with.

TheChirurgeon: Yeah, I had a great time and so did my son Bryce. I think there’s a lot of room for improvement but I’m excited and hopeful that they’ll continue to iterate and improve in future years, and in the process make the event what it really has the potential to be. They just need to invest as much into the game/play side of things as the costumes and props. And also spend a little more time working on tech infrastructure. If they want advice on that, I know a few guys who run a Discord and make an app for tracking Crusade campaigns…

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