Over The Top at the Grand Tournament!!!

I recently worked the Seattle GT as an Outrider and I got the chance to meet a lot of cool people and see some great armies. At a Grand Tournament, there are a lot of incredible armies. Conversions on a grand scale, painters that compete for Golden Daemons, etc. It can be difficult to get your army noticed. It seems to me that in the last year or so, as painting standards have risen, more people are turning to over-the-top looks or performances to make sure that they get noticed. This isn't a bad thing. They are highly entertaining and generally add to the fun and diversity of a Grand Tournament. I'll tell you a little bit about some of the Over the top things that I've seen, both at the Seattle GT and elsewhere. In keeping with my policy of keeping load times short and not loading the site down with images, I'll link to images elsewhere for those armies that I can find links to. I've also got a few pictures of some of the armies, so if your curiousity is piqued, email me and I'll see if I can mail you the pics, or tell you where to find them.

Ork Land Pirates- These Orks have a Battle wagon modeled like an aircraft carrier and another modeled like a tunneling submarine (it's got a great screw on the front and is modeled so that it looks like it's partly submerged under the ground.) They've also got trukks with sails and Nobz wearing diving gear ('eavy armor, perhaps?) It's a great looking army with cool conversions and some great paintjobs.

Female Orks-This ork army was modeled so that every figure was obviously female. One model had a "Gorgous Ladeez Of Waaaaagh! banner. Very neat looking and an interesting idea.

The Valhallan Commander-This army was conventional looking, but the player was unusual. Sean is a great guy. He runs Z Games in Vancouver, Washington, and I can see I'm going to have to stop by his store sometime. His objective markers were pictures of himself put into classic third-world Dictator poses on billboards. He spoke in a Russian accent almost all the time and really had a great time with it. I... I don't think I can really explain how funny he was, alternately boasting about how strong his army was and how it would crush the enemy, then referring to the army as "Garbage!" when the dice didn't work. (The snipers are ashamed that they miss so poorly, you should shoot them and put them out of their misery!) The army itself was a fairly conventional IG force with a few tanks and a Chimera and some heavy weapons squads and a bunch of standard squads. In addition to being funny, however, Sean also tried his hardest to make sure his opponent had fun. (He ended up winning Best Sportsman, so apparently it worked!) In one game, he was very obviously wiping out his opponent, so he would "forget" to fire his heavy weapon teams at times. He would also roll his mood die each turn (happy, sad, indifferent, angry, etc.) and would only fire the Mortars when he was happy. He then proceeded to charge into combat with his guardsmen (not generally a good tactic.) At the end of the game, he and the other player were tallying their scores and he realized their point totals were fairly close. He thought they might be within the margin for a tie, so he started searching his rule sheet to see what the margin for a tie was. The opponent found it first, and they were a little bit over the margin, so he had a win instead of a tie. When he found out, he crumpled up the rule sheet and tossed it to the floor and said, "Garbage!"(in his Russian accent) like an angry dictator. I was really impressed with him, and I'm definitely going to have to go down to Vancouver to see him again.

Diggaz-This was a very interesting looking army, since the player used unusual models for it. It was, apparently, an Ork army, but using Diggaz models from one of the specialist games that Games Workshop puts out (possibly Gorkamorka?)

The Familiar Army-This was a Fantasy army that consisted of models of various magical familiars (like black cats and owls and bats and little demon things) that were supposedly all controlled by the god of magic and were on a quest for him. I don't know enough about Fantasy (yet... more on this at a later date) to know what the army list was based on, but it looked pretty cool and very unusual.

The Warmonger Black Crusade-The Warmongers are a really cool gaming club out of New York City. They had a totally mad idea after a GT last year to have the whole club (or a lot of them anyway) get together and coordinate a massive project with linked armies. They put together Abbadon's 13th Black Crusade, featuring 9 of the Founding Chapters of Chaos. They each took one of the chapters and built an army around it. They also built 2 foot display bases for each of their armies, that were designed to be connected together to make a single 18 foot wide base with all nine armies on it! Check it out here.

The Thousand Squats Army-This is from last year, but it definitely fits in here. The Squats were the 40k equivalent of Dwarves. They were part of previous editions of 40k, but they have been dropped from 3rd edition. To make a long story short, this player (a Warmonger, see above) decided to do an army based on them. Since they no longer had an armylist, he used a Chaos armylist and converted his figures heavily. Check it out here.

Wow! How is my army going to compete against that? Well, it depends... what are you competing for? These armies tend to have a massive edge in the Player's Choice category, because they call attention to themselves (not easy to do in a field of 100 or more players) and they are different from the usual, which makes them additionally interesting. On the other hand, if you are competing for Appearance (like Best Painted) there is something that they don't always have going for them. Theme. Theme is a part of the Appearance Category that GW added this year. The Appearance judges (not me, since I was a rules judge) had a long meeting about it, but we were all given the rough points (which I believe were also written down in the packet that players received) about Theme. Theme boils down to asking, "Would you see this army if you were in the 40k universe?" Which means that if it's a Black Templar force, does it look like something the Black Templars would field, according to the background fluff? Which means that those heavily converted or heavily themed armies may not do as well in this category, even if they have great painting and conversions, unless they also fit the theme of their army.

Sportsmanship is another area where these over the top armies don't have an advantage. Depending on how they are set up, they may actually offer a disadvantage. In particular, the more radically different they are from the original army, the greater their disadvantage in Sportsmanship. If I look across the table and I have a hard time remembering which unit does what, or what they represent (you mean that's an assassin and those are ratling snipers?) I may feel that it wasn't quite a fair game, which means that they may get a lower Sportsmanship score for bringing an army that was hard to understand.

Battle Points can go either way for these over the top armies. They can be heavily themed, which makes them a bit different to play than a standard army. That means that the player may have a hard time using the army correctly, until they've had sufficient practice with the army. On the other hand, they may also be quite different than the enemy expects, so opponents may also have a steep learning curve, which would give the over the top army the advantage. The theme of the army may also make particular kinds of mission difficult for the army. (If they are all on foot, they'll have a difficult time claiming objectives, for example)

In short, there are some amazing armies and people out there, that are really trying for recognition, but they won't necessarily hog all the glory. A good paintjob coupled with a good attitude and solid tactics will still take you a long way! Maybe I'll see you at the GT next year!

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