by Peter Atkinson
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder… or is it in the saddle of a giant wolf? We can argue whether that was the best reveal ever, but Gitmob is certainly the one that got my blood pumping:
I haven’t gone balls-deep into a new release for years, but I’ll be selling off the last of my 40K to do exactly that. I love everything about this – I love the models, I love the fluff and I love the fact that it’s happening. Helps that I’m a huge Mad Max fan too – I can see myself maining Gitmob for the foreseeable future.
What about the Orruks? Well that Hobgrot dude is just gonna be kitbashed / proxied, and in all honesty I’m not super energised by the idea of more faction terrain to lug around. But I am pleased we’re getting the Foot of Gork. It’s a literal physical manifestation of magic on the battlefield – one with a venerable history – and it should have been the first faction Endless Spell in the game. So I’ve got one word to say: Thanks FINALLY.
Is it Podiums, or Podia?
Spell it how you want, as long as you spell it with a W!
Let’s hear it for PC core team members Pat Nevan and Zak Rockman, who both smashed onto the Podium at Lost Legion GT this weekend. Pat was rocking his trademark Khorne, with Skullreaper blenders and Skullcrusher tarpits, while Zak was taking names with his “But can you table me twice?” Sylvaneth Monster Mash.
Zak was playing for the event win on Table 1, Round 5 where he came up against the 80-Bestigor netlist in the hands of the mighty Nathan Thompson. Nathan is an absolute juggernaut as well as a friend of ours, so we were rapt to see him win the event, and delighted to pick up a couple more Podiums for our writing team along the way too.
Anyway. Welcome to our monthly catch-up on what we’ve been publishing recently here on Plastic Craic, along with a look ahead to what’s coming up in December – both here on the blog, and in the PC community.
Let’s get into it.
Indexhammer: November ’24
In November we published eight Age of Sigmar articles here on the main blog, plus a further eight over on our Patreon site.
PC Community
We’re kicking off the Plastic Craic Global Campaign! The idea is that you’ll play the games you would be playing anyway against your own local opponents – Hardcore tourney prep, casual shitlists or anything inbetween – and submit your results to me. I’ll organise the players into teams and you’ll earn points for your team by playing games, winning games, doing hobby, naming your units – all the fun things!
And we’ll keep the extra mayo for conquering the map between rounds, so there’s no direct impact on the games you’d already be playing. It will only be narrative in the sense that the map itself will create its own narrative1, but your actual games can still be GHB Matched Play in its purest form.
This is open to all Patrons and I’ll be releasing final details over the next week or so, for a Jan-Feb campaign window. Check out more details here and let me know if you want to get involved – we already have enough players to get it firing, so it’s definitely happening.
The other popular article we published on the Patreon this month was a reflection on Luck vs Skill in Wargaming, both as a high-falutin’ principle and in the context of AOS. It did generate a bit of discussion amongst our members so it’s one to check out if you haven’t already.
Art and Hobby
No sooner had our Spearhead hobby challenge finished than we launched into The Sticky Brush! This is our first single-model painting contest, where we each aim to really push one mini as far as we can. This comp is as much about learning new techniques and improving from your baseline as it is about all-out excellence, and we’re looking forward to seeing what you cook up between now and the end of January.
We’re also running a contest (just for fun) to identify the greatest artwork in the Warhammer fantasy canon (including WHFB, AOS and all adjacent settings such as Mordheim or Blood Bowl). The first round of voting just concluded with around 2,000 votes counted, so thanks to everyone who got involved! We’ll be back with the second round of voting soon.
AOS4
The month started with one controversy and ended with another, as we opened November with that whole thing about Endless Spells jumping straight into each other’s combat range, and closed it out with Zak ruffling some feathers on Faction Terrain.
We’ve already been fully vindicated on the former thanks to the latest FAQ. I’m sure everyone who was carrying on about how wrong we are will pour the same amount of energy into congratulating us and thanking us for our insights 2.
Zak’s Faction Terrain discussion is a different beast – big parts of it were opinions on what’s good, and nobody is going to get an FAQ saying they were right or wrong about that. But the core points are:
- You can and should be milking your opponent’s faction terrain for battle tactics and free movement
- Therefore it’s not automatically the correct decision to just take all faction terrain, every time
I certainly wouldn’t expect everyone to agree on the ranking of every faction piece3, but Zak has just grabbed another podium with Sylvaneth in a red-hot field, so the fella might have some clue what he’s talking about. When it comes to a matter of opinion, I’d say that Zak’s earned the right to express his.
So – hands up who missed Angry Pat? Constructive Pat has been fun but if you were wondering when we’d cycle back to the Full-On Pat Rant subgenre, then boy are you in luck. He’s been playing Nurgle and has all the opinions on where they’re at. TLDR: Back to gathering dust in the cupboard.
Now, we do enjoy a good list review – we hope that our Power Picks and Coolest Lists format celebrates list writing while keeping things snappy, and it’s an opportunity to give our friends around the world a good roasting.
In that spirit we gave the legends in the Scotland AOS community a few friendly jabs in our Brewdog 24 List Review, and followed it up with a review of Geelong’s finest at Lost Legion 24. We’ll probably have a break from the List Reviews for a little while now but if you’re a Patron, and you’d like to have us cover your event, shoot me a line and we’ll see what we can do. People seem to enjoy reading them and we’re here to support the people who support us.
Coming up in December
So let’s take a look at what we’re working on for the weeks ahead:
- Remember when we said Pete was working on a guide to Endless Spells in AOS4 and some of the tricks you can pull? Yeah, he’s still working on it. December. Definitely December.
- Our Patron-voted article was for a Tournament Report on Lost Legion GT, which some combination of Pete, Pat, Zak and Joel will be reporting back on. In fact it’ll probably blow out to several articles, perfectly encapsulating the maxim “be careful what you wish for”.
- We’ll be running our showdown article on the greatest artwork in the Warhammer fantasy canon, moving on to the Top 8 bracket.
- Over on the Patreon, we’ll tidy up the Plastic Craic Global Campaign ready for launch in early 2025.
Craicheads
We’re rapt to welcome our new Patrons Aaron McHours, James Harlow and Almost Human since the last update. Thank you so much for getting involved – and we’re delighted to add your name in lights at the end of each article moving forward.
We’ve been building up a pretty chilled community. Our channel is members and writers only (No Dickheads Policy) so if you want to join us, you know what to do.
If you’d like to help us continue our work, we’d love to have your support. All Patreon Tiers include Discord access, exclusive articles and regular contests. Our Tiers are priced to be within everyone’s reach, so please click here to join us today!
- Not in the GW sense of “Narrative” gaming, which too often tends to mean “Roll a 6 for some insane, random reward and watch the game collapse in on itself”. ↩︎
- They won’t, of course. ↩︎
- We didn’t even agree on that internally – for example I do think the Stormcast one is still worth taking. See what I mean? Opinions. ↩︎
Plastic Craic 