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So, last year I went to the inaugural London GT with my Renegades and had a less-than-fun experience - https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/692504.page

This year, I was very sceptical about attending (despite it being in my town) until I heard that Greg of The Imperial Truth was to be running The London Heresy - a HH Narrative event at the same time. I've been to a couple of Imperial Truth events, and they've all been fun and fluffy. So i signed up, and here’s the review!

(I’ve nabbed some photos from people’s own pages or the official photographers as I didn’t have images of every game!)

Getting there

The venue this year was the Naim Dangoor centre in West London - it wasn't as brightly lit as last year, but it was really big - a huge community sports centre with enough room for what looked like around 150 tables. The organisers had evidently taken on board a load of the feedback - there were plenty of event personnel in bright blue 'L40KGT' t-shirts guiding people to the correct entrance - everyone seemed to know what the plan was all weekend and all the staff were very friendly, and seemed to be having a fun time of it. Here's the room in full swing.



Unfortunately the one thing that hadn't really changed was the terrain. Last year, we had loads of lovely Urbanmats to play on, but every table had the same five bits of unpainted MDF city block. This year, they had sprayed the MDF grey! There evidently was some other terrain created - simple foam hills and rock patches which broke things up and were fully painted - but they were pretty randomly scattered across the boards with no real sense of matching them to the Urbanmat they were sitting on. Lots of clear space, no LOS-blocking terrain, the bare minimum for an ultra-competitive event where nobody cares about the looks, but particularly disappointing for a Heresy one.

The Event

The London Heresy event was a five round narrative campaign with two games at 1500 points and three at 3000 points. Players were split into Loyalist or Traitor sides. Each round, everyone would play the same custom mission and, at the end of the round, either Loyalists or Traitors would be declared the winners based on how many tables they'd won. Victory points were recorded per side so we'd know who was in front, but individual rankings weren't - there were no prizes for best general. All of Greg's events are finely managed so that people have pretty balanced games - if someone brings a really scary list, they'll be put up against other lists, or lists who are capable of beating them. Games might be arranged for fluff reasons (Russ v Magnus or Dorn v Perturabo, etc). Characters who die too often will start to lose WS and BS through the event, and armies who are having too easy time might get penalties applied. All lots of fun, and it ensures that all the games played should be pretty close.

Originally I wanted to finish my Word Bearers in time, but when I realised that wasn't going to happen I fell back on the Traitor Militia. Here's my army:

PIC



It turns out I was the only Militia player there. There were no Solar Auxilia or Blackshields, only one full-Knight player, and lots of Salamanders for some reason!

Game 1 - Legio Custodes

My first game was against the Legio Custodes commanded by (possibly) Mike, a competitive 40k player who was having his first go at 30k. You could tell the list was 40k-influenced as it was basically a deathstar - 6 Agamatus jetbikes with Valdor attached (making them ignore difficult terrain), an Oblivion Knight attached (to give them Stealth) and a Knight Errant with Narthecium attached (to make them FNP). Filth. There were also a couple of Calladus tanks, but these didn't have much to shoot at (given all my army is AV14) and died pretty quickly to my tanks.

The mission was Assassination - the winner would be the first to kill the other's general. We did the fluffy thing and charged towards each other, and pretty soon the death star was spending most of each turn eating my goons, and my tanks were waiting around with nothing else to do as I fed more goons into the meat grinder. My general, Renegade Commander Evil Bob, was hiding in the Gogon with the final goon squad, and it came down to fateful choice - would Evil Bob hide all game in the Gorgon, or get out and lead the final squad in defiance of the false emperor??? For fluff reasons, he got out and led the final squad of crazed loonies into the combat, immediately being cut down by Valdor in a challenge. Of course, this lost me the game but seemed like the right thing to do. in the end, (possibly) Mike went on to win all 5 of his games with the even-more-filthy 3000pt version of the list so maybe I should have pushed for the win in the first one!!





Game 2 - Death Guard

My second game was 3000pts against a loyalist Death guard force led by Crysos Morturg. The mission was War of Lies (randomly valued objectives) and Hammer & Anvil deployment. He had two 10-man squads of Grave Guard and one 10-man squad of Deathshroud, all infiltrating because of Morturg, plus some Laser and Quad Launcher Rapiers and three squads of Outflanking Stalker vets in Rhinos. I set up in a tank gun line with a few sacrificial Leman Russ further forward to push back deployment of the terminators.

The three lines of Terminators proved to be quite resilient through the game, and took a fair amount of time to destroy, which left me in an awkward position by turn 4. I had removed almost all of his army, but only held one objective and while he held two, so it felt like I’d actually managed to lose despite taking few casualties. War of Lies came through, though, and it turned out that the Death Guard merely held worthless patches of dirt, while I held a maximum value objective. First win of the tournament.




Game 3 - Salamanders

My last game of the day was against quite a small but beautifully painted Salamanders army, consisting of Nomus Rhytan and some Firedrakes in a Spartan, some Pyroclasts in a Land Raider, a few squads of Tactical Marines in Rhinos, a Contemptor, a Malcador and a Deredeo. The mission was a variant of Shatter Strike with cumulative points - points scored every turn based on being in the enemy table half. However, it was Vanguard Strike deployment which skewed things a bit as it became very easy to get in the enemy half in the corners. It was also Meatgrinder, so destroyed Troops units went into Ongoing Reserves!

I deployed with everything on one side of the board, hoping to rush into the closest corner, but obviously this still took a couple of turns due to the slowness of the goons and the physical size of my transports!

My opponent was really unlucky early on with his saves, and in turn one I had immobilised the Spartan and the Contemptor, destroyed a Rhino and taken all but one hull point from the Land Raider. However, the Pyroclasts and Tactical on the furthest side of the table deployed across the line and started racking up points, staying there for most of the game.

The game unfolded in the two corners - on one side, Rhytan and the Firedrakes survived admirably long before being swamped by cultists, ably assisted by a Tactical Squad that kept on returning from reserves. The Gorgon got it’s first flatten of the tournament when it spend a few turns Thunderblitzing the immobilised Spartan into much. On the other side, the Pyroclasts and a Tactical squad kept on scoring until my destroyed units started moving on in the same place and ate the Tactical squad. In the end he had very little left on the board, I had pretty much all my army, and slightly more victory points. Second win!




Game 4 - Iron Hands

The first game of Sunday was another 1500pt game against an Iron Hands force led by Autek Mor, and I was surprised how much he’d managed to fit in. A Tactical and Breacher squad for Troops, Sicaran, Autek and Gorgon Terminators in a Caestus and a Fire Raptor - all quite scary as I had no anti-flyer weapons! The mission was Kill Points based, but with a rule that meant that a Ld test had to be passed to fire at anything but the closest enemy (vehicles at Ld8).

I managed to get first turn and had a good round of shooting, where my opponent suffered from the fact that most of the army was off-board. All he had was Breachers and Tacticals in a Rhino and the Sicaran and after a full round of shooting (and a really lucky Malcador autocannon shot on the Sicaran) all that was left was the Tactical and four Breachers, standing in some ruins on the other side of the table.

Things got more difficult when the flyers arrived, though i was helped by the fact that the Fire Raptor has a hard time against heavy vehicles and doesn’t really have the firepower to remove my big cultist units. The Gorgons later assaulted into the Malcador, but with only one Hammer didn’t manage to destroy it, while Autek Mor went hunting Vanquishers. Given that the first half of the army was all but destroyed, the rest of the army could concentrate on the flyers and destroyed the Caestus over a few turns, swamped the Gorgons with cultists and forced the Tactical on the far side to flee off the board. Assured of a win, Evil Bob once again challenged the enemy commander to a duel, and was once again cut down by the servants of the false emperor!






Game 5 - Dark Angels

The last game was against Chris from the Club of Filth (see game 1) and his Dark Angels Ravenwing army. Lots of squads of Jetbikes with heavy bolters and bio-ammo (actually less good against my army than regular heavy bolters), two Lightnings with all the Kraken Penetrators, some Terminators in a Caestus and some Terminators in a Dreadclaw. Chris is a lovely guy who I’ve played before, but the list was pure filth and he was playing using the loosest possible interpretation of the Ravenwing rules (units ‘leaving the table’ don’t have to reach the edge, they can just be picked up and removed, even in combat, even after disembarking, hovering flyers can be removed as they count as skimmers, etc). We were playing modified Kill Points based on unit type, and with the lengthways pointy-arrow deployment.

I had issues from the start as there was barely enough room to park my tanks in the deployment zone, so everything started getting in the way of the other, though I managed to take out a unit and a half of Jetbikes in the first turn. However, Chris had deployed right at the back of the table and as the game unfolded I saw why. Each turn, he’d remove anything that had jinked into Ongoing Reserves and leave anything that could shoot at maximum range, jinking if necessary so that I didn’t cause that much damage. The exceptions were the Lightnings turning up and deleting the Baneblade, and the flyers dropping off Terminators to delete the Malcadors. What I could shoot at and what side it was on was entirely controlled by him, so I couldn’t amass enough kill points to equal his. Chris is lovely guy, and the time spent was a laugh, but we weren’t really playing a game - he had a list with enough shenanigans to win all five games, and my guys could only sit there and take pot shots. Still, at least Evil Bob survived!

(Photos from the London Heresy FB group)



End of the Tournament

So, three wins and two losses, and I even managed to complete most of my games. Loyalists managed to keep control of the planet in the end, which is something of a rarity in Heresy events (must be the Custodes). Generally the Heresy area was lots of fun all the way through, people laughing, shouting, playing narratively and the like (by comparison, the 40k tables looked to be full of SERIOUS WARGAMERS, very few of them having fun with their endless Tau and Elder and Magnus lists). There were a few blips - I know a few people were VERY annoyed at being essentially removed from their game when playing the Ravenwing, and my personal low point listing to my Game 1 and Game 5 opponents chatting with their competitive 40k mate about how fantastically broken Valdor could be like it was a good thing (and then, if you stack him with THIS, you basically win!”) - but generally everyone was having fun and playing fluffy armies.

It came to prize giving and, as per usual, the prizes were engraved tankards for Best Sportsman and Army, with no prizes for Best General. Other winners included Best Objectives, Fluffiest Army, Best Backstory etc, all of which got gift tokens from Element Games, who were sponsoring the event. There had also been a raffle going around and I had bought a few tickets, and was lucky to win the grand (and, it turned out, only) prize - a FW Typhon Siege Tank!! It will be getting some oversized engine stacks and earring a place in my White Scars army.

We also waited around to see the prize giving for the 40k which, like last year, seemed a bit weird. In the raffle, it became clear that, while the Heresy raffle had only one prize, the 40k Raffle had LOADS of prizes, none of which were eligible to the Heresy players. I’d guess around ten people won boxed-set level prizes from the raffle, which seemed a bit unfair. At a guess there were around 40 Heresy players and 120 or so 40k players, but ten times as much spent on 40k prizes.

The main prize, as far as I could tell, went to someone who was an active tournament player who placed highly but didn’t usually win events, and he got a great big sword and a few boxed sets. The weird thing was that he ALSO won Best Newcomer and picked up another pile of prizes for that - surely that’s a prize that should go to someone who doesn’t usually compete in these sorts of things? Furthermore, because the top table were populated by people who only put the minimum 3 colours into their army, the same person ALSO won Tournament Winner. Generally, I’d always say that if one person wins all the prizes at a Tournament, the tournament needs to seriously look at their scoring system, and the whole thing was a bit fishy. I’m glad I was in the Heresy!


Conclusions

The London Heresy event was a fun weekend. There were a few dodgy armies, and a few dodgily-written scenarios, but it remained characterful and enjoyable throughout, with a good venue and a real sense of fun. Greg and the Imperial Truth guys did well making sure everyone had as much fun as possible, and the addition of a great big whiteboard to record the mission stats and wounded characters made the whole thing easier to keep track of. I won as many games as I lost and although my army was pretty scary for a lot of my opponents, it was so unwieldy that the actual Victory Points were usually quite close.

The wider event was vastly better organised than last year, and the whole team were much friendlier and more personable. It really seems that they learned a lot from their first tournament and tried to make things better. More than anything, though, it’s clear to me that the organisers are very much from the very competitive side of the 40k world, where terrain and painting is practically irrelevant, things like the ETC matter, and armies are there as excercises in developing the filthiest bunch of tricks and shenanigans possible. Each to their own, butI was glad I wasn’t playing in the 40k event.

I’ll definitely go again next year if Greg is running another Heresy bash, and it'll be interesting to see if the feel from the 40k end changes once 8th is out.

Great write up as always! I've followed your army for a long time and it's great to see it in action and get a few decent results. Hope to see your Word Bearers in action soon