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TL/DR:

This event was bad. This review will not be kind at times. You cannot see the best narrative events from this one but you can look backwards and see Fyre Fest quite clearly inside the horizon.

General issues:

I would like you to keep in mind while reading this that the event was $300, the hotel was roughly $180/night, and many people had to fly in (or park at the venue for $50/day). The missions are available here, click on each round to see the link to the download: https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-us/articles/ylgfa7ao/warhammer-40000-grand-narrative-2024-live-latest-updates-from-the-warfront/

The "thematic immersion" consisted of a single large printed fabric standee (probably 8ft x 6ft) with the setting art on it (icy plains, rocky wasteland, etc). The tables themselves were often sparse on terrain and themed by the paint scheme of the buildings and foam rock walls added (blue for ice, russet for rocky wasteland, etc) with some thematic terrain added (ork wasteland had plenty of Kill Team Ork terrain, did not see much on the ice planet aside from resin frozen rivers). Terrain density was low to very low on every table I played on, with no terrain bases or templates to alleviate the fire lanes.

Additionally, matchups were done via tarot card, which you received with you badge and a copy of which was at a table in each room. So if you played the other battlegroup previously? Unless you could ask someone to surreptitiously switch (either in your room or in the adjacent space which was the same planet but different battlegroups), you played them again.

If you had read the player pack and wanted to interact with a specific Vox Localum (the room personas), roughly five of them were based in the UK (not stated beforehand) and could not be interacted with. So if you brought Death Guard to the US and wanted to explore the narrative with Threnn Gallow and his brother... tough. The Vox Localum were also being run ragged in the US, ferrying rules changes, narrative orders, resolving rules questions, and setting up. The event needed non-narrative runners, the Vox Localum were champions for keeping up as they did.

The Lords of War were immersive, in character, and well acted with quality costuming. However, if you weren't able to really get in their (or the writer's) heads, you may not accomplish the mission in a particular round. For instance, "Keep them back". Does this mean keep them off my deployment zone objective? Or out of my Deployment Zone entirely? Or out of my territory (table half)? Does it mean denying them Area Denial (hold center) or Secure No Man's Land? Turns out it meant, "keep them out of your deployment zone". Similarly, a generic "kill them" ended up meaning "slay the warlord" instead of any of the other 3 or 4 Kill secondaries. This meant that while the briefings were fun, you didn't have a lot of information to work with and you generally sat through each other faction's briefing as well, which felt less immersive and like we were getting information we shouldn't have access to. This is not the fault of the Lords of War, this is on whoever organized it this way. Later rounds, the discord drops started to be more specific, I assume because they received live (and likely hot) feedback on things.

Narrative games appeared to be strictly win/loss. Fame and Infamy were also "yes/no", without much nuance. Particularly irritating was a lack of clarification of what was contributing to fame/infamy. At various points during the weekend I heard the following triggered it:

* Pick up relic tokens
* Fail the pick up a relic token and either sacrifice your warlord (fame) or sacrifice a unit nearby (infamy)
* Other misc actions that could be construed as such to the Vox Localum

Which of these was correct? All of them and none of them, different Vox Localum were asking for different things. What was not said, until I attempted it, was that you could only pick up one relic token per game.

There was no way to track who had dropped from the event and while some Vox Localum seemed to have the player counts handy, it was often a cry of, "Raise your hand if you do NOT have an opponent!". People appeared to drop from day two onwards, for reasons that may become clear as I discuss the missions.

The Games:

Round 1: Linebreaker offensive versus Awakened Dynasty Necrons

Terrain was adequate, though there was a brutal fire lane diagonally cross most of the board. Players score points equal to non-battleshocked units in their opponents territory each command phase. Units cannot be shot beyond 18" and outside 12" it is at -1 to hit. Difficult for Death Guard, given the variety of melee threats (big brick of wraiths with technomancer and bladed destroyers with the new melee destroyer lord and nightbringer). A possibility that I could eke out a tie as round two progressed. However:

New orders! Get as many units out of your own Deployment Zone as you can and then go upstairs to the briefing. Oh, wait, no, JK, finish your game first not just this round. Wait, no this round. Wait no, sorry, the whole game. For real this time. This I accomplished, removing a little over half my army from my own DZ over three turns. This despite my warlord's (Lord of Contagion) bodyguard unit (blightlords) succombing to a failed relic roll and all dying instantly, no saves allowed (LoC was cleaned up by immortals next turn).

Turns out the new orders had ZERO narrative impact and ZERO scoring impact so that meant I had a full loss on the first game. That felt bad and was only a harbinger of things to come. Would otherwise have been a fine narrative mission if the new orders hadn't been dropped on us. Folks that ignored the new orders seemed to have a great time with this one.

Round 2: Contested Seizure versus Skitarri Hunter Cohort

Terrain was below par with a large, 9" wide open ice river in the middle running across as 60" of table. Deployment was table quarters. Opponent had three disintegrators with ferrumite cannons and lascannon ironstriders. Great guy, really rough map for Death Guard. The mission is a heavily modified version of The Relic. Had my Warlord and Blightlords pick up a relic (yay!) and then advance into the open turn 2 with most things coming on from reserves and moving in to fight or do the action. This is where I found out, with my warlord sitting in the open on turn 3 in front of 12+ lascannon shots plus 9+ krak missile shots, that you can only pick up one relic per game. Great rules clarity GW! Nearly pulled out a win (forgot the mission reinforcements rule which would have handily won me the game), lost after my opponent made a 4+ advance roll, would otherwise have tied which it did not look like I should have been able to do given the state of the board (triple disintegrators on a huge firing lane will do that).

A good round, good mission, great opponent, inadequate terrain.

Round 3: Lightning Strike versus Ironstorm Marines

I'm not going to describe the mission other than to say this appears to have been a gimme for the Imperium after the Imperium ended up dead last after the first day. Chaos/Interloper deploys in the center 13" diagonal stripe, Imperium deploys on opposite table corners, Imperium always goes first. Played into tournament ready Ironstorm that could pick up additional alpha strike from their roster, knowing they had first turn. Terrain would have been good, frankly, but was unfortunately a series of T shaped obscuring ruins. So anything hiding in the center DZ would be shootable from one of the two Attacker deployment corners. Literally no place to hide. Tabled top of turn 3 despite reserving half the army to make a play of it turn 2. People paid $300 to be fed to their imperium opponents to even out the scoring.

Round 4: Light the Beacons versus Imperial Knights

I want to preface this with the Knight player is a great guy. Cool opponent, not his fault the mission did this. Not going to describe the mission again, just deployment, this was another "Who's going first? Cool, GG." round at this $300 event.

Deployment was, to make it simple, alternating deeptrikes. You can deploy INSIDE NINE INCHES but outside 3 inches of an opposing unit at the cost of D6 mortal wounds. Now, if you're Knights (of either flavor), you just deploy at 9" and call it a day. Either you lose, or, in my case the knight player won the roll off for first turn and tabled me on turn 2 (which I would honestly have been doing to him if I had won the roll off)

At this point I confirmed that I could move my flight forward two days and literally took the midnight flight home, saving a day on hotel and food expenses. I did not play the next two rounds but will give my impressions of the rules and deployments.

Round 5: Frontline Withdrawal

THE DEPLOYMENT ZONES. ARE SIX INCHES. AWAY. FROM. EACH. OTHER. I woke up sick, at noon, having driven an hour from the airport at 3am, and I'm still glad I didn't stay.

Round 6: Terminus offensive

This actually looks like a good mission with normal deployment zones?

So 3 out of 6 missions, for a $300 event (plus airfare and hotel for some) were actually good and not a coin flip or purposefully tilted towards one faction winning. Terrain that, to be unsparing, is thematic for local gaming groups circa ten years ago (with less than a dozen or so noticeable exceptions) The ending performances were supposedly good. Would be interested in whether anyone ever had to actually utilize any of the Chalnath lore, which was suggested in the event primer, I didn't see any references at all to it. Similarly, the Great Gun only had relevance in the final performances and at no other point.

Ouch. I'm sorry it wasn't a well run event. Was there any good points to your trip?

This is so unfortunate- I want to see GW do more narrative promotion, and hearing about this, it seems they've got a ways to go.

I wonder how the rest of the tourney ended up. If it was as poorly run.

I'll post what I put on my discord. To note I play Imperial Guard and did not take a meta list at all (two aircraft lol)

So i went to the 40k Grand Narrative in Atlanta this year and while I thought the volunteers and official cosplayers did a great job (Especially the Rogue trader, Kristoval Dynost the 3rd), there were some problems that need to be addressed.

On registration they did not have my name or any information about me, despite having bought my ticket months in advance. After my ticket was confirmed I was simply given a card (which determines who i would fight, which i was not told at the time) and a numbered battle group that I was supposed to belong to. I had no idea what these really meant, but I figured the briefing in the morning would tell me more, so I went to sleep and awaited more information in the morning. After the morning briefing I still had no idea what was going on, so I had to stop one of the Vox Localum, who themselves had to then stop another player, so that he could look at his discord, to tell me where I was supposed to go for my first game. Unbeknownst to me, all of this information was on the discord, and I did not get access to the discord or any information about the overall narrative until after my first game and asking about 6 people what was going on. Even after this it took the event organizers 4 email attempts to get my name correct and to send me a discord invite. All of this meant that I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing, what room was I supposed to fight in, or any information at all until it was essentially too late to process it. Communication about the event discord was posted nowhere publicly by GW on their websites and for such critical information to not be able to be seen was a failure in planning.

As far as the missions and gameplay went, I had an even worse time. I never felt like my decisions mattered due to the missions, deployment or time constraints. None of my missions were fair, or finished to completion.


My first game was supposed to be a 1v1 but there were not enough players in my battlegroup, so it ended up being me vs 2 ork players. The mission scored points for each unit at the end of your turn that was on your opponents side of the board. All units were unable to shoot past 18 inches and incurred a -1 penalty for shooting past 12 inches. As a guard player vs a good deal of melee orks, I was severely disadvantaged and I felt like there was little I could do to impact the game due to the parameters of the mission. I went second and my ork opponents went first. In three hours we were only able to complete one and a half turns. With I only completing one turn. The orks won a flawless victory due to the time constraints and mission parameters.

My second mission was vs Nurgle Chaos Demons and we only finished two turns there as well. That mission was actually even and If it had persisted I would have almost guaranteed to have won. That was the only game that I felt I had anything to do with the outcome. The mission was that we each had to put down marker beacons each turn, but during your opponents next turn if they assaulted it the beacon went away.


Mission three was again a mismatch in players, missions, and armies. I had to play another 2v1 this time my imperial guard and another vs a chaos knight list. This mission gained us points for being in the center of the board, and the defender points for preventing that. We could deploy our armies in two opposite corners while the defender placed all of their units in the center of the board. We were guaranteed First turn and thus 2 big imperial guard shooting armies vs knights with a deployment bonus and a first turn guarantee, the mission was practically over before it began. We tabled our opponent in 3 turns and scored maximum points. Props to our chaos opponent who took it on the chin.

The fourth mission was very similar to the 2nd mission, except that there were no deployment zones. Each commander placed a unit one at a time anywhere on the board so long as it was 3 inches away from an opponent unit. If it was within 9 inches however the unit suffered mortal wounds. As a shooting army vs World Eaters, I need to have space to work with, and with this deployment there was practically nothing i could do to stop his entire army from charging on turn one. He got first turn, and had scout moves with half his army. All of his units were within 2 inches before he even had to roll to charge. I was tabled in 3 turns and scored 0 points. That mission did not even deserve to be played out, and I felt like my time and money were being wasted.

At this point I was very frustrated with the game and the mission structure, I had no guarantee of getting on a flight back home and did not want to pay another $300 for a night at the hotel, so I went to sleep and took the first flight home.

They need to do a better job of ensuring fun games. I'm not there to win or be competitive, but I do want to have close games were I feel like I can affect outcomes. Of the four games I played Two only ever got to turn two, and the other two resulted in a tabling by turn 3.

Wow, those missions sound horribly unbalanced and not even remotely playtested.

I can't imagine saying, "Here let's do 2 vs 1, and you can't shoot at our close combat armies. This outta be a blast to play."

I also have trouble with any tournament organizer thinking, "This is exactly what we had in mind."

This whole event sounds more poorly thought out than when my old FLGS let a bunch of Tau players design the missions for a big game. All missions are dangerous terrain. Enjoy moving!

Was any part of the event worth going to?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Wow, those missions sound horribly unbalanced and not even remotely playtested.

I can't imagine saying, "Here let's do 2 vs 1, and you can't shoot at our close combat armies. This outta be a blast to play."

I also have trouble with any tournament organizer thinking, "This is exactly what we had in mind."

This whole event sounds more poorly thought out than when my old FLGS let a bunch of Tau players design the missions for a big game. All missions are dangerous terrain. Enjoy moving!

Was any part of the event worth going to?

The terrain was actually pretty dang bog standard across the board. Ruins and standard GW terrain on appropriately themed felt / mousepad mats. The only rooms I thought were above average was da kill sphere (ork world) and kesserin (forest world). I would have played all of my games on kesserin if I could have.

My lord of war (the rogue trader) was actually really cool and I thought she did a really good job at acting and popping in to the game room. The ork big mek and his grot were pretty funny and the suit was MASSIVE, however I don't think he walked around to the game rooms due to the sheer size and heat of wearing that thing. The Chaos lord of war felt like a dude in a robe with a big staff. To be honest the robe looked cheap and was of the improper material. I watched a video which explained that their original lord of war actually backed out of the event last minute due to his costume design being denied by GW and telling him to just wear a robe. Whether that is true or not I didn't see the chaos leader outside of the briefings.

The store was good and the people for the most part were nice despite my frustration with the rest of the event. However I did spend around $1000 for this event and unless these issues are addressed I would not recommend anyone going.GW should make a PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT about how they are going to run the event and what they are going to do ensure everyone has a fun time, or I would not even think about going again.

I guess this explains why GW don't create narrative content now and focus solely on comp instead. Because they can't, they're utterly inept.

 Gibblets wrote:
I guess this explains why GW don't create narrative content now and focus solely on comp instead. Because they can't, they're utterly inept.

So that's the thing, the narrative missions in Leviathan, Pariah Nexus, and White Dwarf are all mediocre to fine missions. And those missions are LEAGUES better than rounds 3, 4, and 5. None of them actively supports a first turn win, for example. The event would have been greatly improved by using generic missions.

3, 4, and 5 would have been improved on by playing Dawn of War from fething 4th edition.

Is the problem here that you just can't effectively combine a disparate selection of essentially random players and a proper narrative campaign in one event? It seems that way. Good narrative content is custom tailored to both the armies being played and the context of the wider narrative. Having everyone play the same mission and fudging a bunch of results to fit into some nebulous idea of an over-arching story isn't narrative. It's just a bad competitive tournament. Proper narrative games often dispense with regular notions of victory and defeat to allow for asymmetric objectives or unexpected actions by the participants. As the number of players goes up the opportunity to do that goes down.

Narrative takes a lot of work. Not just in terms of terrain and people walking around in costume. You need a solid story you're trying to tell and you need to thoroughly understand how various outcomes change the flow of the story, preferably with the ability to improvise certain consequences on the fly.

I've played a couple of tournaments that tried to have a narrative focus threaded through them and they have been universally terrible. Interestingly, the main complaint here about the cost of attendance versus the quality of the event was my main problem too. I think too many "narrative" organisers think they can get away with just doing weird and wonderful stuff and everyone will appreciate how wacky everything is. In reality, you need to respect the time and money your players have invested to be there and also understand that for every player who will laugh and joke while getting slaughtered in an unwinnable game there are a dozen more who still want some semblance of balance, even when playing narratively.

It sounds like several of those missions are almost impossible to win or have a chance at winning unless you know the mission beforehand and have built your army to cope with those missions.

I guess GW might have thought that if they varied them enough then any skew lists would also win on some and auto lose on others and thus come out even. Which you kind of experienced, but I agree its not really "fun" if the win/loss is basically outside of player influence and where the game itself doesn't have impact.

The inability to get beyond turns 2-3 is also pretty dire. Probably not helped by the numbers skewing as it always takes a team of 2 longer to think/act than 1 person (on average).

$1K is a big chunk of money in hobby terms - that's enough for a whole army. Granted that's not the amount GW are charging as such but when travel and overnight stay are likely mandator for many to attend such an event its a cost that adds into the whole experience that should be account for in the value they try to offer.

Slipspace wrote:
Is the problem here that you just can't effectively combine a disparate selection of essentially random players and a proper narrative campaign in one event? It seems that way. Good narrative content is custom tailored to both the armies being played and the context of the wider narrative. Having everyone play the same mission and fudging a bunch of results to fit into some nebulous idea of an over-arching story isn't narrative. It's just a bad competitive tournament. Proper narrative games often dispense with regular notions of victory and defeat to allow for asymmetric objectives or unexpected actions by the participants. As the number of players goes up the opportunity to do that goes down.

Narrative takes a lot of work. Not just in terms of terrain and people walking around in costume. You need a solid story you're trying to tell and you need to thoroughly understand how various outcomes change the flow of the story, preferably with the ability to improvise certain consequences on the fly.

I've played a couple of tournaments that tried to have a narrative focus threaded through them and they have been universally terrible. Interestingly, the main complaint here about the cost of attendance versus the quality of the event was my main problem too. I think too many "narrative" organisers think they can get away with just doing weird and wonderful stuff and everyone will appreciate how wacky everything is. In reality, you need to respect the time and money your players have invested to be there and also understand that for every player who will laugh and joke while getting slaughtered in an unwinnable game there are a dozen more who still want some semblance of balance, even when playing narratively.

All of this. There are ways to do it, but it takes a lot of work amd effort, and probably would require more from GWs staff than corporate is willing to pay them for.

It seems like the narrative event should have been a combat patrol event.

Where armies are closer to the balance point.

It wouldn't solve all the issues, but may make a dent.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
Is the problem here that you just can't effectively combine a disparate selection of essentially random players and a proper narrative campaign in one event? It seems that way. Good narrative content is custom tailored to both the armies being played and the context of the wider narrative. Having everyone play the same mission and fudging a bunch of results to fit into some nebulous idea of an over-arching story isn't narrative. It's just a bad competitive tournament. Proper narrative games often dispense with regular notions of victory and defeat to allow for asymmetric objectives or unexpected actions by the participants. As the number of players goes up the opportunity to do that goes down.

Narrative takes a lot of work. Not just in terms of terrain and people walking around in costume. You need a solid story you're trying to tell and you need to thoroughly understand how various outcomes change the flow of the story, preferably with the ability to improvise certain consequences on the fly.

I've played a couple of tournaments that tried to have a narrative focus threaded through them and they have been universally terrible. Interestingly, the main complaint here about the cost of attendance versus the quality of the event was my main problem too. I think too many "narrative" organisers think they can get away with just doing weird and wonderful stuff and everyone will appreciate how wacky everything is. In reality, you need to respect the time and money your players have invested to be there and also understand that for every player who will laugh and joke while getting slaughtered in an unwinnable game there are a dozen more who still want some semblance of balance, even when playing narratively.

All of this. There are ways to do it, but it takes a lot of work and effort, and probably would require more from GWs staff than corporate is willing to pay them for.

Yup and from what I could tell everyone was exhausted by the end of the day including the event organizers. They tried their best and did an admiral amount of work, but they lacked either the resources, the experience, or the foresight to see the problems. I want to again give kudos to those who worked the event they put in the effort and it's a shame I didn't have as good of a time as I wanted to.

If they fix the matchups, missions and time constraints it would be a much much better event.

I personally did not mind the narrative at all and I understand that a large event like that is going to preclude individuals from having a larger amount of impact on the story. I thought what they did there was great actually, I j just wish that what existed on the discord was more visible.

 Gibblets wrote:
I guess this explains why GW don't create narrative content now and focus solely on comp instead. Because they can't, they're utterly inept.

When it's not a tournament with a wide variety of factions, 40k's Narrative is just fine- in fact, I'd argue it's the best it's ever been. Crusade escalation 500-3K is awesome with a regular group of about six players.

I think the core mechanics of 9th (especially psychic rules) were more conducive to narrative play, but 9th and 10th are far and away the best narrative sandboxes I've ever played in. You just have to Crusade in order to experience it. It's a full on RPG with plastic soldiers. It is Inquisitor 28.

Back when Spec Ops still existed for KT, playing roster-based armies with gestalt KT and 40K Crusade profiles was freakin' Epic. I can't wait to see December's bespoke GSC Crusade content... They're already one of the best factions in the game to Crusade with- their 10th ed. content is even better than the 9th (I don't think there were Propagate the Stars or Ordeal victories in 9th).

I’ll object to the “9th’s pyschic rules were better for narrative than 10th’s.”

It’s the customization in 9th that was better.
If you could choose from three psychic weapons, two psychic abilities, or a significant passive stat boost on any given Psyker, I doubt the lack of a dedicated phase would matter.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I’ll object to the “9th’s pyschic rules were better for narrative than 10th’s.”

It’s the customization in 9th that was better.
If you could choose from three psychic weapons, two psychic abilities, or a significant passive stat boost on any given Psyker, I doubt the lack of a dedicated phase would matter.

Yeah, folks have managed to change my mind about psychic powers need their own phase; I'm now onboard with no phase. The customization aspect IS for sure what's missing in 10th.

But in terms of narrative, yes, psychic powers were woven into the narrative through the wide variety of interactions with them. For example, in Crusade, Psychic ability was another type of battle honour, which meant that we had progression through levels of psychic mastery. Deny the Witch is DEFINITELY a narrative hook for a Sisters player, and there were various levels of that too. There were Agendas that required the performance of Psychic actions, and the duel of will between Blanks and Psykers added yet another level. Some of the Ksons stuff was off the hook, both in the core rules and in the Crusade content, and the same is true of GK.

Again, in a stand-alone 2k matched play pick-up game, no, even 9th's psychic rules probably wouldn't feel particularly narrative. But stand-alone pick-up battles aren't where narrative really shines. Sure, lots of folks will point out that missions in previous editions were more narrative in nature... And I'd probably agree with that generally speaking. But even then, you really wanted to link them in campaign if you're talking about narrative. Maybe map-based, or maybe a tree campaign. The Planetstrike and Cityfight stuff was awesome... But they kinda brought it back in Octarius in 9th, and Urban Conquest from 8th still held for 9th.

 PenitentJake wrote:
Crusade escalation 500-3K is awesome with a regular group of about six players.

How does your group run this? Like, do you have house rules on how often you have to spend RP on the "Increase Supply Limit" requisition? Or do you all just naturally play in a way that even the slowest growing force lets you play bigger battles soon enough?