Ineffable Ponderings of the Necron | 2023 In Review

Another year winds its way to the traditional conclusion, at least up here in the Anglosphere. Confused, full of cheese, and unsure what day it is (I get that every day...), the minds of all has-been Hobby Bloggers turn to reviewing the last year of trivial pastime activities and contemplating their own navels. Who am I to spit on glorious tradition? Well... tradition. Well... something we do, when we can be arsed.

2023 has marked a break from the past and a return to the future, or something like that. Back to Blogger, back to contemporary 40K, but also playing the contemporary game at all, engaging with the here and now and not folding my arms on the as and when.

I came into this year with some magnetic gaming boards I'd owned since 2017 and mainly used as photo backdrops, some brand new MDF scenery, and two blobs of Chaos Space Marines it had taken me four years to get table ready. All of this might have come to nothing if I hadn't also been informed of a local reprobate who'd started collecting Blood Angels...

Aesthetic wonder it is not, but game it is, and it is being played, and My Dudes are painted, and a good time is being had. The last time I'd been up to speed on 40K was 2013, and coming into ninth edition halfway through was a strange experience. It felt like a lot of the design lessons that had been learned and applied during my previous time with the game had been rolled back, and that we had returned to the principles of second edition. Lots of modifiers, lots of cards, not a lot of standardisation between units and some quite baroque interactions that made the whole thing play a lot more smoothly at small scales.

Combat Patrol and the Only War mission were fairly palatable, but as more rules were layered on going to Incursion (doubling the amount of stuff on the table) and Tempest of War (exponentially more complicated scoring) steam definitely started coming out of some ears. Even more so when, in a fit of enthusiasm, I signed up for Goonhammer's worldwide Crusade event and discovered:

1. Crusade is A Lot, especially when it's layered on top of Tempest to make it more palatable to the "I normally play tournament games" crowd (this was a mistake, and I hope against hope that they won't do it again)
   
2. There were no other players signed up in Wales as a whole (it's like there was a demilitarised zone around me, extending as far as Stockport!)
3. I really don't like Table Top Simulator (fine for them as likes it, I found it fussy, fiddly, and temperamental: three qualities I do not appreciate in software that made the whole 'poor imitation of a real tabletop game' even sadder)

 Nevertheless, we persisted.

Thanks to some rather more pro-active members of the community a day out to Bad Kitty Games in Birmingham (RIP) was arranged, as well as the delightful game with Beornwulf in Hereford (the largest, closest, tensest and probably most fun I've played thus far). My reign of terror was somewhat abortive - three games, two close losses and one absolute barnstorming - but at least I got the fun story of three Chaos Space Marines with four functioning eyeballs between them out of it, and my army was starting to level up nicely even if my characters were, 'ow you say, un petite bit de rubbishe.

With rumblings of tenth edition about to touch cloth over the summer, I redirected my efforts toward painting the Necrons I'd impulse-bought last winter. Their rules in ninth edition did not inspire me with confidence, but the promise of "simplified not simple" would prove to hold true for them in tenth. A decision was made, based on two factors: my increasing loss of fine motor control to various ailments of the physical form, and an amount of self-knowledge. 

Chaos projects always get away from me - there's a temptation there to soup in Knights and Daemons and what I still think of as Cult Troops and before I know it I have four different sets of rules to track and care about and start juggling between. Xenos, with two notable pointy eared exceptions, are easy. Buy a book. Done.

 

  Still not sure about these bases...

I spent the summer painting. Attempts to schedule a game when people with kids are spending time with them and I am working flat out around festivals usually fall flat. I won't drag too much of my real-life professional-type woes in here, but this one was unusually difficult thanks to a tech migration that didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped, and I've since left the job because I started having to find time for a two hour anxiety attack every day.

Did free up time to paint my Monolith, though.

 I've played three games with the tenth edition rules now, all with the extremely plain and unseasoned Only War scenario. I genuinely think this is the right way to go about learning a new thing - new core rules, new army, new detachment, whatever. Strip complexity out of the experience where you can, and stretch yourself in the area where you're trying to learn, where your attention should be focused.

What else? Well, much like last year, in the deep midwinter I have a birthday and I invariable ask for or buy terrain, and then spend December putting it together. This year, the theme is "Necrons" and the remit is "bigger simpler single pieces for playing proper 40K around."

I don't know if it's quite enough, but this TTCombat stuff is reasonably affordable, so I can always pick up one more big building if I need to.

Completing the Necron trifecta for the year, I have also been working on narratives! This is a very organic, fits-and-starts, dictated-by-actual-play process for me - I'm not particularly interested in worldbuilding and backstory is just playing with yourself, really. However, I do have the spur of having played some games a decade ago - a century in-universe, before the Fall of Cadia and the opening of the Cicatrix Maledictum and the fall of half the galaxy into the Dark Imperium.

I've also played some Dark Crusade with the chaps over the summer, in which my Necrons gave an appalling account of themselves (due to compatibility issues, ghetto-ass rural Internet connections, and also my not being very good at classic RTS gameplay). One such "phase out" moment did kick-start something marvellous, though; the increasingly detailed narrative of the Sworn, Necron hunters extraordinaire, aka. Garbutt's shiny new Primaris Marines, my opposite numbers.

He's been thrashing out a timeline of events to develop the tale of Captain Kaine, Codicier Aura and Lieutenant Bors; I've been ruminating on a Necron perspective that allows me to engage with what he's bringing to the table but also respect that my original Necron army is no longer with us.

Thus far, we've been skirmishing and practicing and learning. When Pariah Nexus drops next year, and brings with it a wealth of scenarios themed around Necrons and Necron affairs, the gloves are off - I want to get stuck into a proper Crusade again. It's genuinely my favourite way to play, especially with a regular opponent who's on the level, and I think using the actual missions designed for the format rather than bulking the dish out with regular primary/secondary/condition card draws will make it more palatable this go around.