Tanksgiving 2025

This year I participated in the Tanksgiving event at the local Warhammer store. 

The idea is that you pledge to build and paint a new vehicle or monster for Warhammer 40,000 and then show up with it on the designated day to participate in a mega battle. Now, obviously, it's to get people to BUY more BIG TANKS AND MONSTERS... but you don't HAVE to buy new ones. You could bring in some old stuff still on the sprue sitting in you pile of shame... and I DID consider that - as I have more than a few Imperial Guard tanks and other vehicles I could have brought in and pledged.... but I was worried that might distract me from my plan to FOCUS on Age of Sigmar stuff... so instead I bough a brand new Great Unclean One to build and paint... and I did that:

Great Unclean One

Now... for a tank battle... A Great Unclean One probably wasn't the smartest choice... It doesn't really have much in the way of ranged attacks... (it does have a vomit attack with a range of 12" - but most tanks have guns with ranges in the neighbourhood of 24-36") and id doesn't go very fast, compared to most tanks (so the tanks could just keep backing away - if there's space). But I've never been known as one who made SMART choices, when it came to army selection... or... much of anything, but it was the one way I could assemble and paint something that would be usable in Age of Sigmar and still participate in the event, so there it is... 

I rode out to the Warhammer Store on Saturday - and ended up being a bit late - it was the first really COLD day and it was windy (cold headwind!) and a ride that normally takes me 40-45 minutes took well over an hour. I'd planned to leave early... anyway, people were supposed to show up at 3:30, but I didn't make it there until almost 4pm... and everyone was all lined up and waiting for me... which was a little embarrassing! 

The sides were split up into Imperial and NOT Imperial and the two sides were to fight until one was eliminated, then it would be free-for-all for any remaining Vehicles/Monsters

Like in the latest version of Apocalypse, damage didn't take effect until the end of the round, so if your stuff got blowed up before you got to go, you'd still have a chance to shoot/hit things. 

The winner would be determined by who dealt the most damage, in total. 

On my right was a little Leages of Votann light scout vehicle of some sort and a Chaos Knights Warhound. 

To my left was a Chaos Predator and a Genestealer Cult super heavy tank of some sort. 

There was also another Chaos vehicle... might have been a Rhino or something built on a rhino chassis. Wasn't sure if it was Thousand Sons of Nightlords or some other Traitor Marine Chapter... 

Each vehicle went through a turn entirely on their own: moving, shooting, charging, and fighting, before the next player went. 

First turn of the first round, this little warhound rocked out to the middle of the table, poured some fire into this Marine tank (Space Wolves?) and then charged it and destroyed it!? YIKES! 

It did get to shoot back on the Imperium turn... but failed to take the warhound out. 

Over on the left all the other tanks shot each other up and most died in the first round...

When the dust settled, all that was left was the Dark Angles Fellblade... 

Which was in the opposite corned of the table from me... 

I briefly considered moving forward under cover, but the Votann car and the Warhound had the same idea and, going before me, hid behind the building I was thinking to take cover behind... so I just ran at the thing... 

The Fellblade took a few shots and then charged right in... I DID get to hit it with my sword... ONCE... and dealt THREE damage... Didn't get to use my flail or vomit on it... The other two finished it off and when it exploded, it finished the rest of US off... and that was the game! 

In all I think it took less than an hour! 

Vehicles of all the participants. 

Seemed like a fun bunch of guys. 

I'd probably do it again next year... but next time I'll build one of those Guard tanks that I already have!!

Or maybe a Valkyrie? Could be funny to have a flier! John, the store manager, floated that idea at one point - suggesting maybe make it so EVERYONE had to bring a flier...? I do have an Imperial Guard Valkyrie in a box (not sure how great that would be, it's not really a fighter aircraft, it's meant to be more of a transport!). Somewhere in the house is an Ork and Aeldari fighter, gifts I'd gotten for the kids one year- when they were both still interested in 40K... but neither ever got around to building... 

If they do the Beast Feast again next year (the Age of Sigmar version of this event) I'll definitely get in on that... I have NO IDEA what I'd build and paint, that's MONTHS away... I have no idea what I'll be doing NEXT month most of the time, let alone what I'll be doing in 9-10 months... Lots of things I COULD do.. Bloodthirster... ANOHER Great Unclean One... maybe a Treelord (or I could do a Greater Daemon of some sort AND a Treelord, for Amanda to bring out!?) 

I have a few more games of Age of Sigmar lined up for this next week - and have a few more Warhammer Quest game reports to finish up - so stay tuned for those! 

Estenna of Brighthall, Sloppity Bilepiper, and other Goodies.

I had a nice little ride out to the Warhammer Store this afternoon. 

It was nice and cool (I am not a fan of the heat!) but not cold! 

it's a lovely time of year to ride up and down the river valley with all the fall colours. 

I like to get out and enjoy it BEFORE IT SNOWS! 

I also stopped by campus to drop off Amanda's tea and snack, which I'd noticed she'd left on the counter. 

I rode out to see if the rest of the goodies from the Store Anniversary event had arrived, and indeed they had! I stuck around and had a nice chat with the manager, John. There may have been a bit of ranting about the new Warhammer Quest... but ultimately admitted, we'll both probably end up buying it!?

I noticed they had Squig Plush Slippers this year (to match the Squig-Mega-Hoody I bought last year!?). 

The Goodies: Metal Dice, Dice Cup, Estenna of Brighthall (who I will be painting up as an Anvil of the Heldenhammer and giving a new name!)... and a wooden box/dice tray thingie...? Apparently they were for a previous event... but there were loads extra, so they were given out as a bonus thing...

And then while I was there, I picked up a Sloppity Bilepiper... I was going to wait until the Maggotkin were DONE before I bought any more... but I was there... they had one in stock... I am almost done the Nurgle Spearhead... so... 

The inside of the dice box... I guess tokens and other things can be store in there... during play. Not sure they could be transported in there as they'd just fall into the larger section on the other half..?! Maybe a card could be placed between the two halves whild transporting - as it's held together by magnets... Not sure I'm going to trust magnets to hold it together while stuffed into a bag for transit, though... 

I guess it was for celebrating the opening of the 200th Warhammer Store in North America...? 

I am nearly done the Lord of Afflictions and Pusgoyle Blightlord. Expect pics of the finished minis by the weekend. Maybe. And then a game report of these guys fighting the Sylvaneth in Ghyran! A classic AoS match-up!! 

Ratling Sniper, Spearhead Mat, and Armies on Parade!

 I rolled out to the Warhammer Store in Saskatoon this morning to pick up the free miniature-of-the-month for October 2025... 

Free Ratling Sniper Miniature

They'd also gotten in SOME of the items from the anniversary event and I was able to pick up my new neoprene gaming mat...

The Spearhead side - it is pretty sweet. This will be so much nicer to play on than the cardboard ones... and way more durable! I don't know why they don't just print double-sided mats like this for all the new sets

The other side... not a spearhead mat... I guess it's meant for Kill Team...? Or maybe Warcry (probably kill team as there are metal drums for storing liquids printed in the rubble, if you look carefully...) 

Also Armies on Parade was this weekend and there were a few participants there. I guess it's kind of a come-and-go thing with no set time for everyone to be there...?

Very cool-looking purple Death Guard force.. 

A LARGE force of Impiral Knights!?

Adepta Sororitas (Sisters of Battle) 

Aeldari

A very colourful force of Seraphon - this was easily my favourite and the crappy phone camera photo does NOT do it justice! SO COLOURFUL!! 

There were apparently a lot more people that had signed up... but I didn't want to wair around all day to see who showed up with what... 

Maybe one of these years I'll remember this is a thing and remember to organize something to put together and bring out!?

Warhammer Store Anniversary Event 2025

I can't believe it's been here two years already! 

I rolled out to the Warhammer Store for their Anniversary Event today. I picked up a few things. None of it was impulse buys, really. It was all (well... mostly..) stuff I would have gotten at SOME point... just buying it all now got me some some FREE stuff... 

Here's what I picked up:

• Stormcast Eternals Battletome
• Soulblight Gravelords Battletome
• Nighthaunt Battletome
• Maggotkin of Nurgle Spearhead
• Knight-Zephyros Estenna of Brighthall
• latest White Dwarf

The Battletomes because I have enough of those to field armies... thought I might as well have the rules... 

The Maggotkin of Nurgle I've been thinking about for a year... I thought  it would be fun to have a spearhead for each of the Chaos Powers (also gives me a cluster of fun things to throw at players in Soulbound!)

(the above image is Copyright 2025 Games Workshop and used here entirely without their permission)

Estella of Brighthall is not in the picture of the haul because she is shipped AFTER the anniversary event (they don't ship them to the store beforehand to guarantee that they neither run out nor have extra stock at the end of it all! I should get it her in the next week or two...) Did I NEED this... no, not really... but it's such a fun, dynamic model... and could be a player character in Soulbound... 

I'll probably paint her up as an Anvil of the Heldenhammer and give her a new name, though... 

(the above image is Copyright 2025 Games Workshop and used here entirely without their permission)

Above are the goodies I'll get for buying all this stuff during the store anniversary event. The dice cup and metal dice are kind of... meh... I could take them or leave them (the dice could be handy for keeping track of command points, or something similar, I guess... I imagine that the weight of them would mean I'm less likely to accidentally pick it up for a dice roll...). The Neoprene game mat is what I was most interested in! One side has a Spearhead battlefield printed on it. 

Like Estenna, this stuff also ships after the event, so I'll have it all in a few weeks! 

I also got a coin and a pin and a spare deck of Spearhead cards (just in case I ever have five friends over and we want to play three simultaneous games of Spearhead on the three maps that I own (or... WILL own, when the neoprene one arrives...)

I kind of wish all the Spearhead maps were printed like this. I know they'd cost a bit more, but the neoprene mats are so much more durable than the cardboard ones. 

Conveniently, because I got a bit ahead with the last few batches of undead, even with buying ANOTHER Spearhead, I've still painted more than I've acquired this year. I MAY dip back into the red when I pick up the Helsmiths of Hashut box in a week or so... (Or maybe not if I crank through another unit or two this week!!) 

I did get in a few more games of Spearhead with Orion yesterday, hopefully I'll get those game reports up later today! 

Age of Sigmar: Spearhead - Sap for the Sap God...?

Last Wednesday I rode out to the Warhammer store, again, to play another game of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Spearhead with John. 

This time I brought TWO armies - the Khorne and Sylvaneth forces. John has a Sylvaneth army that he's still assembling and painting and planning on taking to an event in a few weeks, so I suggested he could borrow mine if he wanted a chance to play with them and get a sense for how they worked. 

Though I dragged the Sand & Bone set out with me, John already had Fire & Jade set out, so we just played with that! 

John won the initial roll off and decided he'd like to defend Ghyran (which kind of makes sense as he was playing Sylvaneth!) 

I ended up taking the first turn in the first round. 

The first round my Mighty Skullcrushers made it into combat with the Treelord. Blood Warriors, not-so-much. The Mighty Skullcrushers can deal some terrifying damage when they charge... But the Twist for the Round had allowed John to give the Treelord a Ward 6+ save, and then he played a card (Fight to the Last) which also gave (or increased) a ward save... and so they only dealt three damage to the lumbering beast (all of which was saved by my next turn...) 

The other Blood Warriors got into it with the Kurnothi, charging right past the objective that I probably should have had them take... but they're BLOOD WARRIORS?! Like I wasn't going to take an opportunity to do some fighting?! 

Also, had I not, the Kurnothi probably would have just stood in the corner and shot at them next round

End of my first round, I think...? 

On the Sylvaneth turn the Tree-Revenants sallied out to attack the Blood Warriors, mostly just to keep them from joining the Mighty Skullcrushers and taking down the Treelord (who was in NO danger, given how my dice were rolling...) 

Bloodreavers join the last few Blood Warriors to help finish off the Kurnothi

Which was handy because this is how I was rolling for the Blood Warriors. Three Blood Warriors remaining, three attacks each, they hit on 4+, so I should get 4-5 hits... nope, 2... fail to wound on one, the other was saved... 

Luckily the weight of numbers finally took the last Kurnothi out... 

Blood Warriors faired a little better against the Tree-Revenants. 

But then the Treelord dipped out of combat and charged my Slaughterpriest and squished him to a pulp with one mighty swing of his trunk-like arms. 

Branchwych slinked in and finished off the last of the Mighty Skullcrushers, who were reeling from the assaults of the Treelord... 

At least the Blood Warriors were able to beat down the last Tree-Revenant. 

Because Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows (or, SAP apparently!?) I got a whole bunch of Blood Tithe points in the final round. Mostly from my OWN units dying... 

Just at the Blood Warriors finished off the one unit of Tree-Revenants another unit arrived on the battlefield. 

They'd charge the remaining Blood Warriors and Bloodreavers and I had really, REALLY hoped to finish them off here... (so I could move these blood reavers away and hopefully have enough of them on the objective in the middle of the battlefield to contest it in my final turn... 

Alas... 

Five Bloodreavers, two attacks each, hitting on 4+... I should score 5 hits... 

NOT. ONE. HIT.... 

The last two Blood Warriors had fucked off from that melee, taking mortal wounds that killed one in the process, but left one alive to contest an objective. 

Similarly the other unit of Blood Warriors retreated from the combat with the Treelord to take an objective on my final turn. 

I didn't like that. It didn't feel RIGHT retreating from combat with Blood Warriors... but... you win the game by scoring victory points and you score victory points by holding objectives... (or scoring cards, which generally are about holding SPECIFIC objectives or being in specific parts of the table, etc). 

Even so, I only managed to TIE the game... I don't think there was even enough Bloodreavers left to contest the center objective, even if they could have gotten away. 

Ten games, nine losses, one tie! Things are looking up!

I'm supposed to play another game with Orion tomorrow afternoon. I'm hoping to finish up the Claws of Karanak tonight, so I can try out the new Fangs of Khorne Spearhead army! So I'm off to do that, and blowing off another RPGaDAY prompt... even though I had an idea for today... Ah well... 

Timeworn Ruins, Wight King, and Snarlboss with Wolfgit Retinue

 

I rolled out to the Warhammer Store to play a few games this week (Game Reports Coming Soon!) and both times items I ordered arrived while I was there!

Snarlboss and Wolfgit Retinue

These are the same models as Rippa's Snarlfangs - the Warhammer Underworlds warband. I haven't played for a while, but I haven't entirely written the game off. In the BIG SUMMER PREVIEW last week they announced the new Underworlds core box and that they'll be doing four more boxes of four re-released warbands - one for each Grand Alliance - AND they'll be doing a pack of cards again for all sixteen warbands (for those of us that already HAVE all those warbands!). 

As it happens, I have ALL BUT ONE of the warbands being re-released (Rippa's Snarlfangs)! I checked the age of Sigmar section and found they still had the Snarlboss and Wolfgit Retinue - which, itself was a rerelease of the Rippa's Snarlfang models (but without cards) that could be used in a Gloomspite Gitz army. Last year, when they did the same, all of those warbands being re-released were removed from the website, so I ordered this right away and had it shipped to the store (because that's FREE!) 

WILL I return to Warhammer Underworlds...? Maybe? If not, I have three really cool goblin wolf-riders I can use in other games! 

Dominion of Sigmar: Timeworn Ruins

I did pick up Radukar the Beast a few weeks back (or months!?) and I still haven't assembled him... partly because the model is climbing over a big log with gnarled branches and stuff... and ALL THE OTHER Soulblight Gravelord stuff I have has been based on urban bases of flagstones and rubble... so I though that would be a little out of place... In the end I decided to pick up the Timeworn Ruins set so I could use one of the bits as the thing Radukar is climbing over, and then I'll have a bunch of fast and easy to paint scatter terrain for... whatever...?! 

AND THEN... Because I was feeling like I needed a bit more exercise, I rolled out there AGAIN! (it is ~20Km round trip, depending on the route I take...) 

Wight King

I picked up a Wight King for Finnegan to use as his character in the Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound game we are playing with Champions of Death! 

I am going to replace the skull and crown with maybe a chaos knights helmet - with some ridiculous horns or something - the concept was the character is covered in armour from head to toe, so you couldn't tell, just form looking at him... from a distance... that it's just a skeleton in that armour...