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Wednesday, May 03, 2017

Omega Strain Genestealer Cult Wins Best Army at Astronomi-Con 2017!

Well thank god for that.

As I've been posting less on blog over the last couple of months, my fervent work on my Genestealer Cult of the Omega Strain has been ramping up like crazy. My goal for finishing this force was to enter my first ever tournament with them at Astronomi-Con 2017.


If you've never heard of Astro, it's a mega fun tourney held in Toronto, Ontario (Canada), every year. It is not a part of the ITC tourney circuit, and that is an intentional choice as Astronomi-Con focuses on fun and narrative play, not on face smashing with deathstar units.

I'll have more to say about Astro at a later time, but let's leave it with I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU ATTEND THIS TOURNAMENT if you like playing 40k for fun using some very weird, very original, and very challenging scenarios.

Since I'd never been to a tourney before, I wasn't looking to win. I got roped into it by my hobby buddy Josh, who assured me that having a beautifully painted force, arrayed on a striking display board, would be enough for me to receive accolades at the event. To add to Josh's challenge, my brother, Brother Pink, challenged me to a painting duel to see who could paint more miniatures between January and the end of March. We have yet to officially tally the results of that challenge, but these two things together served to light a fire under my butt that saw me paint an entire army between Jan 1st and April 28th of this year.

And, as I stayed up until an ungodly hour of the morning, mere hours before I was scheduled to play my first game at Astronomi-Con, frantically finishing the paint on my Primus model, I really hoped that all of that work was going to have been worth it.

Turns out it was.

On Sunday evening, I was recognized with the award for Best Army. This award is voted by everyone else at the tourney, and I wound up getting twice as many votes as the next runner up, which is apparently way more than normally comes through for any one army.

If you're into watching long videos about people you don't know, here's the recording I made of the closing ceremony where they present the awards:

...and if you want to skip to the good part, it's here ;)

I'll definitely have more to say about Astro, and about the models in my army, and about the work I put into the table, and all the surreptitious bullshit that went along with it...

However, I've still got one more competition coming up on May 13th, and I've still got to finish some more stuff before I can breathe my final sigh of relief on this project.

Still, this feels pretty awesome, particularly seeing the calibre of armies brought out for Astro (more photos of them soon), and the quality of the event, and the kindness of the people. I put a butt tonne of work into this project (turns out 110 hours in April alone!), and it is really really great to have had that recognized :)


Now. Back to work....


8 comments:

  1. Well done and deserved, it is a good army and you put the effort in. Hope you enjoyed the games as much.

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    1. I enjoyed the games a LOT more than I was expecting to. I will write a separate post about Astronomi-con, but any of you yankey friends who live close to The Wall, and Toronto in particular, should consider venturing into the Lands of Always Winter for an Astronomi-Con event.

      The organizers Christian and Mike are all about having fun scenarios and disabling face-smashing, death star lists. A strong emphasis is put on creating an army that looks beautiful, and there were TONS of unique, striking forces there. Also, my opponents tended to be kind, and their armies were interesting. Every game was played through a unique, very fluffy scenario that the organizers had dreamed up.

      Basically, I can't recommend it highly enough.

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  2. Congratulations! An awesome force and well deserved.

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    1. It felt really good to get the audience choice award, Michael, particularly since I beat out the Best Painted-winning army, which was a druidic marine force with actual trees growing from their dreadnoughts, and a MIND NUMBING level of freehand filigree detail. I would not have been able to beat him when it came to painting.

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  3. Aha! A fellow topknotter. My hairstyle approves your hairstyle ;)

    Love the base and work you have done for this dude. Been a pleasure seeing it come together on social media , and the finished result is just fantastic. A thoroughly well deserved win :)

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    1. Dude. It's so much easier than having any other hairstyle. I'm a convert!

      Thank you for the praise, Naf! I know you're someone who can appreciate all the work that goes into this stuff. Did you ever make a display board for your harlies? Did I miss it? I'd really like to see your talents let loose on that level. I think you'd come up with something really exceptional!

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    2. No I never did, but it is something that has been on my mind for ages. I need to get back into them again, and I might have a crack at it

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    3. Well, them or the Bog Sylvaneth. I just want to see you create a display board!

      The Harlies would really benefit from some kind of horrific carnival for them to be cavorting across >:)

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