This month I had the pleasure of attending Hogtown 40k’s annual tournament, the Hogtowner. This is a casual tournament held by a local club with an enormous focus on painting, presentation, and sportsmanship rather than hardcore competition. I attended my first Hogtowner last year and had an absolute blast. There’s also a small but fantastic narrative Horus Heresy event.
A tournament? In this blog’s economy??
I know, I know. Just last month I was saying that I’m not interested in anything other than narrative play and matched play is a waste of my time. The thing is, there are just no goddamn narrative events.
The only narrative 40k event in Ontario that I’m aware of in the last four years was in spring of 2022 and I didn’t attend as my risk tolerance for COVID was not very high at that time. So what’s a narrative gamer to do?
Last year at the Hogtowner, the missions had pre-selected secondaries, a table wide twist (high winds, delayed CP, etc.), and each player was given a random asset to use (i.e. an orbital strike). This time, the games were a lot closer to standard matched play where players selected fixed or tactical objectives (for most games) with a twist, but no assets.
The Armies
Bar none, the armies at this event were spectacular. Every army was fully painted, with “above tabletop” on the low end to “holy fuck, how??” on the high end (and there were A LOT at the high end). Most armies had amazing display boards and the tables themselves all had fully painted, thematic terrain. In terms of lists, hardcore tournament lists were specifically discouraged in the player pack and on the event’s discord, usually leading to thematic, fun lists. I say usually, as there was a pretty wide spread of list power, with some netlist choices definitely appearing (though I’m not really tuned into the tournament scene to say just how strong some lists were).
For my army, I focussed on taking units I’d painted since the last Hogtowner or hadn’t taken last year. This included the Spartan I painted for my bachelor party (which you can read about HERE), as Legends units were allowed. In the Spartan rode Abaddon with ten terminators and a Warpsmith usually deployed nearby to repair the tank. Alongside this was a squad of ten Tzeentch Legionaries with bolters and heavy weapons in a Rhino and a squad of ten Khorne Legionaries with chainswords and an attached Master of Executions also in a Rhino. On top of these were a pair of War Dog Huntsmen (aka the melta and chainblade ones).
Putting Abaddon and ten terminators in a Spartan was a choice. With the Warpsmith running around fixing it, this was over half my army in one very scary basket. I was a little worried this might be too strong, but the rest of the army was lacking competitive choices: Legionaries almost never show up in tournament-placing CSM lists, and the War Dogs have no access to my detachment stratagems. Plus, the Spartan was about on par with a Knight in terms of survivability, which I figured most people would be prepared for. And, as I learned through my games, using no deep strikers nor action monkeys severely limited the secondaries I could achieve.
The Games
Every opponent I played was fantastic, all people I’d happily play again. And, since my friends were in the Heresy event, I didn’t get matched with any regular opponents (though, to be honest, I did miss playing people I know–apparently I’m just socially anxious at heart). All the missions, except one, were standard deployments and primary objectives from the Leviathan deck, so I won’t go into detail except for the twists.
My first game was against Guido and his Black Templars. I actually remembered his army from the event in 2022 and it won player’s choice this year, which was extremely well deserved. We only got through two and a half turns, but Guido was way ahead on points, so there was no doubt who was going to take it. The twist was night fighting, with penalties to hit outside of 18″, unless the target was on an objective. This didn’t come up much, as we closed extremely quickly with Crusaders, Terminators, Intercessors, and Khorne worshippers all locking blades. Abaddon and Helbrecht met face to face, but the game ended before the outcome could be decided (though the Talon of Horus did take a healthy number of wounds off Helbrecht).
My second game was against Gordon’s Custodes and the twist required us to reserve half our army, ignoring the usual Strategic Reserve limits. This was easy for me: the Spartan holding the terminators and Abby went down on my side with everything else held back. This was a much closer game with very tactical choices on both sides. It started with Abaddon piling out for a turn 1 charge on Trajan Valoris. The Captain-General struck first, but after weathering the blows (see using terminators as transhuman shields), Abaddon struck him down. Despite this, I learned through the game that Custodes are no joke in combat. Though I think this was my closest game points wise, Gordon pulled out the well-earned win.
Game three was called Grognard’s Delight and had some serious old school vibes: the player who deployed first went first (unless the other player seized the initiative), fixed secondaries in the form of First Strike, Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker, and scoring objectives at the end of the game. I played Tim, who I had actually played twice before at Astronomicon (a local narrative event that unfortunately hasn’t run since the pandemic). He brought a really cool Inquisition list with a huge entourage around Eisenhorn backed up by a Rogue Trader, Scions, Ogryns, and a handful of tanks. Unfortunately, this game was pretty one sided as Tim just did not have the anti-armour punch to deal with my mechanised list. His inquisitorial henchmen did fight both War Dogs for several turns, eventually bringing the two machines down in combat before being wiped out by Abaddon.
Game four was against Jesse’s heavily converted Chaos Space Marine army, with lots of beastmen and skaven conversions. The twist was that each player turn you could bombard a unit on an objective, causing some mortal wounds and forcing a battleshock test. Unfortunately, this didn’t have a huge impact on our game, which Jesse took pretty handily with his devastating squads of Chosen. Gonna go ahead and add those to my painting queue, brb…
My fifth and final game was against Vincent and his Orks. Vincent pushed ahead early and held me in my deployment zone for the first half of the game – I don’t think I scored a single victory point until turn 3. The twist for this mission was each player had to select a gambit, which turned off primary scoring for the latter half of the game. The way the game went, I ended up tabling Vincent, but failing to pull off the gambit and losing the game due to Vincent’s early lead. Though I might’ve won without the twist, getting to see gambits in action was super cool and made for a much more tense, tactical game than it would’ve been otherwise. Vincent was a fantastic opponent who ended up winning best sportsmanship.
(Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of this game or Vincent’s army)
Overall Thoughts
The Hogtowner is the gold standard that other tournaments should measure themselves against. The beautiful armies, amazing tables, culture of sportsmanship and welcoming atmosphere cannot be overstated. I see a lot of pictures on social media of tournaments with absolutely terrible, cardboard terrain (occasionally sprayed one colour) and half painted armies. If you want to promote 40k, encourage the spectacle that is gorgeous armies played on fantastic terrain, which the Hogtowner puts front and centre.
Matched Play
Although I enjoyed previous versions of the current matched play deck (i.e. Tempest of War/Maelstrom of War), I’m not a fan of the “action secondaries” and the army construction they promote. The concept of “Investigating Signals” and similar secondaries that have players sending units around to do actions are interesting, but very nebulous. Importing these ideas into a narrative scenario with purpose-built terrain or objectives would work really well, but I feel the abstract location of the centre of the table/on an objective/within a board corner doesn’t really work. And having “action monkey” units whose entire purpose is to deep strike and stand there is very off-putting: I find it immersion breaking.
That being said, I think matched play 40k is a really good game: it forces interesting choices, it’s very tactical and in-depth, and is designed to have comeback mechanics with progressive scoring and gambits. I get why people enjoy it and it’s obviously very popular.
But it’s not for me. I’m glad I went to the Hogtowner (as I keep saying, it was an amazing event), but I wouldn’t attend another matched play event like it.
The other thing is 2,000 point games are a lot, and five of them in a weekend is extremely a lot. One of the lessons I’ve learned (not just at the Hogtowner, but at events I’ve run) is that smaller games are much easier to manage.
As an aside, I’m always a little surprised that there aren’t more 1,000 or 1,500 point tournaments–as these would be much easier for new players to access–but it seems that many, many people are dead set on following the guidelines laid out by GW. I also find it absolutely wild that the loudest critics of Warhammer’s rules and playtesting (or lack thereof) are also the strictest adherents to tournament play guidelines and structure.
Putting the hobby first
Although I personally think the Hogtowner is the best a 40k tournament can be, I don’t think I’ll attend another matched play event for a while. My goal right now is to get my 30k Salamanders up to scratch next year so I can play in the narrative Hogtowner Heresy event.
If you’re interested in dipping your toes in tournament play, the Hogtowner has you covered and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Get your army fully painted and get out there!