2019 In Review and 2020 Resolutions

It Liiiives! Maybe, sort of... not really.

The last post on the blog was back in March, so saying the blog, or the podcast, is alive might be a bit of a stretch. But, it's still here and occasionally, like today, I get nostalgic and decide to try to write up a post. This time, I'm doing my annual year in review and resolutions post.

Tournament Report: Vigilus Exterminatus - 1,500 Point RTT

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending a small tournament at Mishap Games, a store I have been wanting to visit since it opened several years ago. We would be using 1,500 point armies and some Games Workshop based missions for the three rounds. I opted to bring my Blood Angels without Knight support. I also brought some Tyranids for the TO to use as a ringer army since there was going to be 7 players otherwise.

2018 In Review and 2019 Resolutions

Over the last year, while post frequency remained lower than we'd like, I started the year with a Year Review and Look Ahead post. So it seems appropriate to kick off 2019 with the same, looking back at 2018 and my resolutions for the year, and then making new resolutions for 2019.

A Tri-Hards Christmas Tournament Recap

A couple weekends ago I made it over to a semi-local RTT in Gate City, Virginia. In the spirit of the holiday season, leading up to the event I put out an offer to cover the registration fee of anyone who brought food items to donate. The turnout ended up a bit lower than expected, and while only one player brought food, two other guys showed up with donations even though they weren't playing. Having gotten a prior donation from another player I ended up collecting three large boxes of food items to donate to a local food pantry.

NOVA 2018 Recap

NOVA was, as always, a blast. It was a couple weeks ago at this point, but I am already looking forward to next year and have it marked on my calendar. This year, as well as playing in the 40k GT for a sixth time, I also had the pleasure of playing in the Invitational for a third time. I am going to (somewhat) briefly run through my nine game over the course of the convention and give some highlights.

The army I took to the GT

Return to ATC - Team and List Building

It's ATC Time again! It's 4am and I'll be hitting the road very shortly to head down to Chattanooga for my second time at ATC, American Team Championship, starting today. For those who don't know, ATC is (primarily) a 40k event where teams of five players face off in five 1on1 games. I lead a team last year and had a blast, and while most of the team roster has changed this year, I'm still super excited to be leading my team into a field of over 70 opposing teams - that's over 350 players!

Consulting a List Doctor: Competitive List Building - Evan's Tyranids 1.5

As I mentioned in my last post, I reached out to Nick and Matt at the Brown Magic for some List Doctor assistance. I opted to have them each construct a list from scratch, given nothing other than the Warzone: Atomic Empire packet and my desire that they be Tyranid lists, bringing in GSC and Guard if desired.

FTGT Turns 5

Facing the Grey Tide has now celebrated its fifth birthday (as of a couple weeks ago). As I mentioned in last year's birthday recap, we still have no intentions to close up shop. Even if we're not as active as we would like in getting content out, our attempts to face our Grey Tides have not stopped, even if sometimes it feels like I'm going backward.

2017 In Review and 2018 Resolutions

Happy New Year! Another year gone and a new year dawns, and with it I'm resolved to help lead a resurgence for the blog. We'll get into my resolutions further on, but there's no denying that 2017 was such as slow year for the blog that we barely deserve the name. Despite the lack of written content, we were generally a bit more regular with the podcast in the second half of the year, coinciding with the release of the new edition of 40k.

Shameless plug moment: we recently started a Patreon page to support the podcast. As you may know, it takes some degree of funding to produce and host a podcast. Thus far we've been covering the costs ourselves, Chandler in particular. Any support you can provide, as little as $1 a month, will help us immensely and mean a lot. Please check us out at https://www.patreon.com/FTGTPodcast and consider supporting. Thank you.

Now, onto the year in review and resolutions!

Team FTGT Returns from ATC

The FTGT Team returned from its inaugural trip to ATC and I think we all had a blast, getting a bunch of games and not much sleep. For those who don't know, the ATC is the American Team Championship, and it's undoubtedly the biggest team event in the country. This year 58 teams of five made their way to Chatanooga to battle it out; that's 290 40k players!

Don't Break 8th! An Appeal to the Community

So, the New Warhammer 40,000 has only been officially out for a few days, and already there is a lot of discussion on what needs to be "fixed." It shouldn't be surprising, I suppose, but it leads me to writing this, and I hope you'll hear me out:

Leave the rules alone and play it as it lies for now.

Out with 7th; In with 8th

I've had the beginnings of this post, a tournament report from the De-La-Warr Open, partially written for over a month. And like much of my attitude to 7th this year, I just never felt fully motivated to finish it and was more interested in looking ahead to 8th. With the official release of 8th today, I thought I'd finish this, and talk briefly about the path ahead in the new edition.

FTGT Turns 4

I'm almost a month late, but this April marks the fourth birthday of the blog. While we've been pretty inactive of late, we haven't completely folded up shop yet, and with the impending release of 8th Edition we have the mental wheels turning and typing fingers stretching. We haven't had a recent podcast because of technical difficulties - Chandler's computer died and as the keeper of the podcast, we haven't had a chance to record again. Despite being quiet as far as blogging and podcasting goes, we're still gaming, painting, and so on.

NOVA Recap Part 3 - My Experience

For part three of my NOVA recap, I wanted to finally get into my own experiences at NOVA. Part 1 was a pic dump primarily from the 40k hall, while part 2 dug into some of the stats from the 40k GT. I'll cover my games briefly, and hopefully discuss them a bit more in an upcoming podcast, and overall share my experiences at one of the premier hobby and gaming events out there.

NOVA Recap Part 2 - 40k GT Stats

For this part of my NOVA recap, I wanted to dive back into my stat analysis role from Torrent of Fire and break down the results. Field of Fire took a crack at the stats from the event, and I'll probably be retracing some of that ground but looking to dig a little deeper. Part of this is massaging the data a bit to get slightly more accurate results. For example, Chaos Space Marines as listed did very well, but we need to differentiate between any Chaos Space Marine primary lists and those that were actually Renegades primary.

NOVA 2016 Recap Part 1 - Pic Dump

A bit behind my normal schedule, but finally time to begin the NOVA Recaps. As always, I had a total blast at the event, and might have had more fun this year than in previous years. For this first post I'm just going to do a bit of a pic-dump of many of my favorite photos from the weekend.

A selection of Greg's DreadMob

NRVCon Wrap Up

NRVCon 2016 is in the books, and while the 40k tournament was a bit smaller than we hoped, it was still a great time. Thanks to everyone who played. You can see the results on Torrent of Fire. Also, before I get into the event, a ton of thanks to the TO Elle for running the event.  I had three great games and ended up taking home Renaissance Man, being runner up, third in BPs, and second in Paint Score, but more on that toward the end.

FTGT Turns 3!

A little belated, but the blog has just recently turned three years old. Despite the slowdown in content (and podcasts) over the last 6 months or so, we're still working on generating content and keeping involved with the readers we've gathered over the last three years. It is thanks to you that we keep coming back to this, even as life gets full and busy at times.

Commission Showcase: Deathwatch Marines

I just finished up Phil's Deathwatch Marines to a display quality. These are some amazing detailed and characterful models. Plenty of images below. One thing I need to work on is taking better pictures. A lot of these aren't as clean or as focused as I'd like. Nonetheless, enjoy.

Kill Team Cassius

FTGT Painting - Patreon and New Website

As I mentioned on Monday, this week marks the first week of me working full time as a commission painter (in addition to being a stay-at-home dad, so full time is more like 4 hours a day if I'm lucky). In addition to painting, I've started a Patreon page, as well as created a new website just for my commission service. The website is primarily a portfolio of completed work; I'll still include in progress and completed project posts here.