Living a stone’s throw from Warhammer World has its advantages, like being able to attend their narrative campaign weekends on a whim. Next weekend, they are running Descent of the Overlords, an Age of Sigmar event.

They Came from the Sky

Narrative gaming events are quite different to the likes of tournaments. The focus is on playing out a story rather than face-rolling your opponent off the table. Each event has its own flavour and the actions of your faction affect the overall story. Since the Kharadron Overlords have recently thundered into the Age of Sigmar with their gun-toting armada, they are the focus.

Here, the event staff play the role of the guild emissaries. Being Kharadron Overlords, their services can be bought for the right price. In game terms, this might mean a bombing run or offering transport on one of their airships. Deals can be made through the weekend, the prices of assistance variable based on how well you’re doing in the campaign (those winning too heavily might find the prices increase) or just on the greed of the Overlords.

At registration each player gets a bag of coins, a finite resource to be used to barter for assistance from the Overlords.

Atmospherics

As it’s a narrative event, the dynamic and atmosphere is very different from a tournament. Since the focus is story, you should see fewer WAAC (Win At All Costs) players and a more relaxed attitude. It’s not uncommon for an opponent to suggest you add some reinforcements if the battle is going catastrophically against you. In essence, it’s about immersion into a particular story set in the Mortal Realms.

Preparation

Deep meditation. Or just an army, painted and based. The stronger the theme, the better. I get to take my Stormcast Eternals, the Order of Talos, for their first outing to this event. The only issue being that they’re not done yet! Since I like to have a variety of smaller factions in Age of Sigmar, mainly for the variety in painting and narrative, building up to 2000 points required some reinforcements. Ten Judictors and a Knight Venator form have joined the Order of Talos, fresh from the forges of Azyr to fill this gap. Since I paint at the speed of the lethargic sloth, it requires some effort on my part. While I usually try to avoid do it, I’m going for batch painting.

Batch painting lets you work on many models at the same time. You block the same colour across all of them at once so instead of finishing each model individually, they’re all on the go at the same time. It means less faffing around with changing paints and you get into something of a groove, speeding up the process. Not my favourite way to paint but it gets the job done in a short time.

In terms of army building, the focus is narrative, so 2000 points of Skyfires is not likely to win many friends in this sort of event. Having a balanced army that actually looks like an army (hero, plenty of battle line, some elites) is a solid starting point.

Ready for Battle

Building and painting for an event is a great way to motivate through the pile of unpainted plastic or to try new conversions and themes. In getting my Jason and the Argonauts themed army ready for this, I had the idea to change all the shields to match the film and show sea monsters and the like instead of the standard. Not quite Mortal Realms canon but a theme is a theme.

These events are beginner-friendly and loads of fun for those who want to immerse themselves into the story of the Warhammer worlds.