Harvester of Souls 2016 - Best Appearance Winner!

I just got back yesterday from the Harvester of Souls 2016 Grand Tournament, and am pleased to say I won the trophy for Best Appearance! My Dark Eldar army got a lot of positive and excited feedback, especially among the tournament organizers. Naturally everyone loved the comic as well, which I think is a big reason I got a lot of favorite army votes from the players.

I also won Best in Dark Eldar out of 3 total Dark Eldar players. It was mostly the painting and appearance score for that though as I only won a single game of the five I played. My army wasn't really that competitive, but that's the great thing about the Harvester; 33% of your overall score comes from actual gameplay, 33% from sportsmanship, and 33% from appearance and painting. This is in contrast to most grand tournaments placing a higher stake in gameplay over the other two. It doesn't alleviate hyper-competitive players and lists, but it also doesn't encourage it, and puts more emphasis on the hobby, which I love. They also do something unusual, they don't use the ITC missions. Each table at the event has its own terrain set-up with its own narrative scenario. Every time I go back I am playing a different set of 5 games. Most of them are a lot of fun.

This was my 3rd attendance to the Harvester, and I love it. Anyone wanting a good fun tournament and you are in the north-west area of the United States (or even western Canada) the Harvester of Souls is a lot of fun.

Finally a few acknowledgements for this award:

• First to my beautiful patient wife, Beth. She supported the entire effort from the beginning and offered encouragement. She is awesome and helps balance my life in this nerdy hobby of mine. She also edited the comic book to made sure it made sense.
• Second to my brother, Jarom. The cutaway of the underground sewer and how to achieve it was his idea, and of course his awesome art on the comic really brought my story to life. They exceeded my initial storyboard. On a side note, congratulations to Jarom for winning best in Orks. He really rocked it this tournament and his army appearance was a definite improvement over last year.
• Third to my friend, Timo Swaner. He was a big encouragement and someone I could really bounce lists and ideas off of. A partner in crime when it comes to 40k.
• Fourth and final to the War Head blog. It was this post that started the ball rolling on the idea and I cited them since the beginning. It was the idea of space rats as Dark Eldar which festered within me for quite some time that culminated into my own take on it. This is a gorgeous blog to follow if only for the pictures alone, even though most of the time it's in Finnish.

Now I gotta get working on finishing my Duardin for the LVO!