Cronch’s Road Through 2025, Part 2: Loss, Of Multiple Kinds

This time around we catch up on life, hobby, a community meetup, and take up most of the post with an event report from the Welsh Open. A content warning: the first part of this article is going to talk about the loss of a pet. If you’d prefer to avoid that, skip to the section titled “Hobby.”

It’s been a rough couple of weeks on the journey through 2025. On Wednesday 30 July I loaded my beloved cat Fili into his carrier, into the car for the short ride to the vet, and an hour later I arrived home alone. He’d had a short but brutal battle with heart failure, and putting him to sleep was the kindest option.

The previous Friday I’d taken him to the vet having noticed him struggling a bit with his breathing, and she’d diagnosed him in a matter of moments. We left with drugs to clear the fluid from his chest, a follow up appointment for Wednesday, and the knowledge that this would definitely put a timer on his life. Assuming the drugs worked and he could undergo proper treatment for his heart, he’d have between a few months and a couple of years, but by Monday I think I knew that the fluid wasn’t clearing and it was going to be a one way trip back to the vet. His breathing kept worsening, but his unique personality and loving nature were still shining through strongly, and that made the choice an absolute gut-wrenching torment. Ultimately though, it would have been the height of cruelty to prolong his suffering for the sake of deferring mine, especially when he could have no input into the decision.

Fili spent his last few days (and his whole life, to be honest) being spoiled beyond belief, and when the time came he went to sleep calmly with both his favourite toy and me by his side. I’ve been a mess ever since. He was 12, and had 8 amazing years with me after being loved dearly by his original owner for the first 4 years of his life. I’ve lived by myself for over 3 years, but he’s always been there – I’ve never been truly alone until now, and I have to say I kind of hate it. It’ll take a long time to adjust. I’m really grateful for all of the love I got to share with Fili, and for his otherwise rude health throughout his life. Beyond general check-ups and booster vaccinations, this was the only time I ever had to take him to the vet.

Understandably, I haven’t really felt like doing much since. I had event commitments in the calendar though, and I decided I’d rather get out of the house than stew. Painting is always an escape for me too, so the show will go on there too. I am going to try and keep the pet-related grief confined to this first section, other than some gentle nods in its direction, so I apologise in advance if the rest of the article feels like a radical tone shift.

Hobby

I’ll cover the community meetup I went to here, seeing as I painted for the whole weekend. I’m part of a lovely community called Rollmodels, mentioned in the last episode of this series, and we get together every few months in different locations for a RMRO (Rollmodels Roll Out). This time, we were scheduled (ably corralled by beloved friend Jamie) to meet at Bristol Independent Gaming, aka BIG, in…Bristol. We’ve hosted events there before, and I’ve attended tournaments there too. Despite being with a bunch of old friends, and some new ones too, I didn’t feel like signing myself up for any long face-to-face commitments, so I opted instead to bring my Stormcast with me and do some painting at BIG’s hobby table.

I have a handy Monument paint bag which holds everything I need, so I was able to pack that up and just show up with the bag and my army case and get to work. Over the course of the weekend I was able to sit and progress pretty well – I mostly finished Iridan, and got through all of the fire on the rest of my models (Prosecutor wings, Memorian censers, and the like). It was really nice to be able to sit and focus while people occasionally came to chat to me, and when I needed a break I would cruise around the tables and see how games were going. Over the course of the weekend people played games of 40K, AoS, Horus Heresy, Kill Team, Old World, Marvel Crisis Protocol, Team Yankee, and Hypersteel Nightmare! It’s great to have a community with such a range of interests and the hobby power to back them up.

Once I was home I felt quite invigorated to do some more painting on the Stormcast, so first of all I finished off and based Iridan the Witness. I’m pretty pleased with how they’ve come out.

Stormcast are definitely my gaming army and I don’t push them as far as other projects, but I’m learning some quick tricks for making them pop on the tabletop. Despite them being quick though, it was definitely clear at this point that the combination of progress so far plus Goonhammer projects on the horizon meant that I wouldn’t get everything I wanted finished for the Welsh Open at the weekend. I’d end up having to pivot to an older list.

Event Report – The Welsh Open, Firestorm Games Cardiff

For years I’ve been attending Blackout, a large (usually 60-80 players) Age of Sigmar tournament run at Firestorm Game. Last year the TO announced that it would be his last event, but thankfully the guys from Team Wales stepped in to keep the event slot running this year, and hopefully in future years too, re-christened as the Welsh Open. So on the Friday I set off for Cardiff, met my pal Chris for a big BBQ dinner at The Smoke Haus, then we retired to our cheap pod-like hotel, lovingly labelled “space jail” by Chris. Incidentally, in case any American readers are curious – no, Welsh imitation BBQ is not as good as the real thing. But it was perfectly good by the standards of what you can usually get in the UK.

I brought Stormcast Eternals, but having failed to finish my Iridan-based Sentinels of the Bleak Citadel list I was still running with a slight variant of the two dragon list I have used for most of the year so far. Not ideal, as I learned this weekend.

Rich’s list - click to expand

The main idea of the list is that Karazai acts as a kind of central point for the force, absorbing some big hitters, with the Questors setting up on an objective, holding out for a surprisingly long time, then teleporting away at the moment when they can be the most annoying and have the most impact. Meanwhile, the Stardrake is the distraction Carnifex, trying to goad a charge from the opponent’s hammer so that it can eat models with its incredible rampage and then pop the fight first artifact to knock the wind out of their sails. Alongside all of this the shooting units usually deploy in the sky, dropping as a pair to focus down big threats (Longstrikes particularly like monster heroes).

Saturday

We rose, ate a perfectly tolerable breakfast bap, and Ubered across to the venue from the hotel. We checked in, and I said hi to some other club members at the event from the team I’m part of, The Mighty Redeployers. Pairings were released, and we made our way to our tables.

Game 1: Linked Ley Lines vs Alex’s Flesh-Eater Courts

Round 1 I was paired into Alex, who I’d previously fought in round 1 of the Big Bristol Brawl. We were both using very similar lists to that event, not having changed much.

Alex’s list - click to expand

The Scourge of Ghyran Gorewarden is a nice add, with an out-of-sequence objective-taking move that will catch you off guard if you’re not careful. Alex’s army was really nicely painted, too!

Alex outdrops me and gives me the first turn, which I don’t hugely want. Karazai shuffles into the middle, while the Stardrake heads for the right flank where Ushoran is deployed. I drop all of my shooting and bring it to bear on Ush, but he lives on a heartbreaking 1 wound! In Alex’s turn a heal and a big Rally roll bring him back up to 8 wounds or so. He also gets off his warscroll spell to make Karazai attack the Longstrikes that are foolishly in his combat range, eating half of the unit. Alex lines up a whole bunch of charges on the Stardrake but it makes a big Redeploy to limit the engagement and lives. The Stardrake both eats 2 Morbheg Knights with its rampage and pops its artifact and fights first, eating Ushoran.

Alex rolls the double turn and opts to take it, finishing off the Stardrake and engaging the Questors on the far flank with the Horrors and some more Morbhegs. The Morbhegs on the right flank finish of the Stardrake and manage to tag and eat the Longstrikes. I have a big turn 2, scoring a full 20 points, but Alex gets turn 3 priority and does the same in return. Karazai goes on a bit of a spree but fails a load of hit rolls at a critical point, but 3 Longstrikes get brought back with Heavens-sent for a CP and kill the Gorewarden to both claim a Ghyranite Treasure for Intercept and Recover, and stop him jumping into my backfield. I take the double into 4 to try and clean up but don’t get enough out of it, and I’m ultimately left trying to do too much with too few pieces on the board.

If I’d won turn 5 priority I might have been able to score enough to jump ahead, but as it is Alex gets it and scores enough to deny me in a really close-fought game.

Result: 55-62 Loss

Not how I’d dreamed of starting. Still I knew a 5-0 was exceedingly unlikely, and you’ve got to lose sometime over the weekend if that isn’t on the cards. Alex was a brilliant opponent, and our 1-1 record means we’re definitely going to need a decider in the future.

Lunch was Firestorm’s vegan chilli & nacho chips, practically a tradition by this point, then it was on to round 2.

Game 2: Creeping Corruption vs Chris’ Idoneth Deepkin

This was my first time facing Idoneth since their book release, and also my first time playing Chris. Of note, at the time of playing I didn’t have the code for the book and couldn’t check something, which meant I made a stupid mistake.

Chris' list - click to expand

Chris’ list wants to hover around the edges of the board to make the most of a -1 to hit debuff. Mathaela has a pretty scary spell that they can use to do big damage to monsters, and the tides are there to make everything more effective.

Chris is a very experienced player, but by his own admission he’s at the event to play for fun and wants to dial back his competitive edge in favour of having a nice time. After a bit of open conversation about whether it’s a good move or not, I opt to stick to my guns and give him turn 1. He moves some stuff forwards and casts the new manifestation, summoning a tentacle to fight the Questors and also later charging in 3 eels. On my turn I reinforce the right with a Stardrake, and Karazai moves forward into the middle. Shooting units drop to try to take down one of the blocks of 6 eels, but a careful redeploy from Chris leaves them fairly unscathed.

Chris wins T2 priority and scores a full 20, engaging Karazai and my shooting units in the middle. From here onward it was a bit one sided, I held on well with primary scoring but Chris denied my tactics well, and at one point I overkilled Mathaela with shooting meaning that I couldn’t even try to charge the Questors onto the objective they’d teleported near to. Shout out to the Stardrake this game for dealing with 2 units of Scourge of Ghyran Thralls with crit mortals without blinking an eye. That was the highlight though, Chris outscored and outplayed me.

Result: 78-50 Loss

The game was a nice time and mostly we were very open with information, but I did realise later that we’d been massively misplaying the manifestation’s tentacles – because they can’t move, they don’t actually lock you in combat because they’re not predatory manifestations. I had been treating them as though they would, and Chris did nothing to disabuse me of this notion. He’s not obliged to at all and it’s ultimately my mistake, but I was a bit surprised in hindsight, so I’ll chalk it up to an incorrect assumption by him as well that meant we were just both getting it wrong. I don’t think it was a game changer, anyway.

Game 3: Lifecycle vs Tom’s Sylvaneth

Sylvaneth are definitely something I feel a bit more comfortable against, and my list has usually done reasonably well into them with their high volume of hero monsters struggling to hide from Longstrikes’ bolts.

Tom’s list - click to expand

Tom’s list is a bit different to the usual fare, with plenty of cavalry and stuff like the Warcry warband that I’ve never seen before. He’s also bringing Scourge of Ghyran Drycha, whose charge debuff seems really good.

I’m not going to cover this game in much detail as my brain was pretty fried. I screwed up early and won the roll off but incorrectly let Tom drop first, we were both equal drops so this gave him the choice of turn – obviously he made me take it. I had definitely wanted to force him into turn 1, stupid.

The game was back and forth, with lots of tactic and primary scoring on both sides. I did not win a single priority roll and ultimately I think that got Tom a T4 double that sealed the game.

One minor point of contention. I was mistaken in thinking that Drycha had the Infantry keyword rather than Monster and thus benefited from Obscuring. My memory is that I checked this with Tom, he looked a bit unsure, checked his phone, and said “oh yes, Infantry”. If that’s genuinely how it happened then that obviously sucks, she was an Intercept target for me and I ultimately spent most of the game thinking I couldn’t have gotten to her with my shooting. In Tom’s defence, maybe I was too forceful in my assumption and he was agreeing with me or assuming I knew more, or maybe I misheard him. Tom was otherwise a lovely and personable opponent, so I do hope it was my error and not outright cheating. It might not have changed the game, but the result was close enough that I’m annoyed in hindsight, whoever’s fault it is (mine, probably).

Result: 57-63 Loss

0-3 after day one, catastrophic! Not what I’d hoped for and I probably spent the evening a bit too miserable, apologies to Chris if so. We returned to the hotel and ordered a big bag of Slim Chickens, which cheered me up quite a lot.

Sunday

Sunday I woke up feeling refreshed, and we checked out and made it across to the venue without incident. I was initially paired into a Gitz list (lots of Squigs) for Game 4, which I was feeling alright about as I know how to play it with my list, but due to some late arrivals I was shuffled into a new opponent.

Game 4: Roiling Roots vs Aaron’s Maggotkin of Nurgle

Instead of Gitz I ended up facing Aaron’s Maggotkin. I haven’t played against them much in 4th edition, but I know they’ve been up and down.

Aaron’s list - click to expand

Aaron was making use of the Scourge Rotigus scroll, with his scary growing debuff aura, and had a bunch of Forge World Plague Toads being used as his Beasts of Nurgle. The whole army looked great, you could tell it had had a lot of attention!

I took priority and initially gave away turn 1, but Aaron pointed out that he was set up to score an easy 20 on turn 1 if he went first, and talked me out of it so I took the turn. Our whole game was like this, making sure we were both fully aware of what was going on at all points whilst still trying to play competitively. I maxed out primary for turn 1 while Aaron could only hold one in return, which he took from the Stardrake on the right flank with the Gargant and some Beasts.

On my turn 2 I took it back off of him again for another max score and a tactic, while Aaron was kept to just 5 points again. Rotigus did make a long bomb charge into Karazai though, with them leaving each other very wounded. It would all come down to the turn 3 priority…

…which Aaron won. He took the double, Rotigus killed Karazai, and because he was 15 points behind he scored max on primary and two tactics to grab the lead. In return despite my waning numbers I managed to kill Rotigus and teleport to Aaron’s backfield objective for a 15 point swing in my favour.

Turn 4 was mostly movement focused for both of us, with Aaron reclaiming his backfield objective but not killing my unit. He won priority into 5 and got 15 points to pull 5 ahead, which I made up in my turn by holding 1. We ended on a 50-50 draw, both with 3 battle tactics scored, a true tie. I think if I had won turn 5 priority I might have been able to kill Slimux to get another tactic and win by 5, but it would have been dicey as hell.

Result: 50-50 Draw

This game was a hell of a lot of fun, great anathema to a day 1 that had left me gurning. Aaron was a stellar opponent, definitely keen to always find the fun in the game, and his army was beautifully painted too. I hope to play him again soon!

Game 5: Bountiful Equinox vs Julia’s Sylvaneth

Game 5 was Sylvaneth again, this time piloted by Julia. Although she’d been playing for a while, this was Julia’s first two day event! It’s always great to see new people showing up at these big tournaments.

Julia’s list - click to expand

This is more like what I’m used to seeing with Sylvaneth. Julia did the obvious thing, deploying her Ghyranite Treasures on the highly mobile Tree Revenants and the difficult to kill Spirit of Durthu. I won priority, and Julia got turn 1.

Julia had 4 casts in this army, and in turn 1 absolutely none of her spells succeeded. Gutting, as this really limited her ability to reach out and strike with Durthu or the Kurnoth. She moved her Gossamids onto the central objective, and plinked a few wounds off of the Stardrake.

Unfortunately for Julia, what happened for the rest of the game was that my list did exactly what it’s supposed to do, almost better than it has ever done it before. Karazai and the Stardrake stayed together in the middle of the board, taking the objective back from the Gossamids and grabbing me part 1 of Restless Energy. On the right flank, the two shooting units dropped to lace Durthu with arrows. It worked, and he died. The seed of rebirth went off to keep him in play, and to add insult to injury the Stardrake’s long range comet attack then lifted him again. To add further insult, the Questors teleported through the portal to 9” away from the tree revs on the same flank and made a 10” charge to lift them, scoring me a 20 point turn with 2 tactics scored, and another in the bank for turn 2.

I got turn 2 prio and gave it away to Julia, who decided to go aggressive. Her remaining Tree Revenants teleported to my back objective to charge the portal/my wizard, while the Treelord Ancient, Belthanos, Kurnoth Hunters, and the Lady of Vines stepped forward to engage the dragons. Unfortunately this brought the Lady of Vines into Covering Fire range of the Longstrikes, who promptly rolled hot and lifted her off the table.

Charges were made and Belthanos jumped into my backline, but then it was my rampage time. The Stardrake ate two Kurnoth, then decided to fight first, where he lifted another two and easily weathered the remaining pair. Meanwhile, Karazai removed attacks from Belthanos, who was trying to kill his Praetor pals, and then put attacks into the Ancient, picking him up in a single round. In my backfield the Revenants had a bit of a slapfest with the Arcanum, but managed to take that back objective. In my turn two the remaining Kurnoth got eaten, and the wizard kept fighting the Revenants. The Longstrikes ran maximum distance to get some shots off into Belthanos, but didn’t quite kill him. Julia was clever here and chose the remaining Praetor as Belthanos’ rampage target, jumping him out of combat with Karazai on my turn and keeping him alive.

In round 3 I won priority but gave it away to Julia, then the Longstrikes immediately Covering Fired Belthanos to death. The Arcanum and Quicksilver Swords picked up the rest of the Revenants, and we talked through the rest of the game with only an hour of our allotted time used.

Result: 80-18 Win

This one was a bit rough on Julia, as her list was exactly what I hoped to face off against. She was great fun throughout though, I really enjoyed the game and I hope she did too! This was a maximum score win, and I can’t pretend I wasn’t desperately pleased to finish the weekend with at least 1 W to my name.

Overall I had a great time at the Welsh Open, finishing 69th (nice). I won’t pretend I’m not disappointed with my performance, my worst in a good long while, given my stated goal of being more competitive. Obviously though there has been a lot going on in my life, meaning both that my mind has been elsewhere and also that I didn’t get the list I wanted to bring finished in time. I’m glad for more play experience in the new GHB, and it’s always nice to have a weekend away enjoying your hobby with a friend. Chris fared better than me with his Slaves to Darkness, coming 31st after a weekend record of 3-2 (podcast number), and the Mighty Redeployers took a spread of results – shoutout to Krzysztof who took 5th after a 4-1, a nice sendoff for the old Khorne book.

Next Time: More Events!

The fun doesn’t stop there! Next time I’ll talking about a War In The Mortal Realms event in London, and hopefully a Spearhead one too. Spearhead is a great format and I really love playing it. I’m hopeful that I’ll have more finished Stormcast to show off, too.

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