In our Road to LVO series, we’re following several different players and hobbyists as they prepare to play in one of the largest wargaming conventions on the planet. In this article we’re kicking off Dan “Swiftblade” Richardson’s journey to LVO – Dan is a regular writer here at Goonhammer and an organizer in the Houston Warhammer scene.
This year’s Road to LVO series is sponsored by Frontline Gaming.
Welcome back to part three of my Kill Team Road to LVO series here on Goonhammer! In the last article, I narrowed down my choices for teams to take to LVO between either Nemesis Claw, a team I’ve taken to a few events this year who escaped the worst of the Dataslate nerfs, or Hearnkyn Yaegir, a team I’ve got not experience with but I’ve really enjoyed playing and painting them. I’ve still got a few weeks to decide and lock in on a team, but I need to make a decision and stick with it relatively soon or it will be October before I know it and I’ll rock up to Vegas unprepared.
Starting with Yaegirs makes the most sense, I would need to do way more preparing with them. Let’s start with the part of prep that always takes the longest- painting.
Hobby-Painting Hearnkyn Yaegirs
Like I said last time, I’m an elf guy at heart, meaning that anytime the option between playing a dwarf or elf comes up in some fantasy game I’ll always skew towards elf, and spend the entire playtime barely caring at all about what those rock-loving short dorks are doing over under their mountains or whatever. This apparently also applies to 40k; even though the Votann are new on the scene, I’ve bothered extraordinarily little to learn about their lore. I only care about how I can kick their beard-loving asses on the tabletop. So when it was time to pick a scheme, I had no lore to grab on to for inspiration. Since learning more about the background of the Kin flies in the face of my haughty, arrogant elven fanboy ways, I picked my orange scheme on vibes alone.
Google tells me that’s the scheme of the Trans Hyperian Alliance. Good for them, I hope those guys are cool.
Actually painting these Yaegirs is a total breath of fresh air for me, after spending a good bit of my year crunch-painting black power armor and gold trim. I’ll admit that orange is just as fiddly a color to work with as I’ve always heard it was, even when working with the Two Thin Coats paint line it takes several coats and plenty of patience to get even coverage. It looks great when its done though, and a careful wash of Agrax Earthshade followed by highlighting the armor with Flaming Forge Orange and Skulltaker Yellow from TTC makes the orange pop.
The coats are by far the coolest part of the Yaegir model, and the part that I’m happiest about with my end result. I really like the contrast of the cool blue against the bright orange, which looks much better to me than if I were to stick with a classic brown or black coat. I painted the coat by basing with Thunderhawk Blue, followed by a spot wash of Agrax Earthshade in the folds of the coat. I highlighted with Wolf Grey, followed by a careful highlight of Gravestone Blue, trying to make sure it doesn’t overpower the first highlight and blends well. The result came out just as I wanted it to.
When I batch paint, I find that I lose momentum and interest if I try and do the highlights of multiple models all at once. Highlights are fun, something I like to take my time on, and when I do it on multiple models it starts to feel like work. You get lost in it, and start to wonder if you’ll ever be done painting these models. For my process, I base paint a few models, do some shading, and then I do the rest of my painting steps on each model one by one. It’s productive, and since nothing makes me want to paint more models than a finished model, keeps me engaged with painting. So far, I’ve completed the Theyn and the Bombast, and both models came out excellently. I don’t care about space dwarf lore, but man do I love painting them.
With painting coming along nicely, it’s time to get some practice games in with Yaegirs. Since my last article, I’ve gotten two games in- one against Dave down at Goldmine Games, and one against my buddy Chris.
Versus Dave’s Plague Marines
I’ve played Dave a few times now either at the weekly game nights at Goldmine Games or at local events, and each time he’s been a lovely opponent. Our record against one another is pretty even as far as wins and losses go, which is great for me and practicing with this new team. He’s on a new team too, and my heart sinks a little when I hear what it is- Plague Marines.
I’ve played a few times into Plague Marines, and each time I’ve gotten my teeth knocked in. Going up against them is a puzzle box that I’ve struggled to solve internally. How do I win engagements when I can’t expect to trade well into them, even with my deadliest operatives? Between their high wounds, power armor, and Disgustingly Resilient rule, they’ll take plenty of punishment, heal up, and then beat you down at close range. As I’ve come to understand them, this will be especially tricky for my Yaegirs, as raw damage output isn’t my forte. But I can get some nasty stuff off if I position well, and I’m going to need that to win this game.
We pick Extraction for our mission, and are playing on Volkus. I decide to go with Implant as my Tac Op, since I doubt I’ll be killing Plague Marines in one go and most of my weapons are fairly close range anyways I think I’ll be able to score this fairly consistently. I set my mines up in places that I think will funnel him towards more open walkways for sightlines, and place a light barricade near enough to an ammo cache so that a gunner operative can threaten shots on the middle.
On TP one, I play pretty conservatively, even with my Dauntless Explorers move, but not conservatively enough. I make a mistake here by pushing my Tracker way too far forward, I think he was probably fine staying back, and give Dave some shots with his bolter from vantage on my Bladekyn. Fortunately both operatives survive, but I got lucky on the Tracker for sure.
TP two, I go second and get my toughness game going, with Tough Survivalists and In Position. Dave charges the Tracker and takes him out, followed by a charge against his Champion with my Bladekyn. I know the Bladekyn is toast here, but I also know that this is an easy early Implant with some damage to boot, since I can resolve on death. I take off a good chunk on the Champion, even with his heal, and manage to get the kill. Dave pushed up the middle and does the mission objective on the center and his home, making the objective in my deployment zone the Extraction objective. I send out a knife warrior to do some damage against his Grenadier, and when he dies I also set up my No Kin Left Behind marker to cover my Gunner and make him extra deadly.
When I run and send my other knife warrior to grab my home objective, Dave responds by charging me with his Icon bearer. He spikes down and I roll hot, and even though he kills my Warrior I bring the Icon Bearer down to very low health. He does score Storm Objectives here, and I realize I can shut him out of both Crit and Tac Op if I play keep away. I kill his Icon Bearer with my Riflekyn, and then my Gunner takes out his Champion. Even though he’s my implant target, I want the kills where I can get them to keep momentum.
TP 3 and 4 turn into a game of keep-away, and I manage to survive a shot from the Plague Caster with my Bombast by the skin of my teeth for the bombast to drop the Caster in retaliation. The Riflekyn is stuck on Vantage and doesn’t have great targets, so I implant the Fighter who’s alone on this flank before getting eviscerated by Chain flails. The rest of the game I just spend running away to keep Dave from scoring anything else, while getting off one more implant for good measure. I come out on top, with my first victory against Nurgles favorite sons. Despite the score, it feels like a much closer game, and Dave is a great opponent as always.
Result: Victory, 17-9
Versus Chris’s Corsairs
Chris is someone I don’t get to play against very often, especially since we are both new dads. But it also means we are both operating on new dad hours, so he’s more than happy to drive down to my place after the baby is asleep for a quick game on a Friday night when most other folks would have other plans.
Chris is newer to Kill Team, and this is also his first run with Corsairs, so I know that this probably isn’t going to be the same level of practice than what I had with Dave, but that’s okay. I also haven’t ever played into Corsairs, and we are playing on Gallowdark, which I haven’t tried yet with Yaegirs, so there are plenty of things for me to learn about here to improve my play.
We are playing Coordinates, and I pick Storm Objectives as my Tac Op. My plan here is to flood the center objective, which is on his side, with threats, and then commit just enough to the flanks to keep Chris honest. Turning point one, I only open the door in the big room with the neutral objective, thinking that Chris’s elves are so fast that he could potentially get some easy shots off if I open a door without being prepared. Chris pushes forward aggressively, and opens as many doors as he can, so he’s ready to rumble TP 2.
I win the roll off on TP, and I elect to go first. Chris has an operative in a key spot to charge and cause problems in the center room, and then plenty of trouble right behind him if I take the bait. I activate my Bladekyn and then use Bonds that Bind to activate my Gunner as well. I give the Bladekyn a resourceful point so she can open the door, charge, and kill the Corsair all while I get a point for Storm Objectives, while putting the gunner on guard. The gunner on guard turns out to be a huge problem for Chris, who’s reluctant to commit anything to the room now in fear of getting blasted.
Chris starts to try and push onto my home objective, but I use my Tracker to shoot his operative from silent and stay concealed behind cover, picking up his operative with a good roll. At this point, things go downhill fast for Chris, as he tries to make some aggressive plays to take out my operatives, but either bounces his charges thanks to Tough Survivalists and gets picked up in return or tries to make shooting plays but gets picked up in the counter attack. When he finally kills the Bladekyn, a warrior rushes to the center to take her place. When the warrior dies, he drops a No Kin Left Behind marker, and the middle is even deadlier.
Chris gets a few more kills here during the game, but can’t ever get momentum going in his favor, and in the end it’s my game pretty soundly.
Result: Victory, 20-10
Yaegir Takeaways
While it would be very foolish of me to claim complete mastery of this team after just two games, I did learn a bunch of key lessons about their playstyle.
The big lesson is that this is a far more defensive team than my beloved Nemmy Claw, and most of my defensive tricks come from good positioning. Tough Survivalists is the most straightforward defensive tool, and also the most straightforwardly powerful since taking half damage on the first hit in a TP can really throw a wrench into the math. I can’t just waltz into the center like Plague Marines and survive just because of that damage reduction though, I’ll still get mulched if I try and simply body check most teams. No, this team wants to move up and set up deadly engagement zones on the board while controlling how often they get counterattacked and from where. Like with No Kin Left Behind for example, I can try and set up a trade that even if I lose, I can place that marker and turbocharge the damage output of my team. If I’m smart, I should set that sacrificial play up where most of the action is going to happen.
To really improve my Yaegir play, I need to focus on denying more of the board with equipment placement. My Hy-Pex mines didn’t do very much in these games, but largely I think that’s because I was using them wrong. I placed them in areas thinking that my opponent would have to begrudgingly walk on them, but in reality no opponent is going to do that, and it’s very difficult to put these mines in places where your opponent has no other option than to walk in them. Rather, I should think of them as a way to control the battlefield, putting mines in the places an opponent might go to hide from sightlines or to stage for charges. These aren’t damage tools, but ways for me to decide where the fighting happens, and if I get smart about where those mines get placed alongside with other equipment like razorwire and barricades, I can funnel the enemy team to go right where I want them to.
Next Time: Returning to Darkness
While I need to keep up painting my Yaegirs, I want to get a few games in with Nemesis Claw to see how they play, especially post-dataslate. Overall, I think they’re in a good place, but I won’t know until I try. After getting some games in with both Nemesis Claw and Yaegirs, I’ll be able to make the final call on which team is coming with me to Vegas in October. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next article!
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