The big finale of the Games Workshop US Open series of events is this week in Albuquerque and we’ve got a host of Goonhammer authors attending nearly every event. In these Road to articles our authors will talk about their armies, their goals, and their plans for the event.
Hey all! Rocco here. You can usually find me writing about a card game that everyone hates and Yu-Gi-Oh! This is probably going to be the most I write about Warhammer all year. If you remember me from other Warhammer articles I’ve written you’ll know that I primarily play Space Marines. White Scars successor Crab Space Marines: The Brotherhood of the Flowing Tide. As you could have surmised from the title of this article, I’m going to the US Open Grand Finale Narrative!
When the original US Open dates were announced I really wasn’t planning on going to any of them. I don’t do a lot of long-distance travel for Warhammer. The only GT size events I went to this year was the Goonhammer Open back in August, in which I played in the narrative and got thoroughly annihilated, and NOVA Open 2022 back on Labor Day weekend. I didn’t play any Warhammer: 40,000 at the NOVA Open though. I played A LOT of Blood Bowl and an entire relaxing afternoon of Necromunda. It was a great time.
Just a week before NOVA I was press ganged into getting onboard for the Narrrative Grand Finale. I wasn’t very excited about the idea until I realized that was going to be the same weekend as my birthday. So of course I had to buy the tickets for myself as an early birthday present. So now I had to get everything together for my army list. Everything including…
Yeah I bought a large resin son. A new child. The size and weight of a new-born baby. I joined the Goonhammer ranks of Astraeus owners. This was entirely an impulse purchase. I bought it at the Warhammer store pop-up at NOVA. Please do not come to me for financial or budgeting advice.
That said, I planned on bringing this behemoth to the Narrative Grand Finale. Which means I had 3 months to get it ready and devise a list to go with it. The event is using PL which gives me a little bit of flexibility for unit loadouts, but may leave my list lacking in points at the end of the day.
Now considering it’s a crusade I’m deciding to play slightly suboptimally and bringing a Phobos Librarian to most of my games.
I had started working on him a while ago, but I’m finally using this event as a reason to get more paint on him. White Scars have some interesting psychic powers that can positively affect your units’ movement and negatively affect your opponent’s. This kind of fills the same role that I bring a chaplain for so depending on what buffs I want it’ll be a hot swap between the two.
Looking at the crusade rules available to me I noticed that there are particularly cool rules for ancients in a White Dwarf, so I decided to make one using a cataphractii terminator and some bits and pieces from Idoneth Deepkin kits.
Removing the deepkin iconography was a little dicey so I have to do a bit of filling on the banner, but I have plans to put a crab in the middle of the banner and lightning bolts in each of the fanned sections
To round out my list I had about 4 PL to work with. Just enough for some las fusil Eliminators to blast at tanks and hold a back-line objective in the cheap.
I also have to paint these.
The rest of my list will consist of infantry units from Assault Intercessors to Eradicators. It’s all painted and very easy to transport in two KR card cases, so I figure I’ll bring all of it and sort out the lists later.
That’s what I’ve got to work on in time for the event. Check back next week for my progress on it all (the Astraeus may already be finished by the time this article posts).
