Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing (mis)adventures on the road to competitive respectability in the 2022 ITC season. In my previous article, I was wrapping up practice games and frantically painting for the Dallas Open. This time, I’m going to regale you with my experiences at the event and talk about what’s next.

Thursday

I finish painting my Heldrake a few hours before it’s time to leave. It’s about a three-and-a-half hour drive from my part of Houston to Dallas, and while I have a car, we only have one. Leaving my wife without a car all weekend is a recipe for not being allowed to do stuff like this again, so we work out a plan: We drive up to visit Erik, one of my regular sparring partners, for dinner at his place. My wife and his have become friends ever since they met and hit it off in Austin last year, and that has made hams life about ten times easier.

Anyways we have dinner (Erik makes some solid saag paneer) and wait for Carmine, our other carpool buddy, to show up. Carmine is a transplant from the UK who’s been living in Houston for the last decade or so. He recently took up 40k again last fall and has been absolutely lighting it up with Custodes. He’s a very good player and a good painter to boot. We talk about international finance, game theory, and 40k balance on the trip up, and end up getting in about 3 hours later – we make good time with no stops. Then a couple of drinks later we’re off to bed.

My List

Before we go too far into this, let’s recap my list for those people who missed it:

++ Battalion Detachment 0CP (Chaos – Thousand Sons) [103 PL, 10CP, 13 Cabal Points, 1,991pts] ++

Cults of the Legion: Cult of Time
Sorcerous Arcana [-1CP]: Additional Relics [-1CP]

• HQ [20 PL, 8 Cabal Points, 370pts] +

Ahriman [9 PL, 3 Cabal Points, 180pts]: 12. Twist of Fate, 11. Tzeentch’s Firestorm, 21. Presage, Disc of Tzeentch [1 PL, 20pts]

Exalted Sorcerer [6 PL, 3 Cabal Points, 100pts]: 13. Doombolt, 23. Baleful Devolution, Athenaean Scrolls, Inferno Bolt Pistol, Master Misinformator, Warlord

Infernal Master [5 PL, 2 Cabal Points, 90pts]: 12. Glamour of Tzeentch, 5. Glimpse of Eternity, 6. Malefic Maelstrom, Umbralefic Crystal

• Troops [18 PL, 3 Cabal Points, 315pts] +

Rubric Marines [6 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 105pts]
. Aspiring Sorcerer [1 Cabal Points, 21pts]: 22. Weaver of Fates, Inferno Bolt Pistol
. 4x Rubric Marine w/ inferno boltgun [84pts]: 4x Inferno boltgun

Rubric Marines [6 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 105pts]
. Aspiring Sorcerer [1 Cabal Points, 21pts]: 21. Temporal Manipulation, Inferno Bolt Pistol
. 4x Rubric Marine w/ inferno boltgun [84pts]: 4x Inferno boltgun

Rubric Marines [6 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 105pts]
. Aspiring Sorcerer [1 Cabal Points, 21pts]: 31. Empyric Guidance, Inferno Bolt Pistol
. 4x Rubric Marine w/ inferno boltgun [84pts]: 4x Inferno boltgun

• Elites [54 PL, -1CP, 2 Cabal Points, 1,095pts] +

Chaos Leviathan Dreadnought [13 PL, -1CP, 220pts]: 2x Grav-flux bombard
. Two twin volkite calivers

Scarab Occult Terminators [21 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 445pts]: 2x Hellfyre missile rack [20pts]
. Scarab Occult Sorcerer [1 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 55pts]: 23. Temporal Surge, Inferno combi-bolter, Rites of Coalescence [1 PL, 15pts]
. 7x Terminator [280pts]: 7x Inferno combi-bolter, 7x Prosperine khopesh
. Terminator w/ Heavy Weapon [45pts]: Soulreaper cannon [5pts]
. Terminator w/ Heavy Weapon [45pts]: Soulreaper cannon [5pts]

Scarab Occult Terminators [11 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 215pts]: Hellfyre missile rack [20pts]
. Scarab Occult Sorcerer [1 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 40pts]: Gaze of Hate, Inferno combi-bolter
. 3x Terminator [120pts]: 3x Inferno combi-bolter, 3x Prosperine khopesh
. Terminator w/ Heavy Weapon [45pts]: Soulreaper cannon [5pts]

Scarab Occult Terminators [11 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 215pts]: Hellfyre missile rack [20pts]
. Scarab Occult Sorcerer [1 PL, 1 Cabal Points, 40pts]: Twist of Fate, Inferno combi-bolter
. 3x Terminator [120pts]: 3x Inferno combi-bolter, 3x Prosperine khopesh
. Terminator w/ Heavy Weapon [45pts]: Soulreaper cannon [5pts]

• Fast Attack [2 PL, 46pts] +

Chaos Spawn [1 PL, 23pts]: Chaos Spawn [1 PL, 23pts]
Chaos Spawn [1 PL, 23pts]: Chaos Spawn [1 PL, 23pts]

• Flyer [9 PL, 165pts] +

Heldrake [9 PL, 165pts]: Hades autocannon

++++

Basically the concept here is to have the big Terminator unit hold the middle while the smaller units clear off other objectives with support from the Rubrics. The Contemptor gives the list a little ranged punch against marines and the Heldrake is there to deal with Harpies or tie up key units with a first-turn charge. The Chaos Spawn and Heldrake are also there to absorb mortal wounds by being the closest models if it comes up and I need to eat a few.

 

Friday

Alright, it’s go time. I’m up early after sleeping like shit – my room vacillates between being too hot and freezing, and the pillows basically have no firmness whatsoever – and I head downstairs with my army to post up and get breakfast. I’m soon joined by Andrew and Greg “Klobasnek” Narro, two locals from the Houston scene who are playing in the Narrative. We talk for a bit and then I let them know that I don’t want to meet or play anyone new at the event, I only want to play people I know.

Round 1: vs. Don Hooson’s Death Guard

Well that was some powerful magic I put out there. I’m up against awesome guy and fellow Goonhammer contributor Don “the Mastodon” Hooson, playing his vehicle-heavy Death Guard list.

Don's List - Click to Expand

Don’s got a tough list, and he believes it matches up well into Thousand Sons. It very well might – the Plaguecasters prevent it from getting Abhor the Witch, but the list is full of big targets I’m unlikely to kill in a single turn with Wrath of Magnus, keeping that one off the table.

The Mission: Tide of Conviction

There are two things going for me in this matchup: The first is the terrain layout – this is a dense layout, especially compared to some of the other tables – and shorter lines of sight benefit my army, helping me hide from Don’s ranged shooting until I can unload with psychic powers. The other is the mission – Don’s list is mobile but it doesn’t have a lot of units, and it’s going to struggle a lot on hold 2/hold 3 missions like Tide of Conviction. There are two missions like that, and they’re both on Day 1, so a lot of Don’s game plan comes down to hoping he gets good matchups in those games and can weather the day until he gets more favorable matchups on days 2 and 3.

My Secondaries

• Bring it Down
• Mutate Landscape
• To the Last – 10 Scarabs | 5 Scarabs | Leviathan

Don’s Secondaries

• Assassination
• To the Last – MBHs | MBHs | MBHs
• Despoiled Ground

Bring it Down is a no-brainer here, and I opt for Mutate Landscape, hoping to pull 9 VP off it. To the Last is the best of some rough options, and I reckon I can make chewing through 10 Cult of Time Terminators a real chore. For Don’s part, I don’t love his Secondaries – I only have 3 characters for Assassinate and he’ll need to get close to them to pick them off, and Despoiled Ground has never worked for me. I’d have probably gone Grind instead of To the Last here as well, just because of how difficult it is for me to take out more than one of his units per turn with most things. This is where I’d have preferred to have Abhor over two Plaguecasters.

I’m going first.

That works out great for me – Don prefers to go second, but I want to get up psychic defenses like Weaver of Fates and Glamour of Tzeentch, plus I want to stymie him. The big play here is charging my Heldrake up the left side of the table into his Decimators. For Don’s part, he’s made a mistake in deployment here – he’s spread himself thin across the deployment zone, which allows me to spread out and pick off his vehicles one at a time. I don’t have much shooting or damage on turn 1, and Don retaliates by killing my flying idiot Heldrake, only for it to explode and drop a dozen mortal wounds on his units. The Heldrake was pretty average at doing that over the weekend, giving me two explosions when I needed them.

The Leviathan only really shows up in this game, putting in huge work against the Blight Haulers on the right side of the table and helping me kill all three units, good for denying Don 15 points on To the Last and scoring me 10 on Bring it Down. The biggest challenge of the day were Don’s Decimators, who managed to cling to life longer than I expected. But while I never touched his Contemptors, I managed to take them down as well, and my early lead on primary points helped me stay ahead at the end.

Result: 69 – 40, Win (nice)

 

Don is an absolute joy to play, and just really sharp. This is a terrible matchup for him, and on any other table or situation I think he makes this a much closer game, if not winning it outright. I wish him luck with the next round, and he’s not out of it – the pairings are Wins > Random at this event, and there are too many rounds for the number of players, so if Don can score high enough he has a chance of making the finals.

I go light on lunch, meeting up with Carmine, James “Boon” Kelling, and Bill Stineman from the Frozen North. There are lunch buffet tickets but I opt to just have a granola bar. I had plenty of breakfast and I’m not super hungry, plus my plan is to go HAM on dinner.

 

Round 2: vs. Robert Irving’s Ultramarines

Round 2 I was asked to play a game on stream against Ultramarines. Playing on stream kind of gives me anxiety – I fuck up an average of 1-2 things per game, and when you’re on stream those can suddenly become controversies, no matter how innocent. On the other hand, I’m very proud of my thousand sons and want to show them off, so I agree.

Robert's List

Robert’s only recently come back to the game and playing for six months, and his list shows it – he’s made the best of some rough options, but he’s packing a box dreadnought, a unit of 10 terminators, Guilliman, and a hodge podge of units that generally say “I’m just here to have a good time.” I let him know before the game to ask me about anything he’s having trouble with and not to worry about takebacks or small mistakes.

The Mission: Tear Down Their Icons

This is the mission where you plant the bombs. Robert’s got a pair of units of Infiltrators and deploys one forward on the middle objective, so I drop a unit of Rubrics on the southeast objective. There’s a good chance they’ll die if I go second, but they’ll demand some attention and if they only face the Dreadnought and Storm Speeder, there’s a decent chance they survive.

My Secondaries:

• Assassination
• Wrath of Magnus
• Stranglehold

Robert’s Secondaries:

• Stranglehold
• Oaths of Moment
• Assassination

The biggest challenge here for Robert is that he took Tigurius. While the Ultramarines psyker has some neat tricks, just having him means no Abhor and it means I can take Wrath of Magnus to score easy points instead of To the Last.

You can watch this game on stream if you like. It’s not a particularly competitive game. I get out to an early lead by holding the middle and face a bit of opposition when Guilliman spikes some rolls, but it’s never really close. The final score that gets submitted is wrong, because I forgot to score the bomb I plant on the final turn, but it doesn’t matter.

Result: 93 – 47, Win

 

Round 3: vs. Brett “The Catachan” Urbanowski

Round three sets me against Brett, a tall gentleman running Catachans. I’ve played guard many times and while they got another boost in the latest dataslate, I’m not convinced that their boosts – free mortars and auto-wounding on 6s to hit – are good enough to elevate them, and I think they still need to go first to have a chance.

Brett's list - click to expand

I’ve played against guard many times before, going up against Scott’s Cadians and the occasional opponent here and there. I’m not wild about it, since there’s always Vengeance for Cadia to consider, but with Armour of Contempt a lot of these weapons just don’t hit that hard any more – Manticores are only AP-2, which means in cover my Terminators will still get 2+ saves against them and even demolishers aren’t so scary these days.

The Mission: Data-Scry Salvage

This is the other hold 2/hold 3 mission and that means it’s going to be about sitting on these objectives. I forward deploy a unit of rubrics in the lower right corner to get some early Salvage points and we roll off.

My Secondaries:

• Bring it Down
• Mutate Landscape
• To the Last – 10 Scarabs | 5 Scarabs | Leviathan

Brett’s Secondaries: 

• Abhor the Witch
• Retrieve Nachmund Data
• Stranglehold

Bring it Down is a no-brainer, while Mutate Landscape works just fine on a 6-objective map where I need to spread out. I like To the Last here as well, since cutting through 10 terminators is a tall ask. For Brett, Abhor is a fine pick but I’m less convinced on Stranglehold, which requires holding 3 and getting me off one.

I’m going first.

That’s basically it for Brett. Even if he’s going first I think the game heavily favors me but going second, especially with this terrain layout, is a complete disaster for him. I spend turn 1 throwing out mortal wounds and shooting his screening guardsmen and by the end of that turn, he has no infantry left, save a unit of scions in deep strike. On top of that my Heldrake survives being shot in the first battle round, and will just harass his tanks all game. There’s not a ton he can do to score primary at that point, and he’ll end up with only 20 primary points for the whole game.

Result: 87-53, Win

That puts me at 3-0 after day 1 and I’m pretty damn happy with that result. We go out to a Mediterranean grill where I have a solid meal eating a bunch of hummus and falafel. It’s probably the healthiest meal I’ve ever eaten at a tournament. Good stuff. We drink for a bit at the hotel and I have a beer on my room’s balcony with Boon and talk shop.

 

Saturday

Day 2 of the event starts once again with breakfast in the buffet. It’s fine. I’m 3-0, and that’s great. People ask me: “Rob, what’s your secret to going undefeated three rounds?” and I tell them: “Don’t play any hard matchups at all until round 4. It’s easy, you idiot.” Then they get mad at me but this is the truth – the way you get to 3-0 or 4-0 is by avoiding hard match-ups until it’s impossible to do so. Tyranids a problem? Just don’t get matched into them!

I check my matchups and as it turns out, I get paired into a mirror match.

Game 4: vs. Matthew Allee’s Thousand Sons

There are six Thousand Sons players at the event and four of them were matched into each other in this round – Russell Tassin is at the next table over, playing Thousand Sons in a mirror as well.

Matt's List - Click to expand

The big thing here is Magnus, who’s surprisingly good tech into Tyranids and other Thousand Sons – having three Deny the Witch attempts at +2, re-rolling is massive for shutting down my psychic plans, and he’s a dangerous melee threat as well with his AP-4, 3-damage attacks. He can shoot forward and charge me early and just wipe out a unit of terminators if I’m not careful. He’s also on Cult of Duplicity, which gives him more mobility than I’ve got.

The Mission: Conversion

My Secondaries:

• To the Last – 10 Scarabs | 5 Scarabs | Leviathan
• Assassination
• Stranglehold

Matt’s Secondaries: 

• To the Last – Magnus | 10 Scarabs | 10 Scarabs
• Raise the Banners High
• Stranglehold

With Magnus on the table and Thousand Sons, there’s no chance I’m taking Wrath of Magnus, so that thins out my options. Assassination is probably the best of a bad bunch, where I can hopefully take out 2-3 characters, including Magnus, to score 7-10 points. With Stranglehold my plan is to just trade control of the middle and hope that works out, but I don’t love it – Engage might have been a better play here.

I’m Going Second.

Not great! I deploy defensively to prevent a T1 Magnus charge, but that’s not where Matt’s head is at – he plays defensively with Magnus as well, but teleports his Terminators over to the top left corner, using them to take a unit of my Rubrics off the board that I hadn’t placed well.

There isn’t a ton to say about this game, unfortunately. It was an uphill battle with a contentious charge into some poorly-designed terrain on turn 1, and my dice got super cold on turn 2, ensuring Magnus survived longer than he should have. The game was over pretty quickly.

Result: 30 – 95, Loss

 

Welp, that’s one loss down and while I’m still theoretically in contention, I don’t like my odds of being the x-1 player to make the finals, particularly because I think Matt’s got a better game going… today, anyways. The big problem with his list is that while he matches up well against Tyranids, Magnus is going to get murdered immediately by Eldar and T’au, and he’s unlikely to go the entire event without facing them. This will play out in dramatic fashion later, as Matt would beat John Lennon’s Tyranids in a close game round 6, then get demolished by Nanavati’s Eldar and Gonyo’s T’au in rounds 7 and 8. Still, he’s given me a lot to think about with my list.

I go light on lunch again. We’re grabbing dinner over at Pappas BBQ with the Art of War crew and all of our Houston lads, and my plan is to get fucked up on that rather than waste time on lunch.

Game 5: vs. “Sweet” Lew’s Blood Angels

This is an interesting matchup, to be certain. I’m not impressed with Blood Angels, but my army really doesn’t want to be in melee, particularly against 3-damage models.

Lew's list - click to expand

Lew’s gameplan is very simple: Shoot something with the Whirlwind to put it on fights last, then charge it. Repeat that throughout the game. My big thing will be avoiding an early charge and wearing down his units before the arrive, to the point where they’re unable to do significant damage in melee and I can finish them off and dig out with psychic powers.

The Mission: The Scouring

The mission kind of works in my favor, in that Hammer-and-Anvil deployment makes it easier to sit back, but the terrain gives Lew a bit of a leg up, in that he’s got spaces to hide en route to a charge.

My Secondaries:

• No Prisoners
• Mutate Landscape
• Stranglehold

Lew’s Secondaries: 

• Oaths of Moment
• Abhor the Witch
• Retrieve Nachmund Data

Lew’s on Abhor, which isn’t great for me, but has a lot of No Prisoners points to give up. My best bet here is to counter-punch with Stranglehold and try and occupy the middle of the table for a decent part of the game, since Engage will have me string out too far and I don’t like trying to combine psychic actions with regular ones – not enough hands.

I’m going second.

That’s really bad in this matchup, in part because I’ve forgotten that Lew’s Death Company can make a pre-game move, which puts them in range for a 9″ charge on turn 1 – I haven’t deployed far enough back to account for that. Lew manages to make the charge with his Death Company, killing 5 terminators and tying up my Terminators and Dreadnought turn 1. That’s really bad, and will ultimately cost me the game. I’m able to dig out next turn, but the lost models and movement stuffs me in my DZ one turn longer than I’d like, and ensures I don’t score Stranglehold once until turn 5.

There’s a lot of back-and-forth in this game – early my Heldrake ties up the Grav devastators and kills them, which is a good deal for him. Lew sweeps around the bottom of my table and causes problems where I’m light on resources, while I eventually claw through all of his Sanguinary Guard. The problem is that he’s got an ObSec aura and just keeps managing to keep 1 last model alive long enough to stop me from scoring. My dice were pretty bad this game and while normally that isn’t something I like to point to, in a game this close, it was probably the other major factor, behind my deployment mistake. It’s a close game, but Lew takes it. Good for him – he’s a great guy and it’s a fun game. He’ll end up going 6-2, losing to Nanavati in the finals, which is a hell of a run.

Result: 75 – 80, Loss

 

That’s the nail in the coffin for my T4 chances, and I’m out on TiWP for Thousand Sons, but I can still salvage a 4-2 record for days 1-2. The good news is, I’m up against T’au, and on the “tron” table, which benefits me greatly in this matchup.

Game 6: vs. Kristopher’s T’au

T’au are a surprisingly good matchup for Thousand Sons, especially post-dataslate. They can take Abhor, but can’t do anything to stop the mortal wounds, lack strong ObSec tools, and their firepower just doesn’t hit as hard as it used to. If I can stay out of sight from the Broadsides and Hammerhead long enough to do my thing, I’ll be in a good place.

Kris' list - Click to Expand

The big things to watch for here are the Hammerhead and the Broadsides. The Riptide can cause me problems too, but mostly I want to keep my vehicles out of line of sight from those big guns, and keep them from deleting terminators, where the Hammerhead firing submunitions can be an issue too. Kris is light on markerlights, which is a good thing for me since it means Glamour of Tzeentch is going to do a lot of work for me.

The Mission: Recover the Relics

Six objectives to control also benefits me, since I’ve got more durable obsec units to throw down. The big thing I need to be wary of is the Crisis Suits, which will deep strike in – I need to control when and where that happens to ensure they don’t wreck me on the drop.

My Secondaries:

• Grind Them Down
• Mutate Landscape
• Engage on All Fronts

Kris’ Secondaries:

• Abhor the Witch
• Assassination
• Aerospace

Grind feels like a better play here than To the Last, in part because with massed firepower I think Kris can take out some of the big targets, and the Hammerhead can get lucky and one-shot the Leviathan if I’m not careful. Engage benefits an aggressive strategy from me here, and I think I can score at least 10 off it. With 6 objectives, Mutate Landscape becomes an option again, and there are no denies to stop it.

I’m Going First.

That’s great news – it means I can get out in front and play aggressively. I make an immediately play for the bottom-right corner with the Umbralefic Crystal and the Heldrake, and go for a first-turn charge on the Broadsides that tragically fails. Still, this aggressive move puts me in good position, as the Heldrake weathers enough shooting from the Broadsides to stick around an extra turn. I spend a good chunk of the game in that corner mixing it up with the Riptide and Crisis Suit Commander while slowly picking them off and continuing to score the objective with an ObSec unit of Rubrics.

Meanwhile, on the top of the table, I run my Chaos Spawn up to the wall and charge through it to tag the hammerhead and Stealth Suits. The Spawn don’t do much, but they are able to keep both units from shooting effectively and help me capture that objective and score Engage for being in 4 table quarters. By the time the Crisis suits drop, it’s a bit too late – I’ve already gotten a big lead on Primary objectives and the suits just don’t do enough damage on entering – though their output is impressive – to lessen the mortal wound storm that will tear through them in the following two turns.

If there’s an MVP of this game, it’s probably my Chaos Spawn, who put in a crapload of work against the hammerhead and stealth suits by just being there. The Crisis Commander was also a real pain – turns out the most effective melee unit in the game is somehow a Tau unit wearing a glove. Go figure.

Result: 91 – 55, Win

 

That win puts me at 4-2. Hell yeah – that’s way better than the .500 record I was hoping to get, and theoretically gives me a lot of leeway if I want to try for 6-2 or 5-3 tomorrow. Or… I could potentially go home early. There’s an avenue for that opening up, and the prospect of getting home in time to read stories to my son is very enticing. We’ll revisit this.

Dinner that night is at Pappas BBQ. The Pappas franchise is a Houston staple, founded in the ’70s by the Pappas brothers. They have a string of different restaurants – Pappadeaux is cajun cuisine, while Pappas steakhouse is well, a steakhouse. The best of the lot is Pappasitos, the tex-mex variety, but Pappas BBQ is a fine stand-in when we need a big table. They have outdoor seating on long picnic tables and it’s a nice night in Dallas so it all works out. I get a baked potato loaded with fixins and covered in chopped beef brisket and BBQ sauce. It rules, and I eat way too much. Then I get some banana pudding.

We talk for a while about the day’s games, with John Lennon talking us through his recent loss to Matt Allee’s Thousand Sons. It’s a good time up and down the table with lots of seat switching and hooting and hollering. We pack up and head to restaurant, then drink some more before packing it in. I sleep like shit, as do a bunch of other Houston folks.

Sunday

It’s Sunday and, to be honest, I don’t think I have another two games of tournament Warhammer in me. The event is too long by a round for its size anyways, and I’m satisfied enough with 4-2 over the previous two days that I can live with just taking that record, and I’m not going to get best in faction or win best painted anyways. I’ve got some ideas for tweaking my list to consider, and I’m not really curious about how it’ll keep playing out. I decide to drop and get in a casual game against James “Boon” Kelling instead, against whom I have actually never played.

Game 7: James Kelling’s Craftworlds Eldar

The best part about a casual game at this point is I can just chill out and have a good time and not worry about the clock or any of that nonsense. So this next game takes about four hours to play and involves more bathroom breaks than it otherwise would have. This was easily my favorite game of the weekend, and the closest one I played, so it’s the one you get the most detail and strategy on.

James' List - click to expand

Kelling has a mean list, with a lot of movement tricks. It’s definitely able to pull off a lot of bullshit and resting hard on the Swooping Hawk movement tricks that need to be nerfed out of the game – right now Baharroth can charge you, fight, and then just dip out to anywhere on the table before you hit back, while the Swooping Hawks can move multiple times in a turn. James tries to explain some of this to me before the game but I am absolutely uninterested – it changes very little about my strategy since there’s nothing I can do about it, and my battle plan is locked in.

The Mission: Death and Zeal

This can work for me – a center objective is good stuff, and I want to try and block James out from holding as much as I can, for as long as I can, and hope to get a sturdy lead.

My Secondaries:

• Wrath of Magnus
• Stranglehold
• Assassination

James’ Secondaries:

• Stranglehold
• To the Last – Falcon | Falcon | Swooping Hawks
• Retrieve Nachmund Data

Wrath is a solid pick here but a risky one – James has more mortal wounds than most Eldar players, so I’m hoping to deny smites when they happen, and push through mortals as I’m able. The weak link here is Assassination, which can only yield 10 points but I don’t have a ton of great options. Psychic Interrogation seems like a mistake and is deniable, while none of the other Kill secondaries help me much. In retrospect Mutate Landscape+Grind might have been a better play.

There are two major deployment moves: I spend 2 CP on Risen Rubricae to put a unit of rubrics on the top left objective, while James puts his Webway gate in the bottom right. The battle lines have been drawn.

I’m Going First.

That’s what James wants, and there’s a bit of an advantage to going second here, but I still want to go first because I have big things planned. James does his pre-game moves of picking up most of his remaining units and putting them into reserves, to come back in later. I start the turn by teleporting a unit of 5 scarabs to the bottom right corner, where they sit more than 7″ away from the webway gate – this will allow them to shoot anything coming out, but prevent them from being auto-charged. The big threat here are the Howling Banshees otherwise, who do 2 damage and force fights last while turning off Overwatch. If I can kill them with Inescapable Forewarning I’ll be in good shape.

I keep the Heldrake in AIRCRAFT mode and shoot it across the table to James’ Deployment Zone. It fails to do mortals on the flyover, which sucks ass. The goal here is to prevent James from having “safe” spots to drop his units from Deep Strike – if the Heldrake can survive a turn. He spends a round shooting at Baharroth, which is probably a mistake – I only take 2 wounds off the guy, and I might have had more success killing the Rangers or Guardians, but that’s more a hindsight thing. I score Stranglehold and 2 bonus points for being on Objectives I didn’t control at the start of the turn. The big mistake here in retrospect was putting my Terminators on the center objective – I already had both corners, so I should have left them off in order to score 2 more the following turn by just walking on. This would have been trivial.

On James’ turn he brings in both Falcons at the top of the table, but keeps his units inside to avoid getting shot by Forewarning. He throws 5 mortal wounds at the Heldrake, and that idiot saves 0 of them with Biomechanical Mutation, then it fails all its saves and dies after Baharroth charges it, doing just enough damage to kill it after it fails a re-rolled save. I really needed it to survive one turn, as doing so would have meant James couldn’t deep strike back into his deployment zone turn 2. I possibly could have prevented this by staying away from Baharroth a bit, but there wasn’t really a place to get more than 3″ away. Anyways, this idiot Heldrake at least does something right, by exploding on the spot and taking out 3 guardians and 3 Rangers. This means James might fail his RnD action with the Rangers – 1/3 chance – but alas, he gets lucky and completes it. This was also a game-winning roll, in retrospect, since keeping him off his RnD rhythm another turn would have helped me substantially. His Hawks jump forward and kill a single terminator, while his Dire Avengers, Banshees, and Guardians pile out of the webway gate. I shoot the Banshees dead with Inescapable Forewarning and lose two terminators to Avenger shooting. James scores Stranglehold and 7 for primary (4 + 3 bonus), plus he gets his first RnD.

From here we play a tight game of back-and-forth. I take out one of the Falcons but can’t take the other one. The Terminators clear out half the dire avengers in the bottom right, while my terminators in the middle aren’t able to finish off the Falcon up top, and that’ll end up making a huge difference. James manages to keep one of his falcons alive for a couple of turns too long thanks to some bad mortal rolls on my end, and that’s also a big factor for him in the game. Meanwhile that also meant his fire dragons could get the drop on my terminators and kill 2.

 

The crux of this game comes down to the decision on my part to put the 10 terminators in the middle of the table. By doing so I basically got stuck with them out of position and unable to do much damage. I’d have been better off committing 5 to this and putting the 10 near the webway gate. James spends the better part of the game worrying about a double-move charge into his deployment zone, but he’s forgotten that the walls are more than 1″ thick, and so screening me out is trivial. James also gets pretty lucky with his Smites – and by lucky I really mean that my deny rolls all failed – and so manages to blank me on Wrath of Magnus on turns 2 and 4.

The final turn comes down to him managing to get off a 3-wound smite on one of my terminator units to take the center objective, denying me Wrath and scoring him Stranglehold. That’s good enough to squeak out a narrow win. I outscore James on Primary and we tie on Stranglehold, but I only score 6 points across Wrath of Magnus and Assassination, while he snags 5 for To the Last and 12 for Retrieve Nachmund Data.

Result: 71 – 76, Loss

Dammit, James – I’ll get you next time! This was a very fun game, with lots of big swings and up-and-down moments.

 

I grab an early ride back with Klobasnek, who’s willing to drop me off at my place. We make good time, and I’m home in time to read to my son. We’ve been going through Jeff Smith’s Bone, and he absolutely loves any chapter with the stupid Rat Creatures in it. We’re about halfway through the book.

Overall, this was an OK event. The hotel was OK, but going with the Astros Militarum crew really helped make it a good time. It was great to finally play an in-person game with Don, and getting in a game against Boon for the first time was great, especially because we could just be chill about it.

What’s Next

Of course, I immediately regretted signing up to do back-to-back events, as coming home tired on Sunday I realized that I have to turn around and do all this shit again in Seattle this week. So that’s what’s next. I made a few tweaks to my list:

• Change from Cult of Time to Cult of Duplicity
• Swap two 5-model Scarab squads to 1×10
• Swap out one grav-flux bombard for a Siege Claw
• Remove Ahriman’s Disc
• Add another Chaos Spawn

Ideally I’d remove the Leviathan altogether and add 5 more terminators, but fuck to painting another five this week. Instead I’ll roll with 2×10, since having the extra durability is important without Cult of Time. On that note, I need the extra mobility of Duplicity, and this gives me that, and not relying so much on the Crystal means I can swap out Ahriman’s Disc for another Spawn to soak wounds and harass units. Finally the Leviathan is sticking around but I’ve given him a combat weapon. He doesn’t have enough damage output to justify going two bombards and after a few games I felt like I’d have been better off having a harder-hitting melee threat, which the Dreadnought will give me with 5 claw attacks.

Anyways, I’m off to Seattle this weekend – wish me luck, and luck for me in the standings!

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