Hello, Dear Reader, and welcome back to my ongoing blog covering my competitive and hobby journeys through 2022. You may recall from my last article that I was forced to play an RTT with Ultramarines thanks to a particularly ill-advised bet. If you missed it, you can read about that horrible nightmare here.

With the Ultras experience and another 2-1 finish (albeit LWW) behind me, it was time to go back to Chaos. Unfortunately, I’m still very far away from having a painted Black Legion army in place for my next GT – Warzone Houston – and I need to get more practice in with my Thousand Sons before I go to that event; it’s been a bit too long since I played them and they’re not an army with a light mental load. The good news is that a spot opened up for an RTT at Ettin games, and I was able to slip in for another 3-round event with only two weeks to go until WZH. Normally I’d have been at NOVA this weekend, but I decided against it after thinking about the stress of traveling for an event every other weekend for 8 straight weeks (LSO > GHO > NOVA > WZH, plus I was considering the LGT in there too!). This was a much more workable compromise and won me some Wife Points(tm).

My List

Rob's Thousand Sons - Click to Expand

This is basically the same list I took to LSO; I didn’t have time to make many changes to it. It’s heavier on board control than my older list, and it packs a Tzaangor Shaman to open things up for Psychic Interrogation on matchups where Mutate Landscape isn’t workable. He also gives me another Malediction for running Wrath of Magnus in the matchups where I need a second.

The Leviathan is also back, giving me some extra heavy ranged punch and the ability to fight things in melee if I need some additional melee threat. I’m not completely sold on him at the moment, but he’s also a converted model, and that’s important for paint scoring at Ettin events, where you can’t max out your paint score without a display board and conversions. I learned that display board lesson there the hard way last time I was at the event and I’m bringing my Kill Team board and temple again this time as well.

Let’s hop into the games. I’m going to go light on the first two, then dive deep on the third. If you’ve been wanting to see another detailed battle report, this is the post for you.

One quick thing to note on the event before we get started, though: This particular event was using player-placed terrain, which will account for some of the layouts you see in the photos below. This was a net negative for me overall, since my army thrives on medium lines of visibility and isn’t particularly interested in digging into melee. There were also magic box terrain features in play, which are generally very bad for my army.

Round 1: vs. T Chambliss’ Chaos Knights

T’s an Asgard regular I’ve just never really played. While he’s still getting up to speed on the game, he’s a solid player and rapidly improving. His list is ironically a better match for mine than most Chaos Knights lists – normally I make quick work of these lists by killing off the war dogs early and ignoring the one big knight, but in this case T has three big knights – an off-meta choice that makes it much harder for me to take out individual knights, particularly as he sits back and shoots me with his War Dogs.

T's list - click to expand

The Mission: Tide of Conviction

Tide gives me a solid advantage as a hold 2/hold 3 mission, though not as big an advantage as say Data-Scry Salvage might’ve. That said, T’s rocking an ObSec Rampager and that’s going to be a pain to deal with.

My Secondaries

• Bring it Down
• Mutate Landscape
• Wrath of Magnus

T’s Secondaries

• Storm of Darkness
• Ruthless Tyranny
• A Fitting Challenge

I’m Going Second.

Going second isn’t ideal against Chaos Knights – I’d like to get up some of my buffs and try and bracket them before they start shooting – and I use my pre-game redeploy with Master Misinformator to move my Scarabs to the crater on the other side of the table where hopefully they’ll be out of line of sight and they can use the dense terrain to avoid taking too much damage. They lose a few models to shooting and on my turn I’m unable to take out either of the big knights pushing toward my DZ – the Abominant and the Rampager. I do teleport my warpflamers to the upper left corner to threaten his War Dog, though I fail the charge to close the gap.

This puts me on the back foot a bit, but I weather another turn and manage to take out the Rampager – though the Abominant survives with 4 wounds left and will later explode and do some real damage to my side. The Abominant surviving helps T stay u7p on Primary points and steal an objective from me; I blank on my first turn and only score 4 on each of rounds 3 and 4, though I do manage a few points for Overrun thanks to those Warpflamer Rubrics.

I’m eventually able to kill all three of the big knights and squeak out the win, mostly by outscoring T on secondary points – I max Bring it Down and Mutate Landscape and pull 14 on Wrath of Magnus. I manage 12 primary on the final round going second, and that powers me to a 2-point win.

Result: 80-78, Win

A very tough game – most things that could have gone T’s way (such as damage rolls) did, and he played very well to steal objectives from me with his War Dog and obsec knights.

Round 2: vs. Matt Michaliszyn’s Adepta Sororitas

I haven’t gotten many games in against Sororitas yet in Nephilim but I know they’re a bad matchup for Thousand Sons. They have no psykers, which turns off two of the faction secondaries, they have the ability to deny army-wide on a 5+, they’re good in melee if they’re running Bloody Rose, and they score VP trivially easy.

Matt's list - click to expand

The Mission: Recover the Relics

 

I don’t love this one, but I can spend 2 CP to forward deploy a unit of Rubrics on an objective, which will… net me 2 CP if I go second. Still, that’s better than not getting the CP, since it means I’ve got a unit in a better forward position from the jump.

My Secondaries: 

• Engage on All Fronts
• Psychic Interrogation
• Raise the Banners

Matt’s Secondaries:

• Leap of Faith
• Defend the Shrine
• Sacred Grounds

In a true testament to how bullshit the Sisters secondaries are, they don’t even feel the need to take Abhor the Witch, and largely don’t have to kill any of my units in order to score 97 VP. Meanwhile I’m stuck on Engage and Banners. Interrogation is a good secondary but against Sisters it kind of isn’t; I basically need to devote 8 cabal points every round to making sure the interrogation cast is undeniable or I’m going to be risking 3 VP every time I attempt it. That means I don’t get to use some of my other cooler tricks with the cabal points. Banners is the best of a series of bad options here; the characters will never really be available for Assassination, and I’m unlikely to drop more than one unit at a time in Matt’s DZ for Behind Enemy Lines.

I’m Going Second

That’s six in a row going second for me and eight out of my last ten. I’d have preferred to go first to get a CP advantage and get some buffs up early but there’s very little in Matt’s army that’s visible to shoot turn 1, even after he moves up. My turn 1 priorities are to pop Matt’s tanks – I get neither – and then kill as many retributors as possible and starve him of the firepower necessary to really kill Scarabs and my Leviathan.

This goes OK, and on turn 1 I teleport my Warpflamers up and behind his sisters on the rear point. Of course, I roll 15 hits on their 5 warpflamers and kill… a single battle sister. Great. They’ll score me a couple of turns worth of Engage points but otherwise end up pooping the bed. On the whole, Matt’s dice were on fire this game, particularly his deny attempts – he denied pretty much every single power I tried to cast in range of his units, only whiffing on two out of more than two dozen attempts. It was unreal, but fortunately my guns were able to make up some of the slack left behind from a lack of mortal wounds.

The big break happens when Matt leaves his backfield completely undefended; I teleport a unit of scarabs right behind him, then use the single die re-roll from Glimpse of Eternity to drop an 11″ charge into his backlines that kills 3 of his units and leaves my boys in engagement range of his Retributors, trapping them in combat. They’ll then survive being hit by Vahl and the Paragon Warsuits, clinging to life with 2 models left, holding the home objective in Matt’s deployment zone and dropping him to 4 points on primary in round 3.  I end up pulling 15 on banners since I’m able to get 3 up on turn 1, plus 15 for Psychic Interrogation and 9 on Engage.

Result: 94-89, Victory

This game was hilariously not as close as the score would indicate, at least not by any sane standard. I pretty much table Matt and he’s got no gas left come the end of round 4, but it’s impossible to stop him from scoring at least 35 on secondary objectives and it’s a hold one/hold two mission so he’s got some decent primary scoring as well. This is basically the story of tiers and matchups – even against this

Round 3: vs. Carmine Battista’s Adepta Sororitas

 

Of course I’m up against Carmine again. This is pretty much guaranteed to happen at any local RTT where I start 2-0. As I mentioned before, Carmine is a damn good player and since he lost a few games to sisters he’s decided to give up on playing Custodes and chase the current meta darling.

Carmine's list - click to expand

Remember how I said sisters were a nightmare matchup for me last round? Well this round is like that but x2. Carmine’s on a much better order – Bloody Rose have better stratagems and can hit much, much harder, with three units of Repentia that are basically kitted out for killing terminators – and that’s before you buff them to obscene levels via stratagems.

I basically need everything to go my way this game and I need to play a mistake-free game in order to have a chance, and I don’t think that’s very likely.

The Mission: Death and Zeal

This mission is potentially a disaster for me – it puts us only 18″ apart, with the Repentia able to advance and charge, rolling 3D6 drop the lowest +1″ for their distance, potentially dropping in some turn 1 charges. I’ve got to deploy pretty far back and stay away from Carmine’s repentia as best I can. Let’s start by talking about terrain placement, since this event is using player-placed.

The Terrain

There are basically five pieces of terrain per player in this event:

1. A large U-shaped ruin
2. A medium-sized ruin that acts as a “magic box,” i.e. units can move inside it and can’t be seen while inside, nor can they see out
3. A small bunker (ruin) that units can see into/out of while they’re inside it
4. Two forests/craters with dense cover and difficult terrain

The two magic boxes are the real problem here – they’re basically the ideal hiding spots for Repentia, and Carmine can basically sit units inside them near objectives all game and use them to kill anything that comes near with no chance to fire Overwatch – there are no angles from which it’s possible to shoot the units inside. To be honest, that sucks and it’s one reason I’m not a fan of the magic boxes mechanic. Having cover for your melee units? Great. Having absolute cover, where you can’t get behind them? Dumb as hell.

Carmine wins the attacker/defender roll-off and places his first terrain piece. Here’s how it played out:

Notes:

A. Carmine dropped his first piece of terrain here. His plan was to use this to screen his advance, so he could charge forward with Repentia without getting overwatched if I dropped too close in.

B. One thing I’ve picked up from a game against Russell Tassin recently was to deploy these big L-shaped ruins “backwards” if your goal is to advance while shooting. You get the wall either way, but in this case what I really want is a cover save and to Hold Steady/Set to Defend for my Scarabs while they gun down oncoming Repentia, and so having the cover in front of me to shield my advance is better than having it behind me – the wall is in the same place either way. Now if you wanted to argue that I should have just had the whole thing open on this side, I’d be hard-pressed to argue.

C. I set up these craters as close as possible to make it difficult for the Repentia to go around either building, or if they closed off one of my flanks, they’d be unable to quickly charge through to the other side of the table.

D. Carmine had no idea where to put this last crater and didn’t realize it had dense cover. So he dropped it in the corner, where it would benefit me a great deal.

Secondary Objectives

My Secondaries:

• Engage on All Fronts
• Grind Them Down
• Psychic Interrogation

Carmine’s Secondaries:

• Leap of Faith
• Raise the Banners High
• Defend the Shrine (the center objective)

Simply put, these are not great secondaries for me to be on. Grind is a trap most of the time, and Engage isn’t particularly great either. The reason I’m taking them is because I need to take secondaries that can score me at least 12 points – and ideally go to 15. Otherwise there’s no competing. And I don’t think I’m liable to win the battle on specific objectives against Repentia, so my goal is to use the mission’s “catch-up” mechanic – scoring for killing units on objectives or moving onto one you didn’t control – to help keep me in the primary game.

Deployment

Carmine doesn’t have a lot of shooting but he does have Retributors I want to avoid. I deploy heavy to my left side, hoping to draw Carmine to one side away from my forward-deployed Rubrics, which went down last. I’ve got a pre-game redeploy; if I go second my plan will be to shift my units and deploy “off” the home objective, in case I lose my Rubrics in the southeast corner – this is so I can score the T1 mission bonus for moving onto an objective I didn’t control. Otherwise, I can shift my units right and just walk onto the lower right objective as planned.

Carmine puts two units of Zephyrim into deep strike and I remind him that I can shoot his units as they arrive if I have 2 CP available.

I’m Going First

FINALLY. I legitimately want that here – Carmine has deployed waaaay too aggressively, leaving his entire backfield open and several key lines of sight on the right side.

NOTE: Some things might not line up here 100%, but chalk that up to my memory of the game being less than 100% perfect. I’ve got notes on the scores but only a couple of photos and generally I’m less clear on exactly which of Carmine’s units I killed when – partly because they mostly sat in a big blob in the middle of the table – so mostly I only how I scored as a result.

I redeploy my Scarabs, Leviathan, and Exalted Sorcerer to the right, then walk them over to where they have line of sight on Carmine’s forces. The other unit walks forward into the ruins ahead of them and uses Empyric Guidance for extra range to shoot the Rhino, hoping to crack it early. Meanwhile the Warpflamer Rubrics teleport behind Carmine and sit in the dense terrain, where they open up on the Battle Sisters on that objective.

I’m able to kill a unit of Retributors who were stretched out onto the objective to score bonus primary and net me 3 for the turn. Unfortunately the Rhino survives with 4W left and the Warpflamers only kill two battle sisters after they roll complete garbage for their hit totals. I push through a Psychic Interrogation, get some kills for Grind, and score 2 on Engage.

Score: 8-0

Carmine’s Turn 1

Carmine pushes forward and advances both units of Repentia on the fringes, plus Vahl and Celestine. The Repentia charge my Rubrics and manage to kill them, taking the objective and netting Carmine 3 bonus points for primary. I was hoping one Rubric would survive, but no luck there. On the other hand, the Warpflamers did get incredibly lucky, tanking every Retributor shot that didn’t miss and only losing one model to shooting. On the north side Carmine gets his Repentia into the magic box where they’re basically invincible, and that makes taking that objective impossible unless I can pull them out. Carmine puts up two banners, scores 3 for Shrine, and 2 for Leap. I’ve got more kills so I net 3 on Grind.

It’s worth noting that Carmine’s dice were generally pretty cold this game. Not entirely in the sense that he got great rolls with his Repentia and nailed his charges and advance rolls, but his deny rolls and miracle dice rolls were complete trash. He managed to deny my Terminators double moving three times but otherwise didn’t get off any other denials, and his Celestine hilariously dropped a 1 the first time she died.

Score: 11-8

My Turn 2

I need to score more points on Engage and take out some targets, plus I need to pull the Repentia out of their box. I make a daring move, teleporting my Scarabs to the north side of the table. They shoot and take out multiple enemy units while my Warpflamers finish off the one squad of sisters on the objective, only to have to deal with another. On the south side of the table I kill the Repentia and Celestine, then start to chase Vahl. In my deployment zone I spread out to screen out the Zephyrim if they plan to come in this turn. I also make a play for the middle, sending in my Chaos Spawn. Mostly I want them to harass units there and get an objective kill in case the Warpflamers can’t do the job on their end, but they make it work. The Spawn do kill a Ministorum priest who heroically intervenes, though.

I get 3 kills again for Grind and score my first 3 on Engage, plus I force through another Interrogation and net 3 bonus points on Primary. Unfortunately I’m only holding one objective as the turn opens thanks to the Repentia killing my Scarabs so I only score 4 for primary this turn.

Score: 27-8

Carmine’s Turn 2

This was a devastating turn for me as I was largely unprepared for how devastating the Repentia could be. They charge in along with the Repentia Superior and just completely demolish my Scarabs unit. Carmine rolled bonkers good here and my saves were lousy but on the whole my best-case scenario was maybe keeping 1-2 models alive and even then that was a long shot. Carmine’s Canoness makes short work of my Spawn, netting him 1 primary bonus point, adding that to the 12 he scores on primary – I got killed on Primary this game – and he retreats with his injured Vahl to try and clear of my Warpflamers. He fails however, and they survive with two models left. Absolute legends. This keeps me on Grind for another turn.

Score: 30-31

Rob’s Turn 3

I net 8 for primary this turn, which is a good improvement but I need Engage points again and I need to try and kill those Repentia so I teleport another unit of Rubrics near them and open fire with everything I have… rolling like total shit and only killing three out of the eight of them. That’s really bad. In my DZ and the lower right I spread out to screen out the incoming Zephyrim, and chase Vahl a little bit, dropping her to 1 wound and also killing a unit of battle sisters. I get 1 bonus point for that, plus 3 for Engage and 3 for forcing another Interrogation.

Score: 48-31

Carmine’s Turn 3

Carmine capitalizes on my error by advancing his Hospitaller and getting back two Repentia, then they absolutely clown the shit out of my five Rubrics, though I’m able to put 3 wounds on the Superior in Overwatch. Meanwhile Vahl manages to finish off my Warpflamers, throwing me off Grind when I’m unable to re-roll one of their last two saves into a success with Command Re-roll + Glimpse. I was *this* close. He pulls another 12 for primary at the start of his turn and is just going to town scoring Leap and Shrine.

This is also when I notice Carmine forgot to deep strike his Zephyrim. Rather than trap him in a “gotcha” I let him drop them in the middle of the table. I’d been saving CP to shoot them in the prior turn but ended up spending it on Overwatch instead when his Zephyrim never arrived; this feels like a fair compromise.

Score: 48-58

Rob’s Turn 4

Alright now I have to make something happen. I teleport my Scarabs to the upper right corner to get back on some Engage scoring, using the Leviathan as my scoring unit in the lower right. I take out the Rhino, Vahl, and the Battle Sisters but thanks to the mission’s objective control “lock-in” mechanic I haven’t actually removed Carmine’s control of those. I score some damage on the Zephyrim as well.

On the lower left, things don’t go so great. I move my units off the objective and north – I need them to get good range, plus I don’t want Carmine to be able to kill a unit on the objective or move onto it with his Repentia to steal it if I die. I kill another 3 Repentia to thin their numbers a bit but can’t prevent them from charging my Rubrics. I get 3 kills for Grind again, force another Interrogation, and score 2 for Engage, plus 1 for the primary bonus.

Score: 72-58

Carmine’s Turn 4

Carmine scores 12 again on Primary and that basically means he’ll automatically max it out at this point. Not great for me. He completes his charge on the Rubrics but I kill the Superior in Overwatch. As a result he doesn’t kill the entire unit, which will allow me to score Engage one more time for 2 points on the final turn (the X there is erroneous but I’m not firing photoshop back up to correct it at this point). He maneuvers his Zephyrim to the middle of the table.

He’s basically maxed Leap at this point, plus he’ll net 3 more for Shrine and another 2 for banners, but I get 3 for Grind again.

Score: 75-79

Rob’s Turn 5

It’s the final turn and we’re coming up on time. I kill Carmine’s Repentia in the psychic phase and teleport my Scarabs forward onto the Northeast objective. This will pull down the banner there, though Carmine put one more up on the Northwest objective. My Leviathan and Exalted Sorcerer work with the Scarabs to clear the middle so I can net 3 this turn on primary bonus. I’ll score 2 for Engage with my surviving Rubrics in the lower left (not shown above), plus I’ll net Grind one more time and push through one more Interrogation to max that one out.

Carmine’s Turn 5

Carmine can’t do much on his turn but he doesn’t have to. He’s maxed primary, he’ll score 2 for banners and then 2 for banners at end of game, and he’s maxed Leap of Faith and Shrine.

We tally things up and it looks like this:

Rob

Primary: 39
Grind Them Down: 12
Engage on All Fronts: 12
Psychic Interrogation: 15
Total: 88

Carmine

Primary: 45
Raise the Banners High: 10
Leap of Faith: 12
Defend the Shrine: 15
Total: 92

Result: 88-92, Loss

A 4-point loss after an absolutely brutal game. Thinking back I probably should have put the Scarabs in a different spot teleporting them in rather than chasing 3 points on grind, instead going after Vahl and hitting Carmine from the right side of the table and trapping his Repentia out of position, then either teleporting to the left or just taking the middle depending on how he responded.

Ultimately my intuition proved true, unfortunately: Even with most things going my way and Carmine playing a less-than-100% game, forgetting his Zephyrim, I still needed more luck and perfect play to win this one. Taking the central objective for Defend the Shrine would have been insanely difficult and would likely have cost half my army, and I was already plenty lucky to have kept the Warpflamers around as long as I did, even if they were abysmal at actually killing sisters. Scoring 12 on Grind was a surprise, but losing 3 mid-game absolutely killed me. I definitely should have held back with the Chaos Spawn, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get the kills I needed there otherwise. Engage was also a really bad secondary pick and in retrospect I might have been better off with Behind Enemy Lines but I couldn’t have known before deployment that Carmine was going to leave his entire backfield open for teleports all game.

All things considered, a close loss to a player of Carmine’s calibre playing a tier 1 army is more encouraging than frustrating. It was a tough game but a lot of fun and tactically engaging with a lot of back-and-forth.

I ended up finishing 2-1 and winning best painted. Unfortunately, the event was using wins > battle points for placings, so my loss to Carmine ended up dropping me to 4th place, behind T, the player I beat in round 1. T’s a great guy and it’s not his fault but this particular outcome sucks shit and I’m still a bit salty about it. Events not using win paths for placings is just terrible.

Next Time: Warzone Houston Prep

That does it for my ramblings this time. Next up is Warzone Houston, a 6-round GT. I’ll probably bring Thousand Sons to that too but I’m reconfiguring the list – right now the Leviathan just doesn’t do enough for me. I’ll have a practice game this weekend to write about, then the event is next weekend. See y’all in a week.

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