TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2024, Part 16: Welcome to Pariah Nexus

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing log of personal, hobby, and competitive progress for Warhammer 40,000. Last time around I finished my Night Lords bikes and played another test game, this time working with the Veterans of the Long War Detachment. The results were pretty disastrous.

This week I was back on my bullshit, testing another Chaos Space Marines army and going back to an old favorite. So it’s a two-fer of battle report goodness! Also, I did some more hobby work on my Night Lords. Stick around for that. But FIRST, let’s start with the games.

Game 1: Soulforged Warpack vs. Thousand Sons

I’m not seriously considering the Soulforged Warpack – yes, they’re one of the best armies in the CSM book and they have some cool stuff, but I don’t really want to paint up a bunch of Night Lords Daemon Engines and they’d require picking up a ton of additional models. That said, they did seem like fun to play so I wanted to give them a spin.

It turns out, I have the perfect opportunity – this Saturday is Asgard’s monthly RTT but it’s a special one: It’s the store’s Annual Charity RTT. This has become an annual tradition at the store, where players can donate to the Houston Food Bank in order to “buy” tickets which can be used for re-rolls in-game. It’s a great way to give to an awesome org (Houston Food Bank is a 4-star org on Charity Navigator, with a 98% rating) while also doing insane things in games of Warhammer 40k.

I’m going this year, and I’m going to take my son along for the ride. And because giant dinosaur robots are cool, I’ve decided to bring a Soulforged Warpack army this time.

How You Can Support My Reign of Terror

If you’d like to support my (and my son’s) reign of terror by donating to the Houston Food Bank in order to buy us re-rolls and other benefits, you can do so by donating via this link. When you fill out the donation form, say you are donating on behalf of Goonhammer. Or TheChirurgeon. They’ll get the idea. Either way, thanks for your support!

Anyways back to the practice game – playing an army without knowing how it works is kind of lame, so I wanted to test it first. Fortunately, my regular sparring partner Erik was up for a game. Unfortunately, he was playing a decidedly more seriously list – an updated version of his Thousand Sons list from the GW US Open in Dallas (He finished third).

My Soulforged Warpack list - Click to Expand

There are some okay units in here but it’s mostly jank. In a real list I wouldn’t take the Lord Discordant or the Heldrakes, and I wouldn’t take a Helbrute outside of Pactbound Zealots. It really needs more Venomcrawlers and Maulerfiends. That said, what it does have is a lot of AP-1, 2-damage weapons, and those are pretty good into Rubrics. If I can get the first turn and do some real damage before Erik can hit back, I just might get lucky with the dice.

The Mission: Unexploded Ordnance – Fog of War – Search & Destroy

We’re trying the new Unexploded Ordnance mission from Pariah Nexus. It’s a much more interesting take on Servo Skulls and requires a lot more action units, and I want to get a feel for how it plays. When I said I was “kind of” playing Servo Skulls last week, well, this is what I meant.

That’s a lot of stuff! My plan here is to scout forward with the Cultists and kick the objectives early before Erik can touch them. If I can kill 1-2 units on turn 1 I can greatly reduce Erik’s ability to move them – I just need to survive the nasty clapback from the Thousand Sons. I win the roll-off, which is a good deal. I press up the middle with Vashtorr, the Lord Discordant, and the Venomcrawler, with the former doing the action while the Heldrakes sweep around the sides. In total I kill one unit of Rubrics with their sorcerer shooting the Venomcrawler and another four Rubrics with the Heldrakes. That’s… not enough. Erik responds with some vicious attacks and kills a Heldrake, the Defiler, Vashtorr, and the Lord Discordant.

My return fire turn isn’t great – the Forgefiends are little too far out to get good shots, and can’t help much. The Helbrute gets into combat with the Rhino and whiffs all its attacks. The Heldrake gets a unit of Rubrics then gets wiped. I have some units barely hanging on, but most of this stuff just isn’t very good and can’t help me against the big targets – Vashtorr is useless against anything that isn’t a vehicle.

It’s over round 3 and I’m not too broken up about it. This list is very bad, and I knew that going in. I may tweak it a bit for the next game, dropping the Helbrutes and other units for some Vindicators.

Result: 34-100, Loss

Game 2: Thousand Sons vs. Wolf Jail

As it would turn out, my buddy Garrett was available for a game the next day and I was itching for a rematch after that streamed game in Dallas. So I had him come over and we slammed hams. Only this time I decided not to bring the janky charity list but instead fire up the old Thousand Sons – I’m trying a new list for Tacoma, and I think at this point I might take the Thousand Sons, depending on how they fare in the next dataslate.

My list - click to expand

The Thousand Sons are an army I mostly enjoy playing – they’re difficult to play well but they can do a ton of stuff, and they’re painted to a level which is good enough to regularly showcase, if not win Best Painted (depending on the competition). If my Night Lords aren’t competitive, the Thousand Sons are a good replacement. This list goes hard on Terminators, who have received some point drops recently and become much more viable. I’m also getting a feel for how the Cultists work in the list.

The Mission: Unexploded Ordnance – Prepared Positions – Search & Destroy

Garrett’s bringing a modified version of his Wolf Jail Space Wolves list, trading out Fenrisian Wolves for more Scouts as he knows that OC 0 units won’t be able to do actions. This is a tough mission for him because his Wulfen can’t kick objectives. That said, he’s still a total bastard and the list can do a ton of nasty tricks.

I’m Going First.

That’s probably not what I wanted on this mission but it isn’t bad, either. One key to Wolf Jail is to expand out early so they can’t trap you in a small contained zone. You’re going to be in melee no matter what, may as well be in melee closer to their half of the table so you have room to breathe. I move up with Rubrics and Cultists on the upper left and kick that objective turn 1 while at the bottom I move into position with two units of Rubrics and Magnus and use Magnus to basically blast a unit of Wulfen off the table. Garrett does a Rapid Ingress with Grimnar and I respond by using Temporal Surge to pull back my Rubrics and Ahirman to protect them a bit.

This pays off big when Garrett advances around the corner and attempts to charge them – he needs a 6 and he doesn’t get it on the first or second tries, rolling a 4 and re-rolling it into a 4. That’s basically game, but there’s more to be done. Magnus shifts his attention back up that way and toward the middle, and the Scarabs blast all of Grimnar’s TWC unit off the table, leaving just the two characters. This is basically karma for all those times Garrett rolled an 11+ to charge right through my -2 to charges Stratagem with Death Guard in 9th edition and it feels great.

What follows is a mess on the left side as Ahriman, the Scarabs, and the Daemon Prince basically fight their way through and kill all of the Thunderwolves. The Daemon Prince mostly disappoints (and his Stealth ability is worthless this game anyways since Garrett has no shooting).

Around the lower right side of the table, Garrett attempts to hold up my Rhino with a single remaining Wulfen model but I use counter-attack to charge him and kill him before he can cause problems, freeing up the Rhino to keep kicking that objective up the table. This was big – if I hadn’t counter-charged, that Wulfen doesn’t kill the Rhino and it can’t fall back and action on the objective, preventing me from scoring the full 8 for an entire round, while also slowing the movement on the Rubrics.

I ended up holding the Marked for Death Secondary too long in this game – I drew it turn 2 and held it to prevent Garrett from going up/down with his Callidus and two Scout units, but ultimately I should have just hucked it to score points. I’d have been better off taking the VP in that case.

Things almost take a turn when Ragnar and his unit bust out and kill Magnus in a single lucky round of combat, but the Rubrics and Infernal Masters quickly wipe them off the board in retaliation.

As things wind down I’ve managed to kill all of Garrett’s Wulfen and TWCs, basically tabling him and kicking the objectives back over to my side of the table. It’s a bit of an ugly win but I’ll take it – Garrett’s a tough opponent and he always makes winning difficult. I will say that having more discardable secondaries made this a much easier game – Bring it Down wasn’t dead this time around and I was able to discard Cull the Hordes as well.

Result: 74-54, Win

Man, I missed playing the Thousand Sons. I’m going to get some more reps in with this list and see how it plays against different opponents. Really feeling it for Tacoma, and if I go that route it’ll need some paint touch-ups.

The new missions were fine. Unexploded Ordnance is much, much better than Servo Skulls, though I still worry it has a big go-first advantage, since kicking objectives back is so hard now it’s nearly impossible to recover after the opponent gets a kick. That said, making it an action felt pretty good and I generally think having a good variety of action-doer units will be super important. Rhinos are amazing for this, and I suspect that will be good reason to bring one in most lists.

Hobby Progress

I’m mostly working on my Night Lords right now, and this week I was doing some more kitbashing and assembly. Specifically, I’m building toward Renegade Raiders at the moment, and I need two Legionary units for that, with two Masters of Executions. Max, the guy who runs my local Games Workshop store, suggested I try doing a Master of Executions out of Fabius Bile and I liked the idea quite a bit. So here’s that attempt:

What I’ve done here is cut off the Bile head and replaced it with the hooded head from the Nightmare Night Lords sprue, with a little green stuff to give him more of a neck/collar. Then I gave him the chainglaive from the kit as well. It’s not a complicated conversion/kitbash but it’s really effective, and it gives me a solid second Master of Executions in the army, letting me have two which are visually distinct, but still clearly Masters of Execution.

Next Time: The Charity RTT Results

I’ve got some more conversions and kitbashes I’ll show off next week. And of course there’s the charity RTT this weekend – be sure and donate to support the cause (and my reign of terror). And as always, if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.