TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2024, Part 2: Shaking Off the Rust

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog detailing my competitive and hobby adventures for Warhammer 40k. Last time around I kicked off the 2024 season talking about a ton of hobby progress and my general goals for the year. Since then… I haven’t done much. Well, I’ve done quite a few things, but very little of it is 40k related. This isn’t abnormal for this time of the year; I usually get caught up early in the year doing hobby content and writing articles behind the scenes as LVO hits and Games Workshop’s release schedule ramps back up. In particular, the dataslate ends up being an “all hands on deck” type situation with multiple authors working to track changes and write the analysis, and this time it fell around the same time as reviews for Codex: Dark Angels and Pariah Nexus.

So let’s start with the hobby stuff, talk about the Dataslate and the game I played, and then I’ll map out my competitive plans for 2024.

Hobby Progress

OK so most of my hobby progress has been painting all of my HeroQuest minis. I had some friends over during Super Bowl weekend for some hangouts and part of those hangouts included breaking out and playing with the new HeroQuest box. I’ve been ravenously snatching up every release for the set since the Avalon Hill edition released a few years ago and this was a good excuse to get it all painted. So far I have the entire core set painted, plus most of the Mythic tier stuff and the new classes, but I haven’t started yet on the bigger expansions. It was enough for our opening weekend, and I also introduced my son to the game as well and he loved it, so that was great.

On the 40k side, my big focus was finishing up models for the new How to Paint Everything – Chaos Space Marines article series, which is now finally done. I’m incredibly happy with how the guide turned out. I painted about X minis in order to finish it off, and I can now easily say I’ve painted a marine of every legion and major renegade chapter. Plus, I finally painted my Night Haunter as part of the How to Paint Night Lords article, and it feels good to finally have that guy painted after nearly a decade sitting in my paint closet.

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit; Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

As I write this, my next hobby project is likely going to be painting a few more plague marines for my Death Guard. I need an additional Foul Blightspawn for the list I want to run plus I’ll need a few more plague marines with plague spewers/sprayers to finish out the post-Dataslate list. I really hoped I was done painting these guys but apparently there’s still more to do on that front.

I’m also working on more of my Black Legion, as I’ll want to bring them to events later in the year where winning Best Painted/Best Overall is a bigger priority. I really think that’s my primary objective this year, moreso than winning a GT with Death Guard.

Playing a Practice Game

I wasn’t able to make the Asgard February RTT but I really wanted to get in a game both to have something to write about and to stop myself from getting too rusty. Fortunately, I was able to get in a practice game this past weekend against a local who was also looking to practice for the upcoming Clutch GT in Houston. I’m not attending that one, but I’m more than happy to help, and I wanted to get in a game against Custodes post-dataslate.

Colin Freitas’ Custodes List

Tank thoughts (1995 points) - click to expand

There are basically two types of Custodes list right now: Double tank lists and lists full of dudes on foot. Recent competitive results have shown the foot lists are far more successful, in part because it’s just way more challenging to deal with that much beef, and the foot lists are better at holding objectives. Colin’s list is basically a mirror of Jack West’s list from the Cross-Swords event, though it trades a unit of Venetarii for a second Blade Champion.

That said, my list is very good at handling infantry

My Death Guard List

My Death Guard List - Click to Expand

This is basically my post-Dataslate list – with some caveats. The first is that I’m probably going to pull the Putrifier. He’s good, but he’s not really part of the strategy with 10-model units. There’s potentially a world where I look at 2×5 with a putrifier and a tallyman but ultimately I like the 2×10 approach to plague marines at the moment and that more calls for a second foul blightspawn. The Blightspawn does some solid damage and makes the unit a nasty anti-infantry overwatch threat, while fights first makes them difficult to charge. That said, I hadn’t painted my second Blightspawn yet so I decided to run a unit with meltaguns and an extra fist (I also haven’t painted all the spewers/belchers I need for the second unit), and that works better with these characters anyways.

Otherwise, this is basically the list I was running at Tampa, minus a drone and with an extra Rhino and a couple of extra plague marines, plus a cheaper character – the Tallyman – to replace the Chaos Lord. I think it packs just as much punch and it’s still very mobile. Depending on what I need, I can either put the tallyman with one of the 10-man units (right now the one with meltaguns), or just let him live solo on my home objective as needed.

If there’s a downside here it’s that going 2×5 plague marines for the second set gives me a lot more versatility at the expense of some power. I may still go that route, as not having the poxwalkers makes it harder to screen my home objective, and I don’t really want to commit a unit of Nurglings to the task.

The Mission: J – Priority Targets / Chilling Rain / Crucible of Battle

Mission J is the first mission at Clutch. When doing practice, I like to focus on the first mission, followed by any problem scenarios that might be in the packet. If you can win your first game things tend to go a lot better, and it also helps keep calm when that first rush of adrenaline hits.

We both go with Tactical missions. Priority Targets is an interesting one. It’s both good and bad for Colin – the good news is you only need to hold 2 objectives per round, so smaller armies can stay in the primary game pretty easily if they can just hold objectives. The bad news is that you score for your home objective, making it more important to keep that one – and I can easily punish him for putting a weak unit on that objective. I put one unit of Nurglings in Deep Strike along with both units of Deathshroud and I pick -1 to saves as my contagion. While Trajann can shut that off, it’s just for his unit and ultimately killing Custodes by putting them on a 4+ save is the most important part here. The other unit of Nurglings will screen out my backfield and I’ll sticky the objective with a PBC turn 1.

Colin puts his Callidus and two units of Wardens – including the one with Trajann – into Deep Strike reserves. he puts his Prosecutors on the table, and that’s a mistake – they’re the perfect target for my mortars, which otherwise will struggle to do more than a wound or two on Custodes otherwise. I can easily wipe the Prosecutors off the table, which is great for VP if I draw the right objective and otherwise just good for forcing Colin to commit a “real” unit to his home objective.

He also doesn’t put anything on his home objective during deployment. That’s a smart move in the case of the sisters, and I could draw something like Overwhelming Force turn 1 and score it immediately using indirect fire, but a bad move to leave the Wardens off it since it takes away the ability to use Sworn Guardians to sticky it before moving off it in the Movement phase.

I’m Going First.

That’s horrible for Colin. I’ve never lost a game in 10th edition going first and I’m not going to start now. As a cherry on top, I draw two “free’ secondaries – Extend Battle Lines and Cleanse. I push forward with one rhino (the one with the blightspawn) to the middle of the table and action with it. For the other, I get out first and advance, using the Putrifier to advance and action on the other, while I push the rhino ahead of them to act as a screen for the Wardens to avoid eating a turn 1 charge on the plague marines. I want to get a turn of shooting off on them before they come in.

Colin won’t have line of sight on me with his Caladius tanks unless I move them out so I decide to use turn 1 to lob mortars at him, killing the Prosecutor squad pretty easily with one lucky volley. The other two volleys only score a single wound on each Warden unit but that’s all I need – Colin now has to put a unit on his home objective to hold it and it can’t be the cheap sisters unit. And if he doesn’t do that via Ingress, I’m going to put Deathshrouds on it to block him out.

On Colin’s turn he draws Assassination and Deploy Teleport Homers, neither of which is likely to get scored this round. He wheels around with the Caladius tanks, and opts to advance the one at the bottom of the table to get it onto an objective, reckoning the other can shoot a rhino to death by itself. That ends up not being the case however, as I pop smoke on the Rhino and end up tanking the shooting from the Caladius, which only pushes through 7 damage. The Rhino isn’t critical to my plans, but keeping around helps. He presses one warden unit into my other rhino and destroys it, and holds the other wardens unit back behind a wall to prevent them from being shot on my turn.

On my turn I pull the extra CP from the Tallyman, opt again for re-roll 1s to wound with Mortarion and draw Defend Stronghold and Assassination. Those are also pretty easy for me. I can pretty easily get one of the characters this round. I spread out in my Movement phase, preparing to block an opportunistic Rapid Ingress from Trajann. I fan southward with two PBCs, keeping them both within 6″ of Morty. One gets line of sight on the Caladius while the other is going to be full indirect. The third PBC sweeps north to shoot Wardens. Then I drop my other nurglings in the upper left corner to keep Trajann from dropping behind me and I drop both units of Deathshroud into Colin’s deployment zone – one on the objective, where I can get LOS with Typhus and the DS champion on that unit of Wardens with Draxos, and the other right behind here where I can have the LoV get line of sight on everything on Colin’s half of the table. I push the injured rhino forward to have it push a 6″ contagion aura on Draxos’ unit through the wall and also block the Wardens from walking through it – it’s far enough away from the wall they can’t fight through it. I keep my unit of plague marines up top stationary – they’re already less than 6″ away from the Wardens and if I move them within 9″ that unit may get a free move and I don’t want to deal with that.

The Deathshrouds all dropped just outside of 9″ away from Draxos’ unit, giving me ample room to pick targets. I start with the single champion in Typhus’ unit, who scores 1 wound and a kill on the wounded Warden in the unit. Then the Lord of Virulence and his unit open up and kill the remaining 3 Wardens before Typhus finishes off Draxos with 4 mortal wounds. Next I lob a pair of grenades with the plague marines up top but only manage to kill one model after the Colin crushes his FNP saves. I then whiff with the meltaguns and spewer, and likewise with the PBC’s guns. Given I’ll be hit first either way, I opt to let the unit sit there for another turn.

the other PBCs and Mortarion combine to drop the Caladius to 5 wounds remaining and kill all of Typhus’ squad with some pretty lucky mortar shot counts, helped by an extra AP-1 from Ferric Blight on one of the PBCs. Mortarion then charges in and finishes off the Caladius.

At this point things have gotten pretty far out of hand. Trajann’s good but not kill-mortarion-in-one-round good and without a unit to lead he’ll quickly get ground into a paste by the -1 save effect. Colin brings in his remaining custodian unit and assassins the following turn but he’s only scoring 5 on primary and making that up is going to be tough, especially as he draws some bad secondaries. It’s pretty much over heading into turn 3 and we call it. I don’t have time to re-rack and play another game but we talk about what could have been done differently.

Result: 98-28, win

I definitely think Colin needed to keep a unit on the objective in deployment to sticky it walking off, and then hold that objective with a tank following. The Prosecutors can’t start on the table against PBCs, and need to be a Strat Reserves unit. Beyond that, I’m not super sure – my list does a great job of handling infantry targets and is a nightmare for Custodes, but I really benefit from being able to pick off smaller units. Keeping them out of line of sight until the charge is a big focus as the mortars will struggle against Custodes in cover.

Either way, Colin’s a swell guy and took his lumps in stride. I wished him luck at Clutch and he suggested his ingenious master plan was in fact to lose round 1 and submarine his way to 4-1. Godspeed, good buddy.

Planning The 2024 Season

Why do I need to shake rust off, anyways? Well the short answer is because I’m actually planning to attend some events this year. Right now the general plan is to attend all four GW US Open events, plus the World Championships. On top of that I’m looking at a UKTC event – probably Oxford – plus the Goonhammer Open (though I’m going to be running the narrative), and 2-3 RTTs, if I can manage. It’s a full slate of events but I think it’s pretty much the max of what I can make work with the family and some of the trips will serve double duty as proper vacations or trips where I take my son along.

In terms of what I’m going to play well, that’s still up in the air. I’m currently refining my Death Guard and will keep things going with them, but also planning to work more on my Black Legion and get them to a place where they can work – though some of that will be waiting on the Codex release. The dataslate hit them pretty hard but I think they still have decent play and they’re by far my best painted army so they’re the option I want if I’m going for Best Overall. And at some point I’ll paint my new Magnus and the Thousand Sons will be ready for another ride.

Next Time: More Hobby Progress and Games, Probably Some Crusade

That does it for this update but hopefully I’ll be back in two weeks with another update more quickly. My plan is to log some more games, and try and get in one in each of the local crusade campaigns I’ve ostensibly agreed to take part in. I’ll get a more competitive game in there as well. Either way, I’ll be back on a more regular update schedule.

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