Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress for 2025. Last Time Around I talked about the first half of my experience at the Clutch City GT, covering the first three rounds of the event. I finished the day 2-1 after I lost in round 2 to TJ Bruce’s Legion of Excess, and my goal going into day 2 was to try and finish undefeated with a 5-1 record, though I wouldn’t be upset to go home early and eat dinner with the family.

Sunday

Once again it was rise and shine around 7am to prep for the event, and we were at the venue about half an hour before start. Coming into day 2 I told Shane I was likely to drop after round 5 if I had a second loss, but if I was playing for x-1 I’d keep going. Likewise, Goatboy was committed to dropping after round 5 so he could make the 3-plus-hour drive back to Austin at a reasonable time. Six-round events are pretty tough in that regard and while I appreciate that you need six rounds to have fewer undefeateds it’s still not enough for 150 players (you’d ideally want at least 7 rounds), and so that makes it a rough count. I really don’t enjoy going late on Sunday at events, but at the same time I don’t necessarily want to go to a three-day event, either. But it’s hard to make that work.

Round 4: vs. Nick Toomey’s Adepta Sororitas

As luck would have it, round 4 saw me going back up against Nick “Doots” Toomey. I last played Nick at the Dragon’s Lair GT last fall and while we got off to a shaky start, he was a fine opponent. Having already played, we hit things off much better this time around and have a much more enjoyable game.

Nick's list - Click to Expand

Nick’s a very good player but Sisters are in a miserable position at this event – they don’t generate enough Miracle Dice to really do their thing and they’re too expensive to make up for that lack of lethality with body counts. The good news is that I help Nick out early by having completely rancid dice. That puts me on edge a bit, but I’ll eventually realize that Nick doesn’t have enough units to punish me for it and cool down a bit. Nick’s biggest threat here is Vahl – he puts her in Strategic Reserves and so my goal will be to block her out of my half of the table so that she’s got to spend multiple turns walking my way once she arrives. The Castigators are a pain in the ass but manageable, and my tanks are better at killing them than they are at killing mine.

The Mission: The Ritual / Crucible of Battle / Swift Action

The mission will end up helping me out quite a bit, as I’ve got a ton of Battleline units to work with, while Nick can’t afford the luxury of taking subpar Sororitas units. Unfortunately, I roll double +1 Toughness for my upgrades and then re-roll it into double +1 Toughness. I swear to god I had the worst Bile rolls this event. +1 Toughness could be worse against Sisters – it puts them on 5+ to wound me with Heavy Bolters and a 3+ with Castigators and Multi-Meltas, which helps.

I’m going second. That’s fine, and generally preferable on this mission and in this scenario. Nick’s plan is to try and knock out a strong alpha strike but doesn’t really get there when his Castigator can’t kill my Rhino. Of course I repay the favor by not being able to kill his Castigator at all – I fail to roll above a 2 on six separate Advances attempting to get within range of one of the two Castigators, and ultimately can’t reach either, plus my shooting leaves the Castigator on two wounds. Then on Paul’s turn I go for an Overwatch kill with my Vindicator and end up scoring two hits, getting one through and doing… 1 damage. The good news on my end is that Nick’s Miracle Dice rolls were largely pretty bad, keeping him from being able to push saves through when he needed them.

This game primarily came down to Secondary objectives. Nick drew Assassination and Establish Locus on turn 1 and spent 1 CP to drop Assassination, drawing Overwhelming Force in its place. He ended up keeping force which, fair, drawing No Prisoners to go with it on turn 2. That didn’t work out however, as I managed to blank him on both using Smokescreen on a Rhino. He held both another turn, and that blank ended up really hurting him over the game. That said, I’d end up blanking on round 3 when I drew into Marked for Death and Area Denial, discarding Marked only to end up with a dead draw in Storm Hostile.

I took Nick’s tanks out pretty early and would end up scrapping with him over the middle objective while pressuring him with some garbage in his Deployment zone, and my plan to hold back Vahl largely worked, in part because he really wanted to not get shot by the vindicator before she could shoot. She’d eventually end up taking it out, but not before I managed to secure most of my objectives. One of my plague marine units were the stars of this show, screening out my top corner on rounds 1-3 before hopping into a Rhino, getting out and then advancing to drop a Locus in Nick’s deployment zone on round 4.

I was down 20 on primary coming into the final round and tied on secondary so I needed to score at least 5 on secondary objectives to secure the game. As luck would have it, I pulled Sabotage and Cleanse on the final round, giving me 4 for clearing two objectives and another 6 when the Plague Marines dropped a Sabotage action in Nick’s deployment zone. It was really unlikely I’d lose at that point, given how hard it would have been to draw fewer than 5 VP in secondaries, but it would still have been possible with something like Assassination or Overwhelming Force so I was lucky to walk away with this one on turn 5.

Result: 88-83

That was an incredibly close game and that’s pretty much what I expect when I play against Nick, since he’s a very good player. At some point Sisters are going to get buffed back to respectability and I’m going to match into him and be fucked, but right now I’ll live with being up 2-0.

I opt for venue food for lunch and end up eating an okay burger and some fries. It’s fine and I’m impressed that the food and drink prices at the venue are largely reasonable. The only complaint I have is that when I buy a Shiner Bock they label it as an “Import beer” and charge me accordingly. Which, being in Texas, is some hilarious bullshit. But otherwise, the venue was great and that extra charge meant I was paying like $3.50 instead of $2.50 for a beer, which is pretty great.

Round 5: vs. Ryan Young’s Adeptus Mechanicus

Ryan’s another local, and you may recall me playing against him running a GSC Final Day list in the Ettin League a few weeks back. Ryan’s another great guy, and a total blast to play. He’s also currently 3-1 and running a Skitarii Hunter Cohort list.

Ryan's List - Click to Expand

I haven’t played against the Cohort yet and so this is good experience to learn how big a pain in the ass they can be. These models are an absolute chore to kill, with everything in the army having Stealth and a bunch more giving me -1 to wound and improving their saves with cover. The upside for me is that the AdMech can sometimes struggle to actually kill things – though Ryan’s Vanguard units put out a world of hurt when they jump out of a Transport, getting full re-rolls to hit and wound on an insane number of shots.

The Mission: Burden of Trust / Search and Destroy / Prepared Positions

I’m going first. And I think that’s helpful here – I want to be able to move onto objectives early and put pressure on Ryan’s army. The Skitarii thrive when they can prevent their opponents from crossing mid-table early and going first means it’ll be that much harder to stop that from happening. I am still mindful of Ryan’s damage output, but his tanks aren’t especially threatening compared to some other options. I once again roll +1 Toughness on my Bile roll, but at least this time it’s paired with +1 WS, meaning I can shrug off the -1 to hit for most of the units in Ryan’s army – at least when I’m in combat. The Toughness bonus doesn’t really matter given how much anti-infantry he’s got on his shooting.

Ryan’s army is one of two I can legitimately apply pressure to this game. He’s got some nasty threats with his Ruststalkers but the rest of the army is pretty fragile when it comes to getting punched in the face and even those melee threats can be killed pretty easily if I get the drop on him with the charge. My biggest threats are the Pteraxii, who will spend all game dropping in and messing with my plans. So my plan is to destroy those as quickly as possible and screen out the ones Ryan’s holding in reserves.

I decide early on to leave the middle open and just run to the side objectives. Those are easier to defend while staying hidden and that’ll force Ryan to split resources coming after me, making his already fragile units – which depend on staying within 6″ of a BATTLELINE unit to get the full benefit – even easier to pick off. Plus there are easy targets on those where Ryan has left himself too far from the coverage of the rest of his army. So I run to those early and build a large lead on primary scoring.

And Primary was the story of the game – I held Ryan from holding any objectives until round 4, and that’s not something you can recover from, no matter how good your secondary draws are (and Ryan’s were only OK). There were a couple of times Ryan surprised me with the eye-watering amount of firepower he could get out of a single Skitarii unit into one of my MSUs, but on the whole I was able to stay ahead of him on kills by taking out his vehicles early and preventing him from being able to really deal with the Predator and Vindicator.

Result: 95-56, Win

As always, Ryan was an absolute pleasure to play – just a great guy who really “gets it” when it comes to playing Warhammer competitively.

Thomas bows out after round five and gets a head start on his ride home, while Shane has dropped his second game. And while I said I wanted to head home early, I’m sitting at 4-1 and eager to try and finish at 5-1 and get Best Overall (though hilariously it will later turn out that this will not matter at all). So I tell Shane we’re staying for round 6, god dammit.

Round 6: vs. David Hall’s Chaos Daemons

Ah, fuck.

David’s running Legion of Excess, which I established yesterday is a terrible matchup for me. He’s running fewer Chariots and more Fiends, but for the most part it’s the same set of problems.

David's List - Click to Expand

The other big wrinkle here is the Soul Grinder, which basically gives him a third Keeper-sized threat for me to deal with and that’s uh… more than I can really deal with most of the time. It can out-range my Vindicator, so I need to get some good shots off with that and really make it count this game to have a shot.

The Mission: Take and Hold / Raise Banners / Search and Destroy

There are a few things working in my favor this time around. The first is that I’m going first, giving me a chance to get the drop on some units and at least get into position to fight back. The second is that I rolled +1 Attack on my Bile roll… but also +1 Toughness. I’m so tired of rolling that shit and it hasn’t helped me at all this event.

Anyways, my dice ended up being rancid this game. My Vindicator absolutely abandoned me, never rolling above five shots, and I failed so, so many Pact rolls. I was able to get off to a decent start killing one of the Keepers before it could cause too much damage and a unit of Fiends, and I’d generally use the Nemesis Claw to help chop through several units while preventing them from shunting wounds, but it was an uphill battle all game. I was able to hold David to low primary scoring on rounds 2 and 4 using my battleline units and Raid Ingressing Raptors (who stole his home objective from his Beast of Nurgle), but who would die to his other Keeper the following turn.

Ultimately this one came down to dice and secondary draws and that’s where I got completely wrecked – David’s were just generally great and I got a blank turn 1 with Locus and Overwhelming Force, while his only miss was a Containment he didn’t even try to score and a Sabotage I managed to keep him off of for a turn by killing the Masque in my Deployment Zone. This game was crazy tight with very little left on the table in the final turn and if I had drawn something better than Cleanse on the final turn I might have tied or taken it.

The most frustrating moments happened at the end of the game, where failing leadership test after leadership test and Battle-shock test started to take their toll. Case in point: I had a single 3W chosen and Bile left while David had a Soul Grinder on one wound. I charge into him and pact for Lethal Hits, failing the pact and losing 3 wounds, killing the Chosen. Then I’d watch Bile just bounce off completely as David passed the three 4+ saves he needed to make on Bile’s 8 attacks. Killing that would have prevented David from scoring 15 on Primary in the final turn. Another big help? If I’d kept a single plague marine alive on the middle objective of the table, but he failed his battle-shock test and died while in David’s Shadow of Chaos. The game was just like that.

Result: 85-87, Loss

Anyways, this complaining shouldn’t overshadow that David’s a very good player and played a hell of a game. It was a real nail-biter down to the end and David was just a fun and understanding opponent – I got a little flustered early when my turn 2 took too long and I started sweating the time I had left on the clock. Playing Creations of Bile can sometimes be a real fuckin chore clock-wise if you’re getting into six combats on round 2, each with a pact roll and five or six different weapon profiles to roll.

The Final Results

The most important final result is that for the first time in forever, I had a full slate of great opponents – everyone I played at the event was fun to play and just generally very chill and that almost never happens. So that’s the real win.

But right, the event win stuff – I didn’t win Best Overall. I have no idea how that was calculated. Supposedly it was just Paint Score + total battle points, but the top 3 for Best Overall don’t really line up with that. As I said before the event, the Paint Rubric for Texas events is usually insane and rigidly enforced in a crazy “checking boxes is better than looking good” kind of way so I’ve given up on giving a shit about them.

That said, I won third place in Best Painted. I finished behind my friend Garrett Moore, whose Space Wolves have improved dramatically in the last year (he finally put edge highlights on them), and a World Eaters player whose army I haven’t seen. This is more than fair, honestly – as I mentioned, I had some rough models in my army, including a few that are only 80% done and some that are painted as Black Legion. There’s no shame or hard feelings losing to Garrett. It does make me wonder what my paint score was relative to the Best Overall crew, but again, not going to start giving a shit about that now. And the trophy is pretty cool, so that’s a plus.

I also won Best in Faction for Chaos Space Marines, which is neat. I don’t generally focus on Best in Faction awards, but I’m not upset about walking away with another plaque.

Overall the Clutch City GT was a very well run event and I had a great time. Shane finished 3-3, and so did a number of the D-Tier crew from my local shop. I thought the decision to give two golden tickets to both players on the top table – so long as there were no sportsmanship behavioral issues – was an interesting way to diffuse and reduce drama. Though it combined with the event size to create a separate issue, which is that it created an incentive for the other undefeated player on table 3 to root for bad sportsmanship so they’d get the ticket. Which seems like it could lead to some bad behavior but fortunately things seem to have worked out.

I had a great time and I’m planning to go back next year.

Next Time: Testing New Lists

That’s it for my recap of Clutch. Thanks for joining me – I’ll be back next week testing some new lists, as Creations of Bile was fun but it’s time to start looking at some new army options. So check back next week for that and some more hobby progress on Emperor’s Children.

See you next week.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.