Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of hobby and gaming progress through 2025. Last time around I was prepping for the GW US Open Dallas event, recapping my games at GHAST, and making final adjustments to my list. This week I’ll be talking about how those changes actually panned out, and my games at Dallas.

Thursday

My initial plans were to bring my wife and son to the event, and he’d participate in the hobby challenge again this year. As we got closer to the event however, she ended up being unable to take the days off work and the event coincided with his last days of school, so they decided to stay home. As a consolation, I was able to convince Andrew “Hero of Team Imperium” and “Destroyer of Cars” Corban to come along with me and split the cost of a room. It’s a little under four hours’ drive from Houston to Dallas, and having a buddy along to talk to and remove the monotony of those hours filled with long stretches of four-lane highway is a big plus.

We stop at Bucc-ee’s for dinner on the way up and then end up grabbing drinks on arrival with Craig “MasterSlowPoke” Sniffen and Steven Salazar. We’re staying at the Courtyard right up the hill from the venue, and it’s plenty walkable at night. Technically it’s walkable during the day but I wouldn’t recommend doing that in 90-degree heat. We walk over to the venue, have some drinks and hang out, then walk back up to crash for the evening.

Friday

Showtime. The event lists the briefing at 8am and the first round at 9 but things don’t really kick off until 9:30. That’s plenty of time to grab a bagel and head over and we still end up standing around a bit. We meet up with the other Astros Militarum folks at the event – Garrett Moore, Joel, and T primarily – and make small talk before the event starts. Then we get pairings and we’re off.

Round 1: vs. Christian Alessi’s Death Guard

Did you know that you can get paired into Death Guard, as a Death Guard player? This is bullshit. 

Christian's List - Click to Expand

This is my nightmare. Christian is not only tooled out to beat the brakes of my list, the mission, layout, and deployment here all favor him pretty substantially. And on top of that, Christian is a very, very good player.

The Mission: Supply Drop – Sweeping Engagement – Rapid Escalation

Who the hell puts Sweeping Engagement at an event? I thought we were past this as a culture. The result here is a mission that has a heavy bias to the player closer to the last objectives to disappear on a wide-open map with lots of firing lanes across the middle.

I really want to go first in this mission so I can move into a strong position to stage for turn two against Christian and drop in my Deathshroud early. If Christian goes first he’s going to pick me apart because there just aren’t any good angles where I can stage on this table against him.

I’m going second. That’s a fine help for scoring on the final turn but this is a game about killing. Christian blows up one of my drones round 1 and just never looks back. To add insult to injury, my secondary draws are abysmal – I pull Marked for Death and Engage on All Fronts turn 1 and then fail my 4+ advance roll to get a drone onto his table half. Then I draw Sabotage and Behind Enemy lines on turn 2 and get to choose between 2 VP and putting my Deathshroud somewhere they can actually make a charge and do something useful. Late game I push toward the middle of the table and make some headway when I finally get into melee, but losing a third of my army on the first two rounds to shooting takes its toll and I just don’t have the punch I need. For extra insult, Christian draws Sabotage and Recover Assets on the final turn to pull 12 secondary VP.

This game was a disaster top to bottom for me – almost nothing went right and it’s a miserable way to start an event. That said, Christian was a chill guy and we had a fun game, and I’ll take a shitty loss to a cool person over a win against a shithead any day.

This game also made me realize I probably needed a few more reps with Mortarion and the list before coming – I forgot a few important triggers with him, including a mortal wounds trigger on round 2.

Result: 45 – 64, Loss

After the first round we have a lot of time before lunch so we head back up to the hotel to eat. I don’t have particularly fond memories of the venue food last year – it’s expensive and pretty bad for you, so I brought a bunch of sandwich stuff this time around so we could just eat in the hotel room.

I picked up a some potato rolls, some baby spinach, a couple of tomatoes (I brought a small knife and cutting board), plus some mesquite turkey, black forest ham, and provolone from HEB and brought that along in a cooler lined with ice packs. As accompaniments, I brought some small bags of chips and some fruit – mango and blackberries. This makes for some tasty sandwiches, is extremely cheap – our total lunch cost across all three days was something like $20 – and has the added benefit of just being way healthier than anything we’d eat at the venue. It’s a pro strategy.

Round 2: vs. Montana Mann’s Blood Angels

With one loss under my belt, I’m pretty much out of the running for top cut – the event numbers just do not favor a 3-1 making it. This means I’m likely to leave early on Saturday if Andrew also drops a game, but my plan is to stay for as long as he wants. The good news is that he’s also on that “drop Sunday after a loss if I miss the top bracket” life, so we’re on the same page.

Round 2 is against Montana, a very nice gentleman who I enjoyed playing. He’s early on his journey with competitive play, and it wasn’t a very long game.

Montana's List - click to expand

This was always likely to happen going into the 0-1 pairing, and I can tell the game is over when I see the number of Intercessors in Montana’s list. He also has a unit of Eradicators but keeps those on his home point, and by the time they come out, it’s a little too late for them to do anything. I push forward aggressively, kill Canis on turn 2, and the drones do what they do best – deleting whole units of marines.

Result: 96-29, Win

Round 3: vs. Kassaday Lairson’s Adeptus Custodes

This one got to me. It was a game I felt I shouldn’t have lost, but I made one massive mistake in the middle of it that ended up costing me the whole thing. As an opponent, Kassaday was a solid guy – none of my frustration with the game had anything to do with him.

Kassaday's List - click to expand

Kassaday’s list is fine. It’s not amazing but it has lots of great pieces. I don’t want to be in combat with the Wardens and they’re a pain but there’s nothing in there I can’t handle, and the anti-infantry guns will make short work of his models. The big problem here is the mission: The Ritual makes it very easy for Kassaday to rack up primary scoring and nearly impossible for me to deny him, which will mean that I need to beat him on secondary scoring.

I’m going first. 

That makes this even harder, but it means I need to figure out when and how to be aggressive. And the answer is “early” and “often.” Kassaday helps out here a bit by castling – he’s afraid to bring one of his Warden + Blade Champion units and his bikes out, worried he’ll lose them. That plays to his benefit in the long run but the reality is they’re too expensive to use as just objective holders.

Of course none of this matters because on turn 2 I move Mortarion up and forget to make an objective with him. I do nothing else with him that turn, but don’t realize until the turn is over.

See Mortarion up there? He should be making an objective, giving me two in No Man’s Land. Instead I brush this off. It’s an error, but I can come back from it – I’m ahead and I think I have this one in the bag. That was a mistake, because Kassaday does that thing Custodes players always do and spikes a bunch of 4+ saves and feel no pains to hang around long past when he should and cause problems. Coming into the final turn I’ve done the best I can to stay ahead – I’m up by 21 points with Mortarion on an objective. There is exactly one secondary in his deck he can draw to win this game and that’s Storm Hostile Objective – it’s the only 4-point secondary he can score, and in order to get score that he needs to pass two battleshock tests. Plus he also needs to draw a secondary he can score 3 VP off off to make it a 22-point turn with three objectives for the Ritual. So naturally he draws this, passes his tests, and the game is over. I lose by 1.

Result: 73-74, Loss

This fucking sucks, and I’m real unhappy about it. Not dropping that objective didn’t seem like a big deal when I had good control of the board, but Kassaday’s deep striking wardens lasting a turn longer than they should have meant I dropped 5 VP for Ritual I shouldn’t have, and not having that objective – which would have gone all game uncontested – basically meant losing out on 15 VP that would have just made the final round inconsequential. Ugh.

I’m not happy about starting 1-2, either. It’s my worst day 1 start in a while. I know I’m going to end up 4-2 from here but I was hoping for 5-1.

We grab dinner at a place next to the hotel called El Toro Sinaloense, which has some absolutely killer burritos. I foolishly decide to eat the entire thing and spend half the night paying for it. I’m also pretty sure Steven got food poisoning there.

Saturday

I’m 1-2 heading into Saturday and we’re again on a late start – 9:30am. Best-case scenario here I’m going to pair into someone wholly unprepared for my list, then head to the 2-2 bracket (bracketing happens after the first four rounds at GW events).

Round 4: vs. Tom Dooley’s Emperor’s Children

Tom’s a very cool guy and I enjoyed playing him. Unfortunately, I knew this one was over as soon as I saw he was running Peerless Blades.

Tom's List - Click to Expand

The big problem here is screening – in Coterie, I can’t use my Poxwalkers to block Emperor’s Children in their deployment zone – they just kill them and score 2 free Coterie points and start the game re-rolling 1s to hit, with a third point and 1s to wound if they’re lucky. That’s really bad for me, as the matchup depends on keeping them off those buffs for as long as possible so they feel anemic into my units. Peerless Bladesmen doesn’t have that, which means I can drop my Poxwalkers 9″ away from Tom’s DZ, push them forward if I go first, and then force him to fight through them and trade down.

I’m going first.

That’s even worse – I push Mortarion up to mid table and give the Poxwalkers a reactive move to play with. On Tom’s first turn he pushes into them and kills them but that’s about all he can manage – a single unit of Inceptors manages to escape and harry a pair of drones, but Tom splits their attacks across both drones and kills neither. On my turn, I wipe the Flawless Blades, most of the noise marines, Mortarion kills Lucius, and I take out a unit of Inceptors. That pretty much seals the game, but the Deathshroud also come to party and help mop up the rest.

Result: 93-31, Win

This is pretty much how I expect to go from here. I’m generally not good enough for the undefeated bracket at these events, but too good for the 2-2 bracket. Unless I pair into someone similarly unfortunate, I’m not liable to have competitive games from here. Andrew and I grab Craig and we head back to the room for sandwich lunch. Andrew has dropped a game so the plan now is to go back early. We kill our sandwich supplies in preparation.

Round 5: vs. Jacob Ward’s Adeptus Custodes

Jacob was another very fine opponent who was tragically unprepared for the sheer lethality of the Death Guard.

Jacob's List - Click to Expand

Jacob is running Talons, who can cause me some headaches for my mortal wound output, but the key there is to just kill the sisters quickly and move on. There aren’t many bad units in the Custodes book, but Death Guard – especially Bloat Drones – are just super well-equipped to kill Custodes right now.

I press forward aggressive and screen out most of Jacob’s deep strikes, using Mortarion to sweep around up top and kill the Blade Champion when he arrives. I forget just how nasty double-firing Draxos can be when she single-handedly kills a unit of Deathshroud arriving from reserves, but otherwise I manage to wipe most of his infantry by round 3 and we call. it.

Result: 98-55, Win

Jacob was a cool guy and I hope he had better games after this one. It’s particularly frustrating to bring Custodes to the table and see them just melt to Death Guard shooting and my heart goes out to him.

Round 6: vs. Tom Abbate’s Blood Angels

Once more into the breach. Tom is a Houston local who I haven’t played before but have almost certainly been around at events. He’s running Blood Angels, with a list I’m not particularly scared of. The Death Company are the big threat here but the lancers need to get real lucky to put a hurt on Mortarion.

Tom's List - Click to Expand

As always, the goal here is to kill the scouts early and prevent up/down shenanigans while weathering the rest. Bloat-drones will make short work of jump intercessors so my only real worry are the Death Company. I’m going first, so I spend the early game circling around them and taking out edge threats, putting Mortarion in juicy position. My play is always to let him take 10 wounds and then use Leechspore Eruption to get back 4-5 of them and demoralize the opponent.

Tom’s Death Guard do more damage to my Deathshroud than I expected, but bounce off the Lords of Contagion, who then wipe up the squads and leave the Chaplains to die to shooting. The Daemon Prince heads to midtable, where he charges and kills a Lancer, then manages to shrug off an entire round of fighting from Jump Intercessors and Sanguinary Guard and Dante using the Disgustingly Resilient Stratagem. And then he drops Leechspore Eruption to end the game.

Result: 95-50, Win

This is pretty much how I expect the 2-2 bracket to be and so I’m not particularly feeling the need to stick around for day three. There are no prizes to be had and I’m not about to win best overall or best painted with my Death Guard. Andrew and I have decided we’re just going to rise and head home early on Sunday. I set up my army for Showcase and decide to do something fun with Craig, partly to honor our old friend James “Boon” Kelling and the decision which cost him his ability to ever return to Texas.

Craig wasn’t able to bring his display board to the event thanks to some last-minute issues at the gate of his local airport so I was more than happy to help him out and lend him some of mine.

Rainbow Warriors vs. Death Guard

1 of 3

It’s a fun way to blow off a little steam at the end of the event.

For dinner we head over to a local bar called Tipsy Oaks. They have a solid beer selection, good appetizers, and live music. That last part is whatever to me when I’ve been yelling for two straight days and am trying to talk to people, but we sit inside and avoid most of it. I end up grabbing a lobster roll. It’s fine – it’s Maine style and not Connecticut style (the superior option), but it’s still very solid, despite an attempt to class it up with lettuce and celery that do nothing for it but give the illusion of healthiness.

We’re also joined by Dan “Swiftblade” Richardson, who showed up Friday night to participate in the Kill Team event, and “Gar” Garcia, who’s here playing in one of his first competitive events in years. I haven’t seen Dan much since the birth of his kid, so it’s cool to have him with us hanging out. The hangouts are typical – despite the fact that we could talk about literally anything else, almost every conversation is about Warhammer. The games we played, what we think of certain matchups, what we think will be in the next dataslate. Half of us know but can’t tell the other half, which always makes for fun times.

We call it a night around eleven, then I give Dan and Craig a lift back to the venue and I grab my army to pack up.

Sunday

We get up early, find the GW store is still closed for another half an hour, then head out. There’s no one on the road and we grab breakfast at Bucc-ee’s and I house a bacon/egg/sausage/cheese/potato burrito before we white-knuckle it the rest of the way home. As much as I’d have enjoyed playing those last two games, I’m home by noon and that whips, especially with the Monday holiday to just chill as well.

In all I’m not super happy with the event – 4-2 isn’t how I wanted to end things and I’m kicking myself for not making that objective in the Ritual. It feels like I’m playing more than ever but not focusing enough and getting results. Some of this just boils down to getting quality reps – I needed more reps with the list, more practice using Mortarion and trying it against different things. I don’t know that my list from GHAST would have done better – it was just a way worse list and the single 6-model deathshroud brick is not the way to go – but I do think I’d have made fewer mistakes and forgotten fewer things. Now I get to try it all again in two weeks at Ottawa.

Next Week: Ottawa Prep

Two events down, one to go. My next tournament is an 8-man teams event in Ottawa. I’m bringing Death Guard to that one as well, but I’m likely making some changes to the list and working on ways to improve results there. A lot of the things I was worried about – such as handling melee pressure – just don’t matter as much in a teams environment, and I think I just need to get more reps now with the list to really see how it’s going to play. I have some games lined up already, so hopefully that will give me enough time to better learn the army and build a good bracket for them.

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