Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress for 2025. Last week I was talking about my time at the 2025 US Goonhammer Open, doing some paint judging and running the Narrative. This week I’m back on my competitive grind, working on another practice rep with Death Guard, tweaking my list, and doing some last-minute painting for Tacoma.
Making Tweaks to My List
Having tested Defilers with that big ass 160mm base, I can say that they just aren’t going to work. I can maybe make them work on some specific layouts or terrain, but the reality is that base is more or less 8″ long and that’s the full movement of a Defiler. In World Eaters, that might work, but here it just makes things too tricky, even with a Stratagem to move through walls. I’ll miss the Defiler, but the reality is that it wasn’t doing a ton on most missions, just giving me another vehicle with guns. Its output can be replaced, is my point.
Removing a Defiler gives me 165 points, and there were basically three options to consider here:
- Add a Daemon Prince. I’ll need to cut something else – probably the Fleshmower – to clear up 195 points for a Daemon Prince on foot. That will give me another melee beater and a way to get 2 CP strats earlier. That said, I have almost no Infantry in this list to protect him, and the DP without the +1 Toughness/5+ FNP Enhancement in Vectorium is just a bit underwhelming.
- Lord of Contagion + Tallyman. The Lord costs me 110, and the Tallyman tacks 40 on top of that, plus I can fit in another Enhancement. Adding a Lord of Contagion makes one of the Deathshroud units much more deadly, and able to more reliably crack small knights on the charge.
- Lord of Contagion + Another unit of Deathshrouds. In this loadout, I have to take out the Fleshmower on top of the Defiler. But the upside is that a third unit of Deathshrouds does more for me than the Fleshmower, and helps me keep up my threatened targets count for one more round.
Ultimately I went with the Lord of Contagion + Deathshrouds – they’re just an extremely good unit with a lot of versatility and I didn’t feel like it was a decision I’d regret.
Practice Game: vs. Andrew’s Astra Militarum
For this game I was up against Andrew and his five-Dorn Astra Militarum list. In addition to his Dorns (two Commanders), he sports two hellhounds and a chimera. That’s a lot of beef to chew through, and while this isn’t an Imperial Knights list, it offers some reasonable comps in terms of figuring out “how the hell do I chew through those vehicles?” It’s also a bit shootier than the Knights list, and can reliably delete smaller vehicles in one volley from each Dorn, so I need to play it coy with spacing and try and alpha strike more often.
The Mission: Supply Drop / Hammer and Anvil
I end up going second, which is a huge advantage here. I drop all of my Poxwalkers 9″ out of Andrew’s DZ to stop cheeky scout moves, then move my Spawn up. Andrew doesn’t get anything but hte poxwalkers killed turn 1 and while I have a bad time shooting the Hellhound (I forgot they’re 2+ save – next time I’ll tag those if they’re outside of 12″). Andrew ends up scoring 6 on his first turn for Cleans and Extend and that gives me a free 3 VP when I draw Great Haste as the Challenger in round 2. I pull Sabotage and Assassination and end up pitching Assassination when it’s clear getting a character will be tough.
The name of the game here is keeping Primary – I don’t score a ton but I use the Spawn to contest the top objective and the Deathshrouds to mostly threaten Andrew and force him to play around them. This is roughest when on the first turn I just completely blank into the Hellhound, forgetting about that damn 2+ save. We trade a few vehicles on turn 1 and I end up losing two PBCs – which isn’t ideal.
That said, I’m able to pressure Andrew pretty effectively as I press forward, using the additional unit of Deathshroud for extra melee touching and pressure. I drop one unit in his backfield to score Behind Enemy Lines and Great Haste on round 2, and discard Cleanse without scoring it to avoid going up by 6+. I’m the only one scoring primary, so eventually that’s going to end up with Andrew getting to use the catch-up mechanic as well. The goal then becomes to only go up either by 5 or by 9+ in a given round – going up by 6-8 will likely result in Andrew catching up with a Challenger card. The good news is that I’m going second, so I can control most of that.
There’s a fun moment on round 3 where I decide not to kill the last two melta Kasrkin in Andrew’s squad so they can’t come back with Reinforcements! as a full unit. Then Andrew moves them to the middle of the table to score Area Denial and gets off some lucky shots, killing my bloat-drone there. Which then explodes and kills them with 2 mortal wounds, blanking him on the secondary. Karma’s a bitch.
This ends up being a low-scoring game – like most Supply Drop missions are – but the real crux of it is that Andrew never scores any primary VP. By the time he captures the north objective, it disappears on him and the same goes for the southern one. We have to call it a little early but it’s pretty clear where things are going – he has a single bracketed Dorn and one unit of Kasrkin reinforcements he dropped deep in my DZ to score Behind Enemy Lines on round 4. Meanwhile I’m scoring the big 15 on the final round for holding the middle objective, and that puts me ahead, 64-44.
Final Result: 64-44, Win
It was great to get a rep in and we were able to kill two birds with one stone on this visit, with Andrew dropping off a ton of terrain I’d been waiting on. I know have way too much terrain to handle, but I’ll likely put most of it to work next year for the Houston GHO Narrative event I’m planning. Not sure yet if I even want to think about doing a competitive event, but a narrative event would be a lot of fun.
This was a solid rep to have and while I definitely still need more I’m not feeling any pressure as I go to Tacoma this year. Part of that is the ticket already on my shelf, and part of it is that the army I’m playing is just really good this time around. Am I worried about knights? Sure, I’ll probably lose to them. Am I happy to not be playing Thousand Sons this time around? Kind of? I don’t have the urge to paint all those Tzaangors and Terminators aren’t the jam right now. That said, This is my fourth year going to Tacoma and the first year I’m not running Terminator-heavy Thousand Sons so that’s kind of a fun break with tradition.
Probably still lose a game on stream, though.
Hobby Progress
I’ve been talking for a few weeks now about needing to finish my Death Guard and this weekend was finally the time to sit down and do it. I’d already done most of the work on these making them tabletop ready for Ottawa a few weeks back, so there wasn’t much to do. The To Do list here was one Chaos Spawn and two heavy blight launcher bloat-drones.
The Spawn was almost done and while I could have added more detail, these models are kind of dog shit. Lots of gross mould lines and just generally unappealing construction means I’m not spending a ton of time on them. I have a couple of rebased Accursed cultists I’ve done that I plan to paint to act as spawn in other armies, but I haven’t gotten around to painting them yet. Someday.
That just left the two bloat-drones. The general goal with these was to match them to the other drones I’ve done, and try and make each one distinct. That’s pretty easy given there are three face plates for the drones, but I have some added help in that my first HBL drone was converted from a double spitter drone in the Dark Imperium box, so it has a slightly different construction to the other two.
I really prefer the versions of these that have that gemstone eye on them as it gives them a cool visual center to draw you in, but I had to settle for just having two with cool face plates in that regard. The trio mesh well together and I’m happy with the outcome.
My Death Guard remain a mixed bag – I like how they’re painted, but they’re not going to win anything near best painted at Tacoma. If I’m lucky, they’ll make showcase, though Tacoma paint standards tend to be much higher. I think they’re good enough to make showcase generally, but it depends on who’s judging and how closely they look at the models – I do a lot of work on mine to make them look gross. But like I said, I’m not sweating it. They look good but not best painted good and probably not Best Overall good unless the good painters at Tacoma really don’t show up in the standings.
The upside is that I won’t be sweating it the same way I was with my Thousand Sons, who I know are good enough for Best Overall. So that’s a weight off.
What’s not a mixed bag are my Emperor’s Children, who need to be ready for the WCW. So I’m back on them. Right now I’m working on my first winged Daemon Prince:
I’m happy with how he’s shaping up, and I love the colors on the wing, but I’ll probably need to add more detail to it if I want to wow judges. Maybe leopard print spots. Stay tuned.
Next Time: Tacoma Round-Up
That’s it for the prep. I’m flying out this evening and this weekend figures to be a fun time with the west coast Goonhammer crew. But if you see me at Tacoma, don’t be afraid to say “hi” – I love meeting readers and it’s always cool to run into people who have been following along on this never-ending journey toward slightly-above-average play.
See you next Thursday.
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