TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2025, Part 31: The Tacoma Open

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress for 2025. Last week I was doing final prep for the Tacoma Open, getting in a test game with my updated Death Guard army and starting in earnest on my Emperor’s Children for the World Championships this fall. This time I’m recapping my experience at the Tacoma Open this year.

Thursday

I spend most of Thursday morning packing and doing final prep for the event. There’s a little hobby progress, when I add leopard print to the wings of my Emperor’s Children Daemon Prince, but I’ll save the reveal on those for next week. My flight to Tacoma was delayed, but only by a small bit, so I more or less arrived on schedule at SeaTac around 9:30pm local time. From there it’s about a 45 minute Uber ride to the hotel, and that’s where I met up with the Goonhammer crew for some drinks before calling it a night.

For a quick recap, here’s the list I brought:

My Death Guard list - Click to Expand

Friday

Welcome to Tacoma! The event is bigger than ever this year, and there are some 450 players here for the 40k GT, which runs three days. I grabbed hotel bar breakfast with Jack and Alice and Campbell, opting for the breakfast burrito. It’s not bad but it’s definitely overpriced. The hotel isn’t really in a good breakfast area so I’m paying a $10 premium to not walk six blocks to get something comparable and that’s almost worth it.

While I’m waiting for the event to start and Brandt is doing his famous “you’re all losers” speech, I’m greeted by Ryan, who I’ve played against at prior Tacoma events. It’s always great to meet up with people again at these, and we talk for a bit about this year’s plans and what we’re bringing. The big strategy is just “Don’t play too many knights armies,” because there are a lot of knights armies here at Tacoma.

Round 1: vs. Alex’s Imperial Knights

Welp, I didn’t even make it one round. Alex is running Imperial Knights with five big knights and a Callidus, and that’s a ton of beef to chew through. On top of that, we’re on Search and Destroy, making it difficult to put distance between us. And we’re on shorter terrain, which he can walk over (apparently this wasn’t supposed to be the case but we missed that in the pre-event announcements).

Alex's list - click to expand

This is brutal, but not unmanageable. I go with Fixed missions on this – Assassination + Bring it Down, meaning each knight is worth 10 VP. I’m either going to kill two early on and win, or he’s going to spike some 4+ saves and I’ll lose. At least, that’s what I thought would happen.

The Mission: Search and Destroy + Linchpin

I need to keep Alex off my home objective, but naturally he has Mysterious Guardian, enabling him to pick up and drop down there or at least nearby if I leave any gaps. I put my Deathshroud into space and get after it. I’m going second, which helps, but Alex goes super aggressive early – he dumps that Atropos and the Gallant my way early and I’m able to pick them up. Which would be good, except I’ve now scored 20 VP on secondary objectives plus another 8 on primary to Alex’s 6 at the end of the second battle round, so he gets a Challenger card on 3.

Then I kill his Callidus on the next turn, for another 4 VP, plus 8 primary – now the score is 50 – 39 going into 4 so he gets another challenger card, which scores an easy 3 VP when the condition is “be 15″ away from your own units and do an action” – which his Castellan can do while still shooting. I kill a third big knight on round 4, and now I’ve scored another 10 secondary VP to bring my total up to 34, but the score is 63 – 56 going into the final round, so he gets another challenger card, pulls 8 on primary, and draws Cleanse and Extend Battle Lines for an easy 9 on secondaries after he discards Behind Enemy Lines.

Now I’m suddenly down 75 – 63 on my turn and I need to hold a third objective or kill a Castellan from full health in order to score more points to win the game. I can’t reach either other objective so I need to put everything into the Castellan and hope for the best.

…and it doesn’t work. I knock it down to 3 wounds after charging with the Lord of Contagion but I can’t get it there. I lose the game 71 – 74 after giving up a whopping 9 VP to Challenger cards.

I fucking loathe Challenger cards now, let me tell you what. They were free points the entire game, handing Alex a narrow win instead of what should have been a loss. Alex was a great guy, who played a fine game, and a pleasure to play, but this loss hurt.

Result: 71-74, Loss

Round 1 losses are the worst. They immediately instill you with a sense of “welp, now everything else is meaningless” as the chances I’ll make the top cut with a loss is almost zero. It’s possible – I believe a few players made it – but really difficult, especially since it depends on opponent win percentage. Well, here’s hoping Alex does well.

I grab a quick sandwich at Jimmy John’s with my buddies Ben Jurek and Steven Salazar. It’s more expensive than it should be, but Tacoma is just kind of stupidly expensive, to the point that you don’t even really save money leaving the convention center to eat. You do get more vegetables, though.

Round 2: vs. Steven Lowery’s Thousand Sons

I’m more than familiar with the Thousand Sons matchup and it’s a good one for Death Guard. My army is really good at killing 2W infantry and while Thousand Sons can focus down enemy units, I’ve got more than enough where those came from to retaliate after losing one or two.

Steven's list - click to expand

Steven’s list only runs one Mutalith and no Magnus, and that’s kind of a dead giveaway it’s not going to get there. The Scarab unit is neat but with only five models it’s not the kind of weapon you need to really be a threat. This is a nightmare matchup for Steven and we both know it going in.

The Mission: Crucible of Battle + Terraform

I win the roll-off, and that’s good news on Terraform. I charge forward and start terraforming objectives while positioning to stop the Mutalith from charging into my lines or shooting a PBC, and Steven never really gets to use anything in his army more than once. Another great opponent, but there’s not a lot he can do in this matchup without more anti-vehicle threats. We talk a bit after the game about what he could have done differently and I think he really needed to put his Terminators in Deep Strike (he started them on the table), and have them as a backfield threat which could fight, then reposition later with the Crystal.

Result: 99-37, Win

After a quick break it’s on to round three.

Round 3: vs. Doug Johnson’s Orks

Round 3 has me up against Doug from Tablewar. Great guy, and this was a very tough game. We had a very cool, thematic table for this one with lots of Orky terrain.

Doug's list - click to expand

Bully Boyz can be an absolute nightmare to slog through with two full turns of 5+++ on their nobz, and the Squighog riders can make short work of vehicles. As such, I need to screen Doug out on turn 1 and make sure he doesn’t come screaming across the table and crash into my lines.

The Mission: Hammer and Anvil + Supply Drop

I lose the roll-off and that’s great – going second on Supply Drop is huge. I do my usual trick in these situations of deploying back and putting Poxwalkers where they can block movement and stop Doug’s Orks a turn early, giving me time to pick apart the key units and blunt his strike. Doug races forward and kills most – but not all – of my Poxwalkers, and I’m able to retaliate by killing most of his Squighog riders.

After that it’s time to fight my way out of jail – Doug presses forward the following turn and gets stuck in with Meganobz on my tanks and averages killing 1-2 per unit before I can bring down my Deathshroud. He’s in Waaagh! on round 2, and that means my impact is going to be much less than I’d like, and true to form I struggle to kill meaningful numbers of Meganobz, even with 3 damage guns.

See those triangles of grots on the left side? Those are what ultimately do Doug in on this mission. Not the grots, specifically, but rather that he hadn’t really read the mission clearly. I’d have made the same mistake if not for my practice game against Andrew two weeks ago – only the objectives in No Man’s Land score on this mission, and they disappear on rounds 4 and 5. Despite me telling Doug I’d never drop in his DZ before the game, he spent three rounds screening me out back there, meaning his grots weren’t able to help him hold objectives. As he crashed into my lines with his meganobz and Ghaz, I teleported Deathshroud onto the middle objective and just let him have my home as I ran around.

By the time Doug realized what was going on, it was too late. He made it to the bottom objective in time for it to disappear, then did the same with the one at the top of the table. I held the middle all three rounds, giving me a big bump on the final round.

Result: 67-83, Win

That was a tough game! I got a little contentious in the middle when we had to talk about pile-in and consolidate moves, but that’s just how it goes some time. Doug’s great, and he hooked me up with a sick Tablewar dice bag. On that note, if you haven’t heard of them, consider giving to Tablewar Charities, their Charitable organization focused on improving the lives of children and adults on the Autism Spectrum through Autism Advocates to help families with students who are on the spectrum. It’s a great cause, and we help support them every year at the Goonhammer Open.

Andrew “Pendulin” Haywood drove down on Friday despite being in the 40k Narrative and that not starting until Saturday morning, so we decided to hang out and talk app development. We went up to McMenamins Elks Temple about eight blocks up the street in Tacoma, where we grabbed drinks with some of the GW events staff and talked about next steps on Administratum. We just brought on a new dev to work on the app, and we’re hoping he can help us get caught up on faction add-ons.

Saturday

Saturday kicks off with hotel bar breakfast again and this time I opt for some standard bacon and eggs. Nothing fancy, but it’s not amazing, either. My goal today is to start 3-1 and at least have a chance at the top bracket.

Round 4: vs. Josh Long’s Chaos Knights

Josh is running an interesting variation of the Infernals list, with Be’lakor for support as a kind of pseudo-fifth big knight to accompany his others.

Josh's List - Click to expand

Lancers can walk over Nurglings, so I need to be careful about where I place these guys on round 1. My goal is to hang back and not give up a turn 1 charge. The good news is that I have a Stratagem to give an opponent -2 to their charge rolls against a vehicle, so that can help.

Mission: Hidden Supplies + Crucible of Battle

I’m going second (good), and I opt for Assassination + Bring it Down again. I really don’t like giving up that many Challenger points, but I’m at least more prepared this time around for it. Josh kicks things up with a turn 1 charge, rolling boxcars to make an 11″ charge after I drop the -2″ stratagem on him. This is basically what happens 100% of the time I use that Stratagem, going all the way back to ninth edition. I hate that goddamn stratagem so much.

I drop a big knight on each of turns one and two, then kill a third and Be’lakor on round 4. I end up giving up nine challenger VP to Josh on three cards again, but the early dice go my way this game and Josh doesn’t have the tools to recover when he needs them. There’s not a lot to say about this one – the mission helped me a lot here as well, since stickying objectives is less of a problem when you have six instead of five and can safely ignore one more than usual.

Result: 95-50, Win

I opt to stay in the building for lunch, grabbing convention hall chicken tenders and chatting with Ben. Ben’s 4-0, and beat the pants of James “Boon” Kelling back in round 2. Boon’s having a pretty rough go of it, in part because this is just not a good meta for Seer Council.

Round 5: vs. Sean Dahlin’s Dark Angels

Let me preface by saying that I started this game off a bit on the wrong foot. In an earnest effort to explain his army to me, Sean went into a ton of detail. To the point where I had to stop him and tell him that I just wasn’t going to retain it all. And true to my word, I didn’t, missing that he could both advance and shoot and charge and fall back and shoot and charge, and that would lead to an early misplay and a bit of a snippy moment (I suggested he had omitted the part about falling back and realistically, he probably hadn’t, and I just missed it). That was a dick move on my part, and I should have just kept my mouth shut, regardless. We got to an OK place eventually, I think.

List - Click to expand

Sean has a gorgeous Ravenwing army, but some of his conversions made it very difficult to tell what’s going on – I had forgotten that Attack bikes were Legends’d, so those are ATVs. And a lot of the chainswords were actually power pick-wielding black knights. That caught me off guard once or twice, but the bigger surprise was the shooting on the big units – they can put out some nasty shot volume, and if they’d played a bigger part in the game, I’d have been in trouble.

Mission: Scorched Earth + Tipping Point

Sean can come in from reserves a turn early with one of his big Black Knight units, and he has two he puts in reserves. I don’t need to screen them out of my DZ turn 1, but I will need to do so on turn 2. The good news for me is that Bloat-Drones rip through bikes, and Sean was afraid of losing his. I just need to avoid getting charged early and often. I put my Poxwalkers in his face to block movement out of his zone, and in the one moment where that explanation story mattered, I charged his bikes with my other poxwalkers, thinking I’d tie them up, only to be informed the following turn that he could just fall back and shoot and charge with mounted units. Again, that one’s on me.

This game was slow. In part because I had a long turn 2 shooting, but also because a lot of Sean’s army had different profiles and got into melee early – those meaningless bolter shots on the bikes can be killer when you need to make every wound count. I managed to screen Sean out of my DZ on round 2 and most of the table, so he dropped his big squads on the far side of the table. This was more or less what I was hoping for, as it meant they’d spend a turn or two just getting to the fight, and not be able to make an impact.

We were behind on time, so we got a clock after round 2 with 24 minutes each – not a ton, but more than enough to finish the game. Unfortunately this is where Josh’s strategy of holding one third of his army in reserves really hurt him, as it ate a lot of time after the clock was already down for him to move and shoot all of those models. That said, the bigger challenge was just that they were moving around the outside of the table, and I’d managed to hold the top and middle objectives for most of the game.

Sean would end up clocking, but the margin on this one was enough that i don’t think it would have mattered. By the time his big squads made it to the northeast objective I’d held down the center and bottom right, and while we tied on primary, Sean’s secondary draws on the final two rounds were just very unlucky, drawing Defend Stronghold and Storm Hostile and only being able to score 3 across those on round 4. With a little more luck late in the game and time I think Sean could have made this more of a tie, but I think he was a little too afraid of being shot early with his bikes. He needed to just bring in both units on round 2, in places I could see them, and count on threat and wound saturation to carry him through as he bum rushed my army. Instead he fed me units piecemeal and let me work through them with a bit more time.

I also just got fairly lucky mid-table with those Poxwalkers, who spiked some feel no pains to prevent Sean from getting to mid-table round 2 and kept us even on primary.

Result: 90-78, Win

That round went pretty much down to the wire, so I had no time before my next matchup against Brandon, an Iowa player Boon had played way back.

Round 6: vs. Brandon Flock’s Necrons

Brandon is a great guy and a wonderful player and I’m terribly sorry for the circumstances he had to play me in. I don’t think events should use Sweeping Engagement Deployment generally, but it’s especially brutal against my army.

List - Click to expand

Brandon’s list is a bit weirder than the usual Hypercrypt/Canoptek lists I’m expecting but it’s got some fun tricks and he’s a good player. I go with -1 to hit on this one because most of his vehicles and units have 4+ invulnerable saves anyways and once you put the Wraiths on a 4+ to hit they become just useless.

Mission: Sweeping Engagement + Terraform

There’s almost nowhere to hide on this board. My plan is to kill the Flayed Ones early and take out a key scoring unit and force Brandon to use good units for Terraform. If I can terraform two early with Poxwalkers and just outscore him there all game, I’ll be in good shape. And that’s exactly what happens on round 1. I lave two MBHs out in the open – I don’t have a lot of options, but also they’re cheap and short-ranged, so they’re never getting to those Tesseract Arks. My goal is to use them to lure out his Arks and then I can kill them. The good news is, Brandon takes the bait.

I tell Brandon going into round 2 that he’s not going to enjoy my shooting phase at all, and that ends up being the case as I watch the life slowly drain out of his eyes. My mortars were on fire this game, and when I killed the first doomsday ark with a bloat-drone it exploded and afflicted every unit nearby. Then on round 2 I started by dropping the strat on his home objective to battle-shock every nearby unit and Brandon failed all three of his tests that round, forcing him to move the other ark over to the objective to hold it.

In addition to having hot dice this game I also was able to neutralize Brandon’s anti-tank units early, then watch as the anti-infantry destroyers couldn’t do much to Deathshroud. I swept up toward Brandon’s home objective with two units of Deathshroud, forgetting I’d abandoned one in the corner while the PBCs and vehicles cleaned up at midtable. The Wraiths were particularly disappointing for Brandon, and that -1 to hit just punished him all game.

Result: 100-59, Win

Brandon was great, and I was happy to have played him. I’m sorry he had to go into this brutal matchup.

After the game it was time to set up for paint judging. The Goonhammer crew all made showcase, though Boon had decided to drop after an awful showing and didn’t put his stuff out. The rest of us set up next to each other, and I put my stuff in between Jack and Craig’s.

1 of 5

Similar to last time at Dallas, I took the opportunity to do some dumb bullshit with my army, putting models on Jack and Craig’s display board for a fun little “incursion” style story. I’m particularly proud of this sicko in the back of Jack’s display board:

You can see him if you zoom in on the picture in the slideshow.

Anyways this is now my favorite dumb thing to do at events and I’m gonna do it every time there’s another Goonhammer person around to be a total idiot with me.

For dinner we head up to Brick, the pizza place/bar up the hill from the convention center. It’s relatively inexpensive for Tacoma, has good food, and serves big containers of booze. We sit outside for as long as we can handle it before we come inside to escape the frigid Washington summer weather. I house a “Hurts So Good” burger, a Burger covered in cherry peppers that whips ass but is absolutely a mistake and dessert ends up being a fistful of Pepto Bismol just to ensure I don’t wake up with a mouth full of fiery bile.

Sunday

I’m still alive in the 3-1 bracket and that’s kind of neat, though ultimately means very little. If there’s one thing I don’t care for with the GW Opens, it’s prize support. I’ve gotten better prizes at local RTTs. They’re the best run events in the world, but man that prize support feels so stingy coming from a company of GW’s size. I’ve already gotten my plaque for winning the Captain’s Bracket and I have my Golden Ticket this year, so today is a bit more chill.

Round 7: vs. Roland Crawley’s Chaos Knights

Welp, I should have known I’d have to play Knights again. This one’s Chaos Knights, and arguably worse for me – the Lords of Dread ability to sticky objectives with OC 5 is just a nightmare for me, and this game is either going to have me killing two Lancers early or losing.

List - Click to expand

I should have taken Assassination + Bring it Down here but I was so sick of giving up 9 Challenger points I went with Tactical. It didn’t matter either way, unfortunately.

Mission: Take and Hold + Search and Destroy

I’m going first, and that’s terrible here – Take and Hold is not great for that, and it means Roland can uppy-downy his Tyrant on turn 1, which he does, putting it in the corner and blowing up two of my vehicles on his first turn. This is also a nightmare deployment for me, since it gives all three Lancers easy turn 1 charges. I do my best to avoid that, but there’s no stopping it with an advance-and-charge lancer rolling an 11 on the charge t1. I intervene with my Deathshroud and drop a dozen wounds on him, then go into my turn.

And that’s when it all falls apart. This shouldn’t have worked for Roland, but he spikes his 4+ saves on my turn 1 and I’m only able to kill one lancer while the other survives on 6 wounds. I kill it the following turn but the damage is done. I’m not able to recover quickly enough to retake objectives after Roland stickies them and he jams the rampager into my zone with another long bomb 11″ charge on round 3 that leaves me unable to dig out in time after it spikes saves to live on 1 wound and steal my home objective.

If I’d gone with Fixed I’d have lost this game 88-89, but that’s not accounting for the fact that I’d have probably not gotten any challenger cards, and likely given my opponent at least one. There just wasn’t any getting around getting jammed early – I needed to kill two lancers turn 1 to win this one, and it didn’t happen. Ah well.

Result: 89-67, Loss

I eat convention center lunch again with the Goonhammer crew, then prep for my final round game.

Round 8: vs. Randy Saucier’s Thousand Sons

Randy has some lovely Thousand Sons and he’s a treat to play. My favorite opponent of the event, and we were both exhausted by the end of this game. It’s a bad matchup for Randy but he turned it into a grueling meat grinder by going full send early.

List - Click to expand

Two Mutaliths, but no Magnus make this a dangerous but not crazy list. I have to worry about getting out-ranged by the Tzaangors early, but if I can prevent Randy from stacking debuffs early when shooting his Tzaangors they aren’t so scary. You really need re-rolls and Twist of Fate AP debuffs for them to kill big vehicles.

Mission: Scorched Earth + Crucible of Battle

Randy goes full send early, hoping to oversaturate me with threats. If he’d held his Mutaliths an extra round it might have worked. As it was, they shot out first and both died round 1, leaving me with easy pickings after that.

Or so I thought – Randy put up a hell of a fight, keeping me in my DZ longer than I expected and making me work for every inch of the table. Every time I thought I’d just finally break his army open, he’d pull some new trick to stay in it. It was very respectable… and very annoying (though I mean this in the best way). That said, I still just had Too Many Units for Too Cheap, and I was able to burn Randy’s home objective on round 3, them move to the others after. We played this one to the end, and it was closer than the score makes it look.

Result: 90-56, Win

Another Tacoma event in the books! This was my favorite yet, filled with some great opponents I enjoyed playing. Day 2 was probably the toughest of the days, just because I think that’s when I was the most exhausted, but I’m glad I went as usual.

We went out to a local biergarten on Sunday night and I crushed some schnitzel. The best part of these events is never the games, it’s hanging out with the Goonhammer crew in person, playing games, talking shop, and just having a great time.

Next Time: Emperor’s Children Hobby Hell

That’s it for this week. Come back next week when I’ll be knee-deep in painting prep for my Emperor’s Children, talking about my philosophy for winning Best Painted, and finishing that Daemon Prince I started. And if I have time to get in a practice game, I’ll write about that too, why not.

See you next Thursday.

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