Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing hobby and competitive progress series for 2025. Previously on Road Through 2025, I was testing my Death Guard again and mulling over how I’d change the list for my GT this upcoming weekend.
After some – but not a ton – of deliberation, I decided to just go with the pared down version of my Mortarion’s Hammer list, cutting out one unit of Deathshroud Terminators and the unit of Chaos Spawn. I’ve put in a lot of hours now with that list and I’m pretty comfortable I can pilot it down those units, even if it’s not the best chance at best painted. Ultimately laziness won out here and I went with something that was easier.
Strategically, this means that very little will change for the army. I’m still running three Plagueburst Crawlers and if you think they’re overcosted at 210 points well, I’m not sure. I think they’re at worst fairly costed. Are there other units that are still undercosted in the army? Yes – and I think the next top Death Guard list is likely to end up spamming units like Predators which are very good but not quite as obviously busted as the others.
Here’s the thing: PBCs straight up win games. Like yeah they’re a bit of a liability in some matchups. But there are a good number of games – at least a third – that they just straight-up win by being on the table. Being able to chip away or remove a key enemy unit buried deep behind their lines is huge, and players have to play around your ability to bomb them from afar. The biggest hit they took was arguably that the mission pack now lets you discard unscored two-turn missions at the end of your opponent’s turn – there were a few games where I’d watch an opponent attempt Sabotage or Recover Assets, then promptly mortar them off the table, only to watch them agonize over being stuck with the secondary and deciding to try it again.
So I’m sticking to my (plague-soaked) guns on this one. Likewise, two units of Poxwalkers will be fine, even if three is ideal – I’ve only painted 20 of them, so that’s fine. And like I’ve mentioned before, I often find I don’t need the third unit of Deathshrouds. So two cuts later and my list is sitting at a very serviceable spot. The biggest challenge I’ll have to deal with is ironically losing the Chaos Spawn – they were a great objective holder, harassment unit, and backfield objective unit. Without them I have to do a bit more work to figure out how to protect my home objective on missions where that matters. And while there aren’t a ton, the last thing you want is a unit in your backfield, clogging up your tanks and making it hard for them to do their jobs.
The real shame is I’d happily put Defilers back in if not for their bases, which just straight up make them unplayable. There’s an alternate list I’d consider that swaps out the PBCs for a trio of Defilers, using the saved points for another key unit.
Anyways, the event is this weekend and if you’re interested in following along it’s going to have a stream table. I think it’s going to be streamed on Twitch via this channel, but last I checked the organizers weren’t 100% sure if it would be there or YouTube. Not the most solid lead, I know, but if you have time consider checking it out. And if I hear a different link, I’ll replace this one: https://www.twitch.tv/grimdarkbard
Hobby Progress
I had a lot of plans to paint more Emperor’s Children stuff over the last week. But then as happens, I had a batch of preview content dropped in my lap. This is always frustrating because it means I’ll end up spending my hobby time painting something I can’t talk about in my weekly column until after it’s not super relevant. That was the case for this guy – three weeks ago I was painting Buri Aegnirsson from the new Leagues of Votann set. I sent most of the set to Goonhammer co-owner Shane Watts, a regular Votann player on our team – but held Buri to paint and review for our article. Then I didn’t finish him in time.
Shane has a very specific aesthetic for his Leagues of Votann, painting them as “Chaos Dwarf Kin,” with gray skin, brass armor, and chaos trappings. You can see that in the Memnyr he painted for the review:
So I removed the Tyranid bits from Buri, added some more horns and chaos parts, and did him up in similar fashion. I’m shipping him off to Shane this week, and he’ll probably see play at the Challengers Cup event in a few weeks.
Speaking of which, organizing for the Challengers Cup has been a nightmare. As much as I enjoy teams events, 8-man events are such a colossal pain in the ass to plan around and coordinate for. When we were planning for Ottawa event we had to replace two players in the two weeks leading into the event and right now I’ve been in a similar position, having to replace four people on this team, including two in the last week. I am skeptical that I’ll be doing more 8-man teams events in the future unless I don’t have to be the one in charge of dealing with this shit.
HeroQuest
Another big hobby project of mine over the last year has been HeroQuest. I’ve been (very) slowly painting the entire set, and at the same time I’ve been making that task harder by expanding the collection with countless expansions and 3d-printed add-ons (I like having physical objects for stuff like walls and special quest items). I’m still working on my big article for running the game with kids, but in the meantime I thought I’d share a few of my tips and tricks:
Let’s start with prep advice.
Prep/Pregame Stuff to do:
- Paint the minis. This makes such a huge difference and the kids love playing with and seeing painted minis. Have them help, even – I’ve done a lot of the work on my heroquest minis with Contrast Paint, and that’s an easy way to bring them into the process, especially when something like the pantry cabinet can be painted just mostly using Snakebite Leather contrast paint. Also be sure to varnish them after because those kids are gonna touch the shit out of them.
- Paint the alternate versions too. The new releases have alternate-gendered versions of the heroes and that’s awesome because it means that when the girls sit down to play they have character models that better represent them – and they immediately pick up on this. Although admittedly it’s a bit weirder with the monsters and your kids are like “wait did we kill a girl goblin?”
- Use sleeves. Holy shit get sleeves. I use penny sleeves and they’ve already saved my cards from a spill. Fun fact: Kids are fucking psychopaths and when they fill a cup with water they’ll fill it to the brim for no fucking reason and despite your insistence that they can just refill it later. And they will spill that shit. Also you’re probably gonna have snacks and those little monsters get crumbs and Cheetoh dust on everything. I’m a sicko when it comes to printed materials and so keeping them in pristine condition is one of my sticking points.
- Get a dice tray. You don’t need one but it makes a huge difference because it stops the kids from rolling dice into the board all the time and knocking over the minis. Which they will do. Often.
- Money tracking. This is one of my favorites. Tracking money in HeroQuest is already a pain in the ass when you’re an adult, with everyone tracking their gold on separate sheets and having to total it up and it gets changed between quests. What I do instead is when the kids find treasure, I hand them fake plastic coins equal to the amount. We have a bunch of play money Bryce got and I use the same denominations, i.e. nickels are worth 5 coins, dimes worth 10, quarters 25, etc. The gold coins there are 100 each. This both gives them a cool prop for holding onto their money and also stealth teaches them the value of actual coins. I also threw in some fake gems there as props.
- Optional: Third-party add-ons. This one’s optional but I’d point out that there are a bunch of third-party, 3d-printed add-ons you can get off ebay an etsy for HeroQuest specifically to give you real models of stuff that’s normally done with cardstock. Those are fine, but I’m a sucker for props and the furniture in Heroquest, so I’ve got a bunch of these ready for when we do Kellar’s Keep, the Witch Lord, and other quests later.
Also optional: I have a Sonos in my game room and I put movie soundtracks on in the background while we play to set the mood.
Running the Game
Here are my tips for when you’re actually running things:
- Play it up. It’s HeroQuest, but treat it like Dungeons and Dragons. Do the voices, narrate what happens. When the kids attack, I tell them what happens – it’s not just three skulls, it’s “you swing your broadsword at the Orc, only to see him smash your sword aside with his axe. You see the glimmer in his eyes as he readies a counter.” Describe rooms when they walk in, tell them what’s going on. Kids eat that shit up, and there’s no time more acceptable for make-believe.
- Make them read. Every time someone searches for treasure or gets a new relic or piece of equipment, I make them read the card out loud. They have to
- Make them count. Same deal with the dice. They have to count that result and tell me what it is on their own.
- Keep it small. My experience is that kids top out at one quest per session. At least right now, when they’re in the 7-10 range. We’ve tried doing two and it’s a disaster. After that first quest they get distracted and want to do other stuff, or just play whatever else. Sometimes they grab the swords and armor and play “real HeroQuest” after. On that note, my experience is that costumes are fine at the table, but you have to tell them to leave the weapons behind or you’ll find your players too distracted by their pretend weapons.
- Have snacks, but have plates and napkins and be ready to clean. Having snacks on hand is great for this, but remember that as little kids, they’re gonna make a mess. Have sleeves ready and my recommendation is to opt for dry, bite-sized foods. Goldfish are particularly great for this but baby carrots and apple slices are also fine.
- Remind them that they’re all on the same team. Kids are selfish little jerks. No matter how many times I tell them that they all share a pool of treasure or that they should work together, they’ll often abandon their teammates to be the first to search for treasure or kick down doors before everyone is ready. The occasional nudge here is worth giving, though ironically that selfishness also helps keep things interesting – HeroQuest is not a particularly hard game, especially in its base questline, and players doing dumb stuff adds a lot of challenge.
- Scale it up or down as you need. That said, scale it up or down as you need, adding wandering monster difficulty or letting off the gas as the situation and your players dictate. You want your players to be worried about dying but not spending time dead. A kid who isn’t playing isn’t just bored at your table, they’re a distraction to other players and likely getting into other toys or running around your house.
Also, if you do this, your kid will want to run their own game, probably using every single mini in your box. Let them do this. It’s not going to be fun, but it will be adorable and you want to encourage that kind of creativity.
Next Time: The Tabled Talk GT
That does it for this week’s update but come back next week when I’ll be recapping my games from this weekend’s GT and hopefully documenting some more hobby progress. At the very least I’ll be able to talk about the things I was painting this week that were under embargo.
See you next Thursday.
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