TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2025: The World Championships of Warhammer

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing hobby and competitive progress series for 2025. Previously on Road Through 2025, I was frantically painting and practicing for the event, trying to get in some final games to familiarize myself with the army and finishing the final models. I finished my last model Tuesday night before leaving, then hopped on a flight to Atlanta with the family.

Let’s get into it. Before we dive in, I’m going to be talking about games played with my list, and here’s the list I took:

My list - Click to Expand

I’ve said most everything about this list I want to say at this point; it’s a watered-down version of Liam VSL’s list from the London GT earlier this year, tweaked to include units I had already finished painting. It’s got a lot of tricks and utility, but it’s far from the best thing I could be running. The Warp Talons and Obliterators always start in reserves, and the guys on foot all start in Rhinos, save for Cypher.

Wednesday

Our flight out on Wednesday was relatively uneventful in that airport security was a breeze despite multiple terminals at IAH being closed. We met up with my friend and occasional Goonhammer co-author T Chambliss on the flight in and took the metro over to the Peachtree Center stop together, after which we met up with Garrett and Steven Salazar for dinner at a local Chinese place. We crushed a few family-style plates, eating a bunch of dumplings, curry, and fried rice in what may have been the healthiest meal I ate all weekend.

Thursday

Alright, it’s Go Time. The event starts blessedly late on Thursday, with a 10am start time for round 1. That’s in order to accommodate the opening ceremonies, which includes handing out commemorative challenge coins to players from each country, and to handle set-up. A 10am start time works fine for me but means that there’s a chance we won’t finish the first round until 2pm.

Round 1: vs. Micheal Godon’s Imperial Knights

Pairings go up and I head to my first round opponent, Micheal. He’s running Imperial Knights, Valourstrike Lance with three big knights.

Micheal's List - Click to Expand

This is an ideal first round opponent for me. My army’s ability, which is essentially Oath of Moment, is great into a small number of large targets, and Imperial Knights aren’t nearly as scary as their Chaos counterparts. On top of that, none of Micheal’s knights have the gatling cannons that I’m most worried about, and that means I can likely pick him off piece by piece and do just fine.

The Mission: Purge the Foe + Hammer and Anvil

This isn’t an ideal mission for me, given how few units Micheal has, but it’s not terrible, either. I lose the roll-off and end up going second, which is also exactly what I wanted here as well. Going second on Purge is huge.

We’re on Layout 8, which is in my opinion the best of the Games Workshop layouts. It’s got a good mix of terrain and lacks the kinds of long sightlines down the board edges which can define other layouts, and works well with Hammer and Anvil. This one also works in my favor as I can stage effectively in the top ruin to prep for Micheal’s knights and also hide from him. He runs his Atropos up that way early and I manage to take it out… and then it explodes, dropping D6+2 mortal wounds onto my army.

I was able to recover and push into Micheal’s lines with my Chosen and Legionaries, killing his Paladin… which then exploded, and dropped D6 mortals into my units. Without a ton of units to work with, Micheal pushed forward, dropping my Predator with its Obliterators with its Volcano Cannon. I’ve been playing a bit conservative so far but I’m actually behind on primary against Micheal, since he’s been able to effectively score Kill more with fewer units while we both mostly score hold 1/kill 1.

I need to pull ahead here so I push into his Castellan with everything and destroy it… and it explodes, dropping D6+2 mortal wounds into my army. This was hilarious but also a bit frustrating. But picking him up on round 4 means I can more or less finish round 5 on my terms, outscoring Micheal to take this one, 78-66.

Outcome: 78-66, Win

I start 1-0. This is awesome – I’m already ahead of my concerns about going 0-8. But in my brain I’m already getting ahead of myself, thinking shit like, “Wow, I can win every fucking one of these games” and “I could win my pod here.” That’s dangerous thinking because having raised expectations is the opposite of what I need right now – I’m at best a middle of the pack player among this group, and even if I wasn’t, I’m not running my best army. Still, I managed a win in a game where I was fairly unlucky, and that’s a solid feeling.

I grab lunch at the local food court with Caroline and Bryce and a couple of the Goonhammer comp crew. It’s a pretty quick slop bowl from a place called Bull Gogi. It’s Bulgogi on rice with a heavy helping of spinach, seaweed and a few other toppings. It’s not bad but it’s still fast food.

Round 2: vs. Charles Gould’s Shadowmark Talon

Charles is an Irish player and just a real treat to match into. Maybe my favorite opponent of the weekend, he’s just a fun guy to talk to and play against and a very good player.

Charles' List - Click to Expand

This list is insanely flexible. It’s got a brutal mix of firepower and mobility, able to pop up behind me on turn 1 and cause problems, while those Devastator Centurions can basically delete anything they can see across the table. I’m helped a bit by another layout 8 mission here, but I really want to go second and screen my backfield.

The Mission: Linchpin + Tipping Point

Unfortunately I “win” the roll-off and end up going first. That’s not ideal but it does mean my reserves will come in earlier, at least. Linchpin tends to be a very low-scoring mission, especially when the armies are, as in this game, playing fairly conservatively. I’m playing not to lose my Chosen and trying to stay one objective ahead and keep Charles off his and that’s difficult – and potentially a losing formula as he’s going second. But I manage to maintain better board position most of the game as Charles plays it a little too safe with his units.

This ended up being a frustrating game. Not because of Charles, but because I had a plan toward game’s end that should have worked. It’s pretty gauche to blame dice but they’re definitely a factor here. I think there were some things I could have done better – I misplayed my bikes a bit during the game and got a little too conservative with my Chosen when I needed to just put them on the middle objective – but the plan I came up with should have worked.

What went wrong here was Charles sending four Assault Intercessors into my home objective. They charged the Vindicator, getting a long enough charge on the re-rollt o reach, and used the combat movement to swing around and steal my home objective. Then the Vindicator did what it did all weekend: It bounced the fuck off them, doing 0 wounds to them in the Shooting phase and ensuring I’d lose a massive number of points on primary to them. Then when they fell back, it bounced off them again, and so did my Predator. I just could not push through damage on them. Meanwhile at Charles’ home objective my Warp Talons managed to steal his home objective but left one Dev Centurion up there alive on one wound, preventing them from leaving table.

On top of that I got completely screwed with my secondary draws this game, pulling unscorable Assassination on round 2 and two completely unscorable secondaries on the final round. What I needed to do was put my Cultists back on my home objective earlier, but I was worried about the combo of Inceptors + Overwhelming Force to clear them out for cheap VP and by the time Charles hit his long bomb into my Vindicator it was too late. I might have been able to clear them out with melee support from the Chosen, but that would have meant running them a pretty long distance and the Vindicator should have been able to kill 1-2 and set me up to finish them off the following turn.

Result: 45-60, Loss

That was a tough one. I think I could have won it had one or two things gone my way, but them’s the breaks. It definitely felt like Charles got away with one and if I’d gone second I think I would have won that one. But again, it’s not the end of the world to be off to a 1-1 start.

We do dinner at the hotel bar. The food is mid and the service is terrible but it’s also easy to do and they serve pizza so Bryce will eat there. I grab a pretzel and a quesadilla and it’s entirely too much food. Most of the Goonhammer crew are finally in, having arrived for the Grand Narrative. Joining us at the table are Dan “FromTheShire” Gates, JD “TheArmourofContempt” Reynolds (who’s here for the Kill Team championships), Paulie “SkySerpent” Wallis, Craig “MasterSlowpoke” Sniffen, Andrew “Pendulin” Haywood, and Jack “Jack Hunter” Hunter.

Showcase

That night we set up for Showcase. It’s a bit wild to do this before the Narrative starts but I’m plenty fine with getting it out of the way. I’ve made showcase though once again my friend Garrett Moore has missed it. Something about his army is just such that GW paint judges Do Not Care For It. Not sure what, exactly. I head back upstairs to get my display board, then run back downstairs to set up. I put most of the army on the board – only the Cultists and one of the Chosen don’t make it onto the final display – and I’m pretty happy with it, despite it just being really crowded.

Someone came by and took shots for WarCom and they look better than any of the shots I took so I’m just going to show those:

Looking around I like my odds. I don’t think I’m going to win – there’s a T’au army I think is going to win – but I think I can definitely get silver or podium. GW inexplicably does not do third place trophies on paint, but I’d be OK with that result too.

Friday

I wake up around 8 the next morning and start prepping for a leisurely morning before a 10am start only to realize that the round actually starts at 8:30 that morning, presumably to make room for a Shadow Round after the first four rounds have completed. Well, shit. I rush through a shower and head downstairs, snarfing down a granola bar I’d been saving in my backpack since Challengers cup for breakfast.

Round 3: vs. Dan “The Wizard” Montoya’s Death Guard

This is a funny one because I’d run into Dan on Wednesday night in the elevators, when he dropped an f-bomb in front of my son, then realized what he’d done and immediately apologized profusely. It was funny then to get paired into him the next day, with him trying to make up for it (it was always OK).

Dan's list - Click to Expand

Dan’s list is another good matchup for me. In theory, Death Guard are a problem because the shooting from the Bloat-Drones is a problem, but they’re really the only shooting he’s got. The rest is plenty manageable and if I screen well and use my reactive moves well I can stay out of trouble.

The Mission: Terraform + Crucible of Battle

We’re on Layout 2 with Crucible, which isn’t my favorite – I think Layout 2 is much better with Search & Destroy, and this is a pretty wide open layout on Crucible. That said, Dan spreads his drones out, preventing him from taking advantage of them against my vehicles. He also puts Mortarion into Deep Strike reserves, which is a mistake as well – with only 24″ range on the Vindicator I don’t have much that can threaten him at range, and Dan needs the threat saturation early. Dan’s going first, and that’s also a big disadvantage.

I’ve played against Death Guard enough to know the score here: Those Poxwalker units are load-bearing for Dan’s army. Once they die, he’ll be unable to terraform or do action secondaries without using a more valuable unit, so I need to wipe them out turn 1. I do just that, throwing my Bikes and Raptors at one unit, my Chosen at another, and my Legionaries at the third. I’ll end up losing the Chosen earlier than I’d like I also terraform all three objectives turn 1, and Dan doesn’t really have the resources to flip them back most of the game.

Dan spends a good portion of this game grinding me down but gets a huge break when my Warp Talons arrive via Ingress, then on the following turn fail a 4″ charge into his bloat drone that strands them on the table. It was a charge I needed to keep far to avoid overwatch and a unit of Deathshroud which arrived via Ingress nearby but it cost me pretty dearly when they got stuck there – they’d end up getting shot up by the drones, with only a single Warp Talon surviving.

That’s when my luck turned a bit; I used Insane Bravery on that Warp Talon to have him auto-pass morale and sent him at Dan’s home objective, where he survived one round of Overwatch from a bloat-drone to steal and terraform Dan’s home objective – the one he can’t flip back. That was huge, and I needed to stay ahead of Dan once Mortarion hit as I had absolutely no way to deal with the Death Guard Primarch.

Dan played a good game but couldn’t catch up on primary; I scored 50 easily with 30 of those dropping on rounds 1-2 though I only outscored him by 6 on secondary objectives. Dan was able to close some of that gap late but not having the resources to Terraform was what really hurt him.

Result: 86-65, Win

Hell yeah. I was once again on track to win the whole goddamn thing, obviously. 3-1 was a long shot but if I kept at it and other people lost maybe I’d make the shadow round or something. WHO KNOWS.

I grabbed lunch again at the food court, this time snagging a burger and eating lunch with Bryce. I hadn’t seen him quite as much this event – when I play the Grand Narrative he’ll hang out with me at the table. At the WCW that’s not quite the same vibe I’m going for, and I need to put all of my brain power into the games. SO it’s nice to get some time with him. For his part he’s been mostly enjoying the ability to play Minecraft on the Switch, but not getting as much into the Narrative, which is a shame.

Round 4: vs. Sumaythan’s Imperial Knights

This list is a nightmare for me and the terrain layout could not be worse for it.

Sumaythan's List - Click to Expand

Oath of Moment is really not so helpful into a bunch of Armigers, where being able to focus down one target at a time doesn’t do nearly as much good. On top of that, these are all decked out to kill anything in my army at range, and this board is wide open – there’s basically nowhere to hide from those AP-boosted helverins.

The Mission: Scorched Earth + Tipping Point

I “win” the roll-off and end up having to go first, which makes this even worse. I’ve gone back and forth in my head about what I could have done to have a fighting chance in this game, and I think the only answer is more or less just pass turn 1 without moving, or move into the top left corner of the table and hope to score up there while Sumaythan walks across the table with the rest of his army.

I don’t do that, and instead make the mistake of trying to stage in the center ruin, where I just get shot to absolute pieces, exacerbated by Sumaythan drawing No Prisoners and Extend on turn 1 compared to my Sabotage + Tempting Target. That was kind of how this one went – I couldn’t catch a break all game, and when I did drop in my heavy hitters they just bounced off Sumaythan’s Knights – at one point I dropped six wounds on his big knight with my Vindicator, only to watch him roll six 5+ saves. This game was a lost cause before that shit happened, and things just didn’t improve from there.

I got completely shithoused this game, and by turn 5 I’m ready to just call it. Sumaythan will end up going 7-1 on the weekend and I can believe it given how brutal his list could be on some of this terrain – It was no shock to me that the only loss he got was on layout 8.

Result: 44-99, Loss

That loss puts me back down to Earth and squarely in the 2-2 bracket. That’s honestly fine; it feels pretty close to where I belong, especially with this list, and I’m not super upset about it. I’m also not stuck in the shadow round, which is the one place I really don’t want to be at one of these events – as much as it’s cool to be in the round for what it represents, I’m already tired from two days at the Warhammer factory and I can’t imagine how I’m gonna feel by Sunday.

On the plus side, fellow Goonhammer author Marchettus is here and after waiting all day for them to get out of school, his family have finally arrived – Bryce is friends with his son and they play Minecraft pretty often. This is the only time they get to meet up in person and they’re largely inseparable the entire time. It takes them about four minutes to figure out that they can both play on the Switch using the two controllers split off, and any minute they’re not chasing each other around with prop weapons they’ll be playing on the Switch.

We hit the Friday night live preview since that seems to be The Thing To Do. They get through Warhammer Quest and then hit technical difficulties that drag on more than 10 minutes so we grab the kids and head upstairs for dinner. Most of the narrative players are still doing their briefings or grabbing dinner but at this point we’ll just catch the previews online later.

The kids end up staying up later than usual but are mostly cooler than usual about it; we make it to bed without any meltdowns and make plans for the next day. The moms are going to take the kids to the Georgia Aquarium. Meanwhile I’m going to be playing another two rounds of Warhammer, this time sorted into the 2-2 bracket and matched largely into non-US players as pairings allow.

Day 3 thankfully starts a little bit later, with a 9am start time. I’m able to get a quick breakfast and head downstairs, during which I look at Sean’s list. He’s running Firestorm marines with a lot of Infernus marines. He’s not running Forgefather’s Seekers despite having Vulkan so I immediately think to myself that one of two things will be about to happen:

1. Sean’s army will be gorgeous and I’ll have a relatively easy game
2. Sean’s army will be barely battle ready and I’m about to get wrecked

Round 5: vs. Sean Olson’s Salamanders

This is definitely a #2 situation. Sean’s got a lot of power here that can cause me problems, and almost all of it is wrapped up safely in the kinds of light vehicles that give me fits. Transports are generally a problem for my list/Detachment – I can’t use my Oath on the contents, and killing a transport is usually a poor use of the ability… but it’s one I have to do if I don’t want to bounce off the thing.

Sean's list - click to expand

Sean’s got a ton of mobility here and as I mentioned, it’s all due to those transports that keep his units safe. I need to crack many of those early so I can kill the units inside. The Infernus marines are an issue but I can get angles on them on this terrain. Vulkan’s also an issue, given that he’ll be OC 10 on that middle point at any time during the game.

The Mission: Hidden Supplies + Search and Destroy

This one’s on Layout 3 with Search and Destroy. Layout 3 is only good for Search and Destroy, making this a decent map for us. Unfortunately, I “win” the roll-off and end up having to go first, which makes this matchup a nightmare. I start things off dropping my Oath on the only transport I can see and pop it open, but I’m unable to make the long charges I’d have liked afterward to really punish Sean for leaving it in the open. On his turn Sean pulls free Area Denial and moves to occupy mid-table. What you can’t see in that photo: Sean’s Storm Raven full of melta devs at the top of the table, trying to stay hidden.

Things immediately take a turn for the worse in this game on turn 2 when my Chaos Lord and his Legionaries charge an impulsor full of Infernus marines, activate his special ability, and… immediately bounce off, doing zero wounds. This is my absolute goddamn nightmare and I’ll loose four of them to firing deck shooting the following turn. Then they’ll bounce again, losing a model and 3 wounds to me failing both hazardous checks with the remaining plasma pistols. In fact, it takes three rounds of combat to get that thing down to half wounds, after which it fails a battle-shock test and dies trying to make a Desperate Escape test.

I generally did not have good luck this weekend at all. It was a running theme through most of my games that my dice let me down and that was pretty rough to try to work around. It meant my wins were uphill battles while my losses were more lopsided than they could have been. I know that’s just how it goes sometimes, but I usually expect more of an evening out over eight games. The Vindicator in particular only had one good turn of shooting the entire weekend. That thing was just constantly disappointing me. The Obliterators never did anything, either – even when I was shooting into Oath targets.

This streak kept on when my Warp Talons failed a 4″ charge into Sean’s Rhino (they still made it but I rolled a 3, which meant they didn’t go far enough to really make it), and ended up not being able to put enough models on it to kill it. Thanks, assholes. That meant they were also trapped on the table, and Sean spiked some saves with his Melta Devastators to ensure they stayed alive and able to shoot me in the face.

I kept pace with Sean on secondary objectives this game but got obliterated on primary. Sean’s extra speed and going second meant he could comfortably hold objectives across the table and push me off them on his turn, staying ahead on primary all game. There was a fun moment late where I failed to kill his Storm Raven – it stayed alive on 3 wounds – and he lost it to hazardous plasma fire, but that didn’t help much that late in the game.

Result: 79-54, Loss

That’s my first pair of losses in a row leave me sitting at 2-3 and I’m hoping to get back to .500 with my final game of the day. As luck would have it, game 6 would end up being the best and most exciting game I played all week.

Round 6: vs. Atal Walia’s Ironstorm Ultramarines

OK, you know how I said Layout 3 is fine for Search and Destroy? It’s not fine for Sweeping Engagement. It’s wide open here, and this sucks – especially because I’m going into an Ironstorm list sporting three Gladiators and three Vindicators. On the one hand I theoretically can do OK into that with oath, but on the other I don’t necessarily have the power to kill three in one turn and each clapback will diminish my resources. On top of all of this there’s Guilliman, who will instantly kill any unit he touches. I have to play this one very coy.

Atal's list - click to expand

I hadn’t played against Ironstorm Gladiators yet but man those things are bullshit. Watching them shoot vehicles is basically just an exercise in watching an opponent re-roll dice until they get the results they want. It feels so detached from the standard yoke of variance. It was a stark reminder that while my dice had been bad this week, I had also done this to myself by playing an army that was just more dice dependent. I was really missing Death Guard in this matchup, is what I’m saying.

The Mission: Supply Drop + Sweeping Engagement

On top of the open map with Sweeping Engagement, we also have Supply Drop, which is just an incredibly evil mission to run at a competitive event. Disappearing objectives determined after deployment makes this such a lousy crapshoot – oh did you deploy your units correctly by accident? Congrats on the free points! It turns out I did not do that necessarily, but I didn’t over-commit to the righthand objective, meaning I could at least make an early play for it to score points and try and get one good turn of the Omega objective before it disappeared.

What really mattered here though was that I was going second. That’s huge, because it means I can more or less count on bottom-of-turn scoring on that middle objective so long as I play it right. Atal opens turn 1 by drawing Engage on All Fronts and Area Denial. He scores 1 for Engage (good), and makes a critical mistake, pushing a Vindicator up to score Area Denial. That puts it right where I can pop out with my Vindicator and Predator to Oath it and remove it from the table on turn 1, and that scores me 3 points on Overwhelming Force and 2 on Marked for Death. I get a little lucky with my Vindicator damage here (He failed five saves), but between the two tanks he wasn’t super likely to survive and I’m able to pop a shot or two off at the Ballistus with the Predator instead.

My plan on the right side is to inch up with the Bikes and Chosen Rhino, then pop out and take out his Lancer. Home objectives don’t matter for much in this mission, but if I can be up there to threaten his home and deny Defend Stronghold later, that’s not bad. Ironically, I got a lot out of my planning and writeup on GW Terrain Layout 3 here, as the practice game I played gave me a good idea of how to use the terrain in this cursed matchup.

The big problem with killing the Gladiators and Vindicators is that Atal just has more where those came from. He kills my Predator and Vindicator on turn 2, then blows open my Rhino with the Legionaries and Nemesis Claw inside. He scores an easy 4 for Bring it Down on turn 2 but blanks on Behind Enemy Lines, pitching it for 1 CP. However because I killed his Vindicator on the middle point he blanks on Primary. That’s not a ton on this mission – objectives will be worth progressively more – but every point is likely to matter here.

On my second turn I drop the Warp Talons and Legionaries, with a plan to use them to destroy the Gladiator Reaper pull them off the table. I drop one unit of Obliterators on each side of the table for support – one in the corner to help soften up the vehicles there and another near the Chosen to help them handle the Lancer there. My experience is that these massed attacks can kill medium vehicles, but you really need to take a few wounds off first or they end up living on like 1-2 and then you’re just totally screwed. So I use the Obliterators and a free grenade from the Chaos Lord to make sure I get the result I want. Unfortunately it suddenly goes too well, and the Warp Talons are left without a charge target. This will come back to bite me.

I score Secure No Man’s Land and Display of Might for 9, and I’ve scored 10 on primary this turn. It’s 34-20 in my favor at this point.

The objective in the middle is the big problem – Atal has Guilliman and a Vindicator on it, and Guilliman is just a death sentence for any of my units he comes into contact with. We brawl for another turn on the left side as I wipe him out on the right. Atal scores 5 for primary on round 3 and draws Defend Stronghold and Establish Locus. My bikes are easily within range of his home objective, having killed his Intercessors in melee the turn before, so he pitches the secondary to get an extra CP. That’s huge for me, because it means I don’t even have to send the bikes up there – they can just head to the middle. At 2 OC each, they’re just beefy enough to cause problems.

Atal ups his Scouts and drops them in my deployment zone for an easy 4 on Establish Locus, then brings in his remaining Vindicator from Strategic Reserves in the lower left corner. It’s more than 12″ away from Cypher so it can’t shoot him, but it does have line of sight on my units in the ruins on the Omega objective. It wipes out a good number of my Warp Talons, who are unable to pass their 5+ invulnerable saves.

Here’s where I did a couple of things that I am PRETTY PROUD OF from a gameplay standpoint. I know, academically, that Cypher is cooked at this point. He’s not on my home point and while he might be able to run far enough to hide, what happens next is that Vindicator drives to my home point and unstickies it. This both denies me a potential Defend Stronghold and also means he’ll be able to keep rumbling forward to shoot the middle of the table on turn 5. I have to stop that, and it becomes even more clear what I have to do when I draw Defend Stronghold and Assassination on my turn 3.

I didn’t take photos of these moves so I’ve recreated them using my own models.

First, I moved Cypher across the table and charged Atal’s Vindicator. He didn’t want to spend 2 CP to Overwatch and I know Cypher can survive a turn of combat against a Vindicator, plus he’ll likely have to lock it down shooting Cypher for a turn. He can’t make the objective without Advancing, so he’s stuck here for a turn watching Cypher dance in his face. This is a gamble, but Cypher makes his 6″ charge and I end up scoring Defend Stronghold on Atal’s turn for 3 VP. I chuck Assassination for CP – there’s no way I’m going to kill either Guilliman or the Callidus this turn.

Atal spends turn 4 killing Cypher with his Vindicator and that’s fine by me – it basically takes it out of the game. He has enough to kill me dead in the upper left corner and took the objective for me, so he scores 8 VP on turn 4 for primary, plus he draws Marked for Death and No Prisoners at a time where I don’t have enough units to stop him from getting five on each. So with 10 Secondary VP he’s suddenly pulling ahead of me on secondaries – my bad draws are making this a tight game. Going into the bottom of 4 it’s 47-47 even. I pull zero primary and then draw secondary objectives. I grab Area Denial and Behind Enemy Lines. NOT GREAT, given my Obliterators just got murdered by a Ballistus after failing six saves. I have a Chaos Lord left on two wounds, two bikes, one Obliterator, the full ass unit of Chosen, and a Rhino. The Rhino has been slowly healing and holding Atal’s scouts in combat in my deployment zone, preventing them from going back up. Atal has two vindicators – one in my corner and out of the game, a Ballistus, the Callidus, and Guilliman. I move the Obliterator and Chosen toward the middle of the table. I need them within Advance range of the middle objective for the final score, but I also need to keep Guilliman from just coming over and killing me first. The answer here are the bikes. Atal spent a turn with Guilliman wandering off the objective to kill my Raptors, and is now on the bottom left corner of the objective and the only unit holding it. That said, I need to not get Overwatched by Guilliman, so I move my Chaos Lord first into Atal’s deployment zone with an advance just big enough to make it. I get lucky here, not catching any Ballistus Overwatch hits, and that’ll score me 3 VP for Behind Enemy Lines.

Next I push my bikes around the middle ruin to the objective to within 3″ of the center to score small Area Denial and put us both at 4 OC on the point. This surprised Atal, who did not realize bikes had 2 OC. This puts us at 52-47 in my favor. I’m going to score 15 on the final turn, so I just need Atal to not have an insane secondary draw here.

He’s pretty upset about this (though marine bikes also have 2 OC), until he remembers – much to my chagrin – that Guilliman can just give himself +1 OC, using the ability that no one ever remembers. So he forgoes the free stratagem ability in order to retake the point. That scores him 15 VP for primary, and he draws secondary objectives and gets… Assassination (OK) and A Tempting Target which, are you fucking kidding me? There’s exactly one option here and he’s already standing on it, so it’s a free 5 VP. That’s JUST GREAT. He moves to wipe my bikes off the table with his Vindicator and Ballistus. His goal now is to use Guilliman to charge my Chosen. If that happens, I’m fucked – the Chosen likely won’t kill guilliman, and will get bogged down and possibly depleted to the point where I won’t have the OC to retake the point.

That’s a big mistake, though – as soon as he moves his Ballistus to mid-table, I reactive move with the bikes to block him. I could have also done this had he tried to move Guilliman first, but I can’t risk him moving up to the wall where I can’t effectively get between him and the unit.

This catches him off-guard and because of the actual placement of his Ballistus (see the final image, below), he can’t go around the top, so has to run around the bottom of my bikes to try and charge the Chosen, putting him on a 10″ charge. He drops his Callidus 9″ from my blob, hoping to potentially charge and kill Bile with Precision, but that wasn’t likely and I could have killed the Callidus pretty easy in retaliation. He easily kills the bikes but the Callidus fails her 9″ charge and Guilliman fails his 10″. Unfortunately he still scores 5 VP for Tempting Target and nets a CP so I need to draw anything scorable to turn this from a tie into a win. My options here are… OK. Establish Locus may be possible if I get good advance rolls, Extend Battle Lines will work, Sabotage and Storm Hostile might also.

Fortunately I also draw Tempting Target, along with Engage on All Fronts, which I discard and get Recover Assets instead. This was a huge mistake – I should have done the math and saved my CP for a re-roll on the advance in case I rolled really bad, but in this case it worked out. The Obliterator makes a 9″ advance to the middle of the table and the Chosen score the 2 they need to get 6+ OC on the point. Overwatch can’t slow them down to the point that it matters and I score 15 VP on primary, plus 5 VP on secondary.

Result: 72-67, Win

That was a hell of a game – the best I played all weekend, easily – and Atal was a very pleasant and fun opponent to play against. I buy him a beer immediately after to celebrate and commiserate. He played a very good game, though I think if he’d been more aggressive with Guilliman he’d have probably taken it. I won this one in large part because I went second. Right now I’m 0-3 in games going first and 3-0 going second. That’s uh, certainly something to think about, I guess.

The kids get back from the Aquarium – they had a great time, if pictures and stories are to be believed – and we head over to Max Lager’s for a team dinner with the Goonhammer peeps. The service is awful but the food is solid, and have a good meal and some beers before heading back to the hotel. There’s an international mixer being thrown by GW but it’s a mile and a half from the hotel and none of us have the energy to head over and do all that. We grab drinks in the hotel lobby bar for a bit and head up. We’re all exhausted – it may only be two games per day but it’s still the same cognitive and physical load as three, somehow. I’m turning in each night by 11pm. That’s crazy.

Sunday

One more day and I can already tell I’m getting sick. I was starting to feel it a little bit Saturday but I have a sore throat and sinus congestion and I’m starting to hope that what I’m coming down with is more of a common cold/con crud and not full-blown COVID. As I finish writing this on Wednesday I’m happy to report that it was just a cold but man did it put me in a bad space on Sunday. By the time I got to my first game I had a headache and my cold was starting to kick in. And on top of all that, the games were not going to be good matchups for me at all.

Round 7: vs. Matthias Murr’s Blood Angels

This is the worst possible matchup for me. Matthias can out-shoot and out-fight me, and he’s faster. He can move out quickly and stop me from deep striking where I want, and if I don’t take care of those lancers quickly they’ll just pick my vehicles up.

Matthias' Blood Angels - click to expand

The Sanguinor is just a straight-up hard counter to Warp Talons. Their whole plan is to Rapid Ingress in, charge a unit, kill it, then be out of combat so they can leave. The Sanguinor fucks all that up by dropping into combat with them when they charge and killing half of them, usually leaving them anemic with their fighting and unable to leave. That fights-first jump captain is also a nightmare for me, and will punish me for rolling too high on a charge.

The Mission: Take and Hold + Hammer and Anvil

Hammer and Anvil on Layout 1 is an odd choice but at least it doesn’t have full board sightlines. I’m going second here, which is a mixed bag – it lets me respond to Matthias, but also means he can control the board early and block me out.

This is a bad matchup for me and it’s made worse by the fact that nothing goes my way. My early charge into the Lancer up top becomes a disaster when the Chaos Lord’s unit rolls a 10″ charge (I needed 8 or less) and gets intervened into by the fights first jump captain, and gets completely destroyed before they can fight. The other lancer survives a turn of Oath’d shooting from a predator and two Obliterators, then takes zero damage from the Obliterators in melee after they charge.

That is just the game right there, and everything else is a slog toward a loss. The Lancers can pick off my remaining vehicles with impunity, the Sanguinor kills half of my Warp Talons when they arrive, and I don’t have the parts I need to hit him back when he has Assault Intercessors and Death Company in my Deployment Zone.

Result: 92-31, Loss

Not much more to say about this one. It was a lopsided matchup favoring Matthias where I needed good luck to even have a chance and I just didn’t get that. I head over to the final briefing of the Grand Narrative to meet up with Caroline and Bryce.

We get some photos with the Space Marine and then watch Trazyn stomp around upset. He’s definitely the best part of this year’s Grand Narrative – the costumes are generally a step up from prior years – but he’s also the most engaging actor this time around as well. There’s something about this whole thing where you can’t play it too seriously – no matter how good your costumes, you’re still in a Hyatt ball room talking to a bunch of guys playing a game. This needs exaggeration, pantomime, and scenery chewing, not your best effort at Shakespeare. Trazyn is an inherently funny character  with his habit of putting people into pokeballs and fits this type of scene well, and everyone loves him.

After the presentation I grab lunch with Bryce and JD over at Dairy Queen. We’ve been comparing records all weekend, but now hobby scores are up. It’s hard to figure out where I ended up in the full press of things because you can only view hobby scores for an individual player at a time, meaning I have to kind of search through the names to see who scored what. Based on the scores I did find, I think I could have scored as high as third or fourth. Eventually we’ll suss out that I ended up more in 8th place. That’s a bummer (I think I deserved higher), but it also means I can skip the awards ceremony later to go to the escape room we booked.

Round 8: vs. Nicolas Robert’s Necrons

Nicolas is a wonderful opponent. Just an upbeat, happy guy here to have a fun time. I however, feel like total shit by this point in the day and I’m just hoping to scrape out one more win to finish 4-4. That isn’t going to happen. Nicolas wants to go first in this game I don’t figure out why until it’s too late.

Nicolas' List - Click to Expand

See Nicolas took one look at the GW US Open terrain and realized that AIRCRAFT can just see the entire table all of the time on most of the layouts. So he’s running three Doom Scythes. They’re especially deadly here on layout 1, where the ruins are in no way adequate. He wants to go first because it means his Doom Scythes arrive early and get to completely kill me off the table. My only chance here is to kill the Triarch Stalkers early so I can kill everything but the flyers, racking up points on primary while Nicolas can’t hold anything or do actions.

The Mission: Scorched Earth + Crucible of Battle

Nicolas immediately charges forward with his Scouting Triarch Stalkers. I use a reactive move with my bikes to prevent being shot at by more than one of them, then it gets off a long charge into my bikes and kills one. They fall back the following turn and use their stratagem to fall back and shoot the flayed ones, killing three of them and capturing the point. Then I pick that Triarch stalker as my oath target and put the Vindicator and the Predator on it, unloading everything into it with Sustained Hits.

And… nothing happens.

It passes every single save and I gotta tell you, the game was over right then and there. The next turn it will melta my Predator off the table then continue to cause problems. At no point did I ever manage to kill it, as the Vindicator and Obliterators completely bounced off it again the following turn. And the turn after, before they were all killed.

The Doom Scythes arrive and it turns out there’s only one safe spot on the entire table to hide from them and that’s in this corner ruin, where the walls are high enough to matter. I get shot to pieces, then the Warp Talons end up too far from the Scythe to make their charge when I get the revelation that in this mode, you have to reach the base of the Doom Scythe and not the model, a change from Hover. That’s kind of on me but also fuck this game’s Aircraft rules.

Nicolas may be having a fun time but I’m miserable. I already felt like shit and getting my ass beat sideways by a trio of units I just cannot interact with isn’t making me feel any better. We call it on three and walk through the rest from there, with Nicolas well on route to tabling me anyways.

Final Result: 91-35, Loss

Those last two games definitely put a bad taste in my mouth. The final one the most, because it was such a non-game. It was absolutely over the moment I bounced, however improbably, off that Triarch Stalker, but not being able to hide from or interact with the Doom Scythes just felt like such shit. It basically immediately made the game a question of “Can you kill the non-planes in time to score VP?” and the answer was always likely to be “no.” Nicolas finished 4-4 and I suspect he mostly won the games where he either went first or the terrain gave him free reign to shoot anywhere on the table.

Nicolas was a fun guy and I enjoyed him as an opponent but nothing about the game itself felt fun, and that wasn’t the note I wanted to end on.

I ended up finishing 8th on paint score. That’s not bad – it’s certainly something to be proud of – but short of my goal of a top 3 score. And really finishing first or second was my primary goal but after seeing what did well I think even Night Lords are a hard sell – the WCW judges seem to have a very strong preference for very bright colors, stark gradients, and pastels and that’s just not something I’m bringing with my armies outside of the Emperor’s Children. So maybe next year my EC will have a real shot.

We had booked the Escape Room at the attached Peachtree Center for Sunday night and following the Grand Narrative awards headed over that way to do the room, which had a pre-WWI theme of solving a murder mystery in a zepplin headed toward London. This one had an actor in the room with us interacting, which was an interesting twist. We managed to solve the mystery with something like 15 minutes to spare and it was overall a great time.

One more night of drinks and I was off to bed again. The flight home was uneventful and we even got in early, which I very much needed. I then immediately continued to deteriorate and was so exhausted I barely made it through recording the weekly Patron-only podcast with Greg and Norman. It’s a good one, though – Greg always brings a rowdier energy with him that makes the podcast a lot of fun.

Final Thoughts

What a trip. I have many thoughts, which makes boiling them down tough. Overall I had a great time, and my opponents ranged from “very pleasant” to “a blast to play and interact with.” My games were mostly good, though my gripes were more with terrain and layouts than the games themselves – the missions at WCW this year were an absolutely baffling mix of layouts and deployment maps, and had some particularly heinous choices. It’s a weird thing to have your year’s biggest event have some of its worst missions. On that note, the terrain was also a bit of a miss – most of the tables I played on had the wrong Ls or overhung their area bases, which is just bush league.

From a record standpoint, I’m very happy with 3-5 as a first try at the WCW. I know more than a few competitive players who are much better and more storied than me who did about as good or worse at their first WCW, and finishing 8th in paint score is also very much worth being proud of, given the competition. I think it was ultimately worth dropping the Death Guard for that – I’m happier with 3-5 and 8th in paint score than I’d have been with 5-3 and not making Showcase.

Would I do it again? Now that’s an interesting question. I had a good time, but I think if the WCW keeps running at the same time as the Grand Narrative, I’d likely do the Grand Narrative instead. It’s not that I didn’t have a good time at the WCW; it’s more that my family had a much better time when I did the Grand Narrative, and I had more fun with my friends hanging out and playing narrative games. I think the combo of those two make Grand Narrative the event I’d pick over the WCW. But if they split them, I’d try to do both – provided I could score a ticket, anyways.

I’ll see you next Thursday, when I continue to unpack the aftermath of the World Championships.

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