Boon’s LVO and ITC Year In Review

The 2021 ITC Season is over and it’s time for a brief look back on the year gone by. The Las Vegas Open is the official end of the 2021 season and it’s been a long, challenging, but ultimately rewarding ride. Today we’ll take a brief look back at the year, identify some areas I think we can improve in the new season as a community, and close with a recap of my games at the final grand event of the season, the Las Vegas Open. Strap in, reader because there’s a lot of Boon-thoughts here.

A Season in Review

I set out in 2021 to claim a top position in the ITC leaderboard, and while I ultimately fell out of the top-10 by year end (I ended up 14^th), it was not a failure of a season. Thanks to the wonderful ITC Battles App I can look back and track my progress over the year – my busiest year of 40k yet. Let’s dig in:

• In total I played in over 13 GT/Major/Major+ singles events as well a whole bunch of smaller, local RTT, League, and Team events.
• In those thirteen GT+ events I tallied a 55-12-1 performance, winning one event outright, and I finished in a podium position (2^nd-4^th) in four others, and narrowly missed on three more.
• Of my losses, only four came from players outside of the ITC top-25: Matt Lorah (32^nd), Hunter Nichols (63^rd), Tyler DeVries (74^th), and Kyle McCord (156^th).
• Over the year I played into incredible opponents at all levels and leaders within the ITC including; Richard Siegler, Mani Cheema, Jack Harpster, Anthony Vanella, Matt Root, Ben Cherwien, Charlie Andre, Nick Nanavati and the list goes on and on.
• Finally, I am ecstatic that my club, Frozen North Gaming, finished 4^th on the season behind the professional Art of War and Glasshammer Gaming clubs. With a strong turnout all season long and at LVO (with top-half finishes for everyone involved) I am proud to call myself a member of the Frozen North team.

My season itself ended at the Las Vegas Open after five consecutive wins and then a round-6 loss to the LVO runner-up Matt Lorah. During that run I played into Black Templars, Grey Knights, two Tyranid Crusher Stampedes, and a Drukhair Thicc City mirror before the final loss to Matt’s Adeptus Custodes. While I’m proud of the performance, the final placings for the event are more than a bit deflating as I fell all the way down to 65^th following the round-6 loss. Digging in a little further, of all the non-top-8 finishers, only Cameron Pineiro (my round 5 opponent) and Jack Harpster had opponents with win averages as high as mine – 4.5, and 4.33 wins, repsectively (27 and 26 opponent wins out of 36). Coming into LVO I felt like I needed to prove to myself that I deserved to be in the top-10 of the ITC, and despite missing at 14^th by year’s end, I think my performance at the LVO gave me the confidence that I’m capable of competing amongst the best in the game.

All told, it was an excellent year, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity and fortune to meet new friends and community leaders past, present, and future. That said, I think there are things we might seek to improve on as a community in the new season!

Improving Tournament Placing Systems

There are two areas related to the competitive format that I think could use some deeper consideration from within the community and at the tournament organizer level. The first is the structure of our tournaments themselves. Not long ago I wrote about the various tournament pairing and placing systems the community uses but I want to tackle the use of Battle Points as a tiebreaker more directly. Most US tournaments and, in fact, the Best Coast Pairings TO app, defaults to Battle Points as the first tiebreaker after Wins in determining pairing or placings. This has been accepted as standard for all intents and purposes and as a default, represents a barrier to change. However, I want to challenge this assumption in 2022 and look for a better system of breaking the Win-tie for player placings as a standard.

The fundamental question to me is, “Are Battle Points meaningful as a measure of performance outside of the context of the game they were earned in?” To me, if the answer is “no,” then they should not be used as the primary system for for placing tiebreaks.

The current system implies that Battle Points are meaningful as a representation of player performance, and on the surface, I would agree that it is an attractive and easy metric. However, if you dig just a little bit, you find several problems with Battle Points that aren’t immediately evident. First, “easier games” tend to facilitate greater capability to farm BP – this might take any number of forms including:

• Faction mismatches
• Player skill mismatches
• Mission mismatches
• Dice variance
• Early tournament losses facilitating later easier games
• Lack of faction secondaries

That last piece is the most obviously compelling – some factions simply do not have faction secondaries (or only a single secondary from a yet-to-be-released book) and will not have the same opportunity to score highly. However, even once every faction has released secondaries, not all secondaries are created equal as attractive faction secondaries may limit other attractive secondaries due to the category they come from, or in the case of Herd the Prey or Purifying Ritual, are just flat better than other faction secondaries. But overall, we see that BP are effected by a wide variety of causes, often more than one at a given moment – and as such are subject to chance and luck of the draw in pairings. So can it measure performance overall if it’s not directly comparable across games within a round, much less games across an event? I don’t think so.

Where this most often comes into play is the second-to-last point – as tournaments move forward and the remaining undefeated play into each other, there are tighter games that can often be much lower scoring – especially in Domination mission formats. Meanwhile, players who lost in earlier rounds tend to ‘catch up’ in total BP which results in players who lose at the top tables seeing a tumble down the final placings, usually outside of the podium positions (1^st through 4^th), despite their objectively superior performance. The result is a sort of ‘hollow’ system where players who lost very early in the tournament  place very highly, while similar Win total players who went all the way up to the finish and fell just short place poorly as a result.

We’ve all seen it; we’ve just accepted it as the way it is. But should we? Is there a different system that better reflects the tournament structure? Dear reader, I’m happy to say that yes there is – and it’s also used very widely – sometimes even in 40k! It’s slightly more complex to understand but just as easy to implement as BP – Win Path.

The way Win Path works as a tie-break is that it weighs two players of equal results (say 3-2, or 4-1) against each other, but then breaks the tie in placings based on when they lost. If you lost in round one but then won your next four matches, you will be placed within the 4-1 tier. However, you will not place above a player who also went 4-1 but lost in their last round. Intuitively this makes sense; it’s meritorious based on the first metric we care about – wins. Where people tend to get hung up is that they believe it limits them from placing highly or disincentivizes them from continuing to play well – in fact it does not, you will rank out ahead of everyone else so long as you continue to win – except those who also won out but lost in a later round. Another common complaint I hear is that it prevents you from winning if you get a bad matchup in round one – however, this is also true of a BP system. At the end of the day, a player expecting to place well in an event should expect not to lose in an early round – and that is unchanged whether it’s BP or Win Path. However, importantly in a Win Path system no one is penalized for a late-round loss as they are under BP.

For a competitive system where BP are irrelevant in comparing games, we should consider Win Path the superior option and relegate BP or more likely Spread (differential – used as secondary in place of win path through much of Europe) as a third tie-break after Win Path.

The ITC Algorithm

The second thing I’d like to see change over the 2022 season is how the ITC scoring algorithm works. Specifically, I would like to see two things:

• Changes to the player cap bonus
• The algorithm to be made public (again)

I wrote an article about this back in October following the London GT – if you haven’t, I highly recommend that you read it as the arguments made and supporting reasoning will not be covered here, instead I’m going to make a prediction:

The United Kingdom’s 40k community will break the ITC in 2022.

I can already hear some Brits chortling over this, but the reality is I didn’t support a broken algorithm then and I don’t now. Whatever problems that the overweighting of LVO caused in the past are about to be on full display this year as the United Kingdom lines up one 300+ person event after another each month that heavily tilts the ITC scoring as 4-1 finishers gain more points than 6-0 finishers in the US at smaller events. It is entirely an issue of geography and population density, and I think it’s about to get wild.

I predict that as Americans realize they are increasingly locked out of top spots for factions, teams, or overall that the whining will grow and force an eventual change. But why does it need to come to that? Why can’t we fix what is obviously and predictably broken now? The community and TOs need to apply that pressure to force changes to the system, because as it stands, mid-size majors will simply cease to matter outside of their regional player base and circuits. We should be looking to the health of the international community rather than jealously guarding our fiefdoms. In that vein, publicize the algorithm and allow the community to weigh in on the proper solution. There should be nothing to hide here.

 

The 2022 Las Vegas Open

And with that off my chest, let’s talk about the Las Vegas Open! As with previous event reviews I’ll detail my games and thoughts below:

Round One – Ken Krogman – Black Templars

Retrieval Mission

My secondaries: Herd the Prey, Assassination, Raise the Banners

Ken’s secondaries: Oaths of Moment, Raise the Banners, Minimize Losses

Ken's List - click to expand

My first match of the weekend was into Ken’s Black Templars – an army I had become familiar with because Ben Cherwien is a friend and local player who also moonlights as High Marshall. Ken’s list leaned more heavily into ranged firepower than I was accustomed, having a bevy of Dreadnoughts that carried a wide range of options vs the triple-Redemptor I was used too. The block of Bladeguard was a good add with the ignore AP -1/-2 relic, but without an accompanying Terminator block to force me into one or the other I was confident that I could minimize their overall impact while using the Obscuring terrain to move up the board and mitigate the Dreadnought’s ranged shooting.

Neither of our lists allows for a good third secondary option, but Ken chose the mission secondary in a likely bloodbath (one way or the other) while I chose Assassination after misreading the army list and identifying Company Veterans as a character.

I Go First

Thicc City, or Drukhari generally, don’t have much of a turn one when going first. Without a lot of ranged firepower the turn is usually spent moving up the board and preparing for turn 2 advance and charges. That was no different here – using central ruins to hide my Cronos and Talos and moving the rest up the edges to effect his objectives on Turn 2 with Grotesques and my Court + Characters. I quickly turned over the turn to Ken. Without rapid mobility and placing his dreadnoughts further back to advantage their shooting, he didn’t have much play on turn one either – essentially moving his Blade Guard forward and positioning to shoot me on turn 2.

So on Turn 2 I advanced forward, placing shots into exposed Eradicators in a tower behind Ken’s front line and charginig in on the two Crusader squads that held each of his edge objectives. By the end of my Turn 2 I owned 5 of the 6 objectives and eliminated the biggest threat to my Talos/Cronos who were prepared to pounce on turn 3 to take out the next biggest threat – the fist of Blade Guard and characters that formed Ken’s center. On Ken’s turn he attempted to counter on his objectives but lacked the muscle to push me off – with my Court blocking out his movement on one side, and Grotesques miring the other in hard-to-kill bodies. Over the course of the game this initial position would snowball until ultimately, Ken was tabled on turn 4.

Result: 98 – 38 Victory

Ken and I had a good, fun game rolling dice as we talked about a couple of considerations he could make and plays he could leverage. I think it was a good warm-up game for both of us and Ken would go on to finish in 287^th place at 3-3 after the initial first round loss.

 

Round Two – Timothy Bouta – Crusher Stampede Tyranids

Scorched Earth

My secondaries: Herd the Prey, Retrieve Octarius Data, Bring It Down

Tim’s secondaries: Raise the Banners, Bring It Down, To The Last

Tim's List - click to expand

Oh man – I knew I was going to play this list at some point, so why not round 2? As I wrote in my pre-LVO prep, I had played into a few versions of Crusher prior to the event and I am glad I did. For Thicc City, playing Crusher Stampede means figuring out how to screen appropriately against the big bads into the Talos who will otherwise pick the fight (because of the Swarmlord double move), while figuring out how to tarpit the units you can’t easily handle, like a Flying Hive Tyrant. The prep gave me some experience on how effective or ineffective a single unit of Hive Guard can be into my Talos/Grotesques and how to minimize their impact on backfield objective sitters or Cronos. I didn’t love the matchup, but I was ready for it.

Note: I need to be clear here that of all my games, the specifics of this one are the least clear – all weekend I played on the grey city ruins boards and this game overlaps very much in my memory with the round 4 Crusher match which was also played on a Dawn of War, 6-objective map.

Tim was running a list that leaned heavily on the Hierodules with three of them and an invuln-ignoring Flying Hive Tyrant. More than anything I have found that in this matchup I need to play defensively as I move up the board, and work with what my opponent is giving me. Crusher wants to be charging, and because of its weakness on secondaries, it needs to be scoring on primary – so my task was to figure out how to steal objectives on it.

We deployed our buildings along our deployment lines with an open middle of the table – this was a mistake on my part as I wanted to push up the board a little further than where I ended up having to sit to be obscured. In any case, I deployed tight on the center-left behind my big ruin, with some Grotesques and Wracks/Kabalites covering down on my rightmost home objective. Cronos and some action-squads were held out in reserve. Tim deployed in a fairly distributed fashion with the Hive Guard, Malaceptor and a Barbed Hierodule on my right, the Swarmlord, Flying Hive Tyrant center, and another Barbed Hierodule and Scythed Hierodule to my left, and the Warriors evenly distributed across.

Screened as I was, I wanted to go second and let Tim make the first move.

I Go First

I did not push much – with my ruins placed as they were I pushed forward slightly to screen the Flying Hive Tyrant, and blocked up alleyways on either side, but otherwise held tight. On Tim’s turn he raised some banners then pushed his Barbed Heirodules forward to line up shots where he could – the Scythed Heirodule moved out to position towards the left-center objective and his Flying Hive Tyrant prepared to make a Swarmlord assisted charge. The Hive Guard put some shooting into my Talos but failed to do any damage that wouldn’t be healed up soon after by the Haemoculus. After spending his psychic phase powering up the Hive Tyrant, the beast prepared to target my screens… and couldn’t find a great target. Without many options it charged into 5 Wracks but failed to kill all 5 – trapping the Hive Tyrant without the ability to use the Overrun stratagem to run away from my army.

On my Turn 2 the Wracks in combat with the Hive Tyrant fell back into a ruin and on the center-left objective while I moved everything else out but my right-most units holding that home objective. Then both squads of Cronos came in off my home board edge in a position to ensure that the Flying Hive Tyrant would go down, if not by shooting then in the ensuing charge phase. Everything else made a bee-line for the center-left objective, facing down the Barbed Heirodule creeping in – the Cronos took the Hive Tyrant down significantly, and I used the ensuing charges to catapult myself forward. The loss of the Hive Tyrant was a significant early blow, but the Hierodules were still more than capable of bringing heat.

This turn was critical for Tim – the loss of the Hive Tyrant meant he lost a fair amount of mobility that he would need to force objectives and also had a significant gap in his line. His Barbed and Scythed Heirodules on my left found itself facing most of my army with two units of Warriors to back it up and the rest of the heavy-hitters on the other half of the board. The far Barbed Heirodule moved onto the right-most central objective and dared my forces to come its way while the Malaceptor and Swarmlord moved towards my side of the board. The Scythed Hieodule moved forward to charge the Talos while the remaining Barbed Heirodule hung back slightly and prepared to jump on the objective the next turn and covering  the field with its cannons this turn. The combined Hive Guard and Heirodule shooting wiped my screening Haemoxytes and opened my Talos to a charge from the Scythed Heirodule. Additional shooting placed wounds into my front-most Talos block using the +1D strat from the Heirodule and shooting twice from the Hive Guard. The ensuing Heirodule charge was successful in punishing my lead Talos unit and I’d have lost the objective except for the two Wracks that had earlier fell back into the ruin and ensured I’d maintain control.

On my turn I lined up to knock down both the Scythed and Barbed Heirodule remaining on this board half – then position for a turn 4 sweep of Tim’s left-most home objective. My goal in turn 3 was to allow my army to turn up field rather than hang back on the left-most board half. On the far side, my Grotesques moved out to challenge the Barbed Heirodule there, hoping to shut down the shooting and potentially fall back in the following turn and use a CP to charge his back objective and the Hive Guard that defended it. Instead, I realized that I didn’t have enough to cover my home objective with only a single Wrack squad there that could be removed by Hive Guard shooting on his turn 3. Instead I ended up stringing the Grotesques to facilitate a charge while also toeing my home objective, but any casualties I took would likely prevent me from getting to his Hive Guard on Turn 4. The remaining Talos and Cronos opened up on the Barbed Heirodule nearby and brought it down, and the ensuing charges into the Scythed Heirodule likewise removed that and placed me in range of his Tyranid Warriors.

Losing half of his big monsters left Tim in a tough spot – the game would snowball quickly if he couldn’t stop the advancing Talos, Cronos, and Grotesques on my left-most board half – unfortunately the Hive Guard could only do so much, their double-shooting having been Vect’d earlier, and only a Swarmlord, a Malaceptor, and two Warrior units remained between my army and his remaining home objective. The Swarmy charged in valiantly but it wouldn’t be enough – and weight of attacks plus Ichor Injectors brought him down in my next fight phase while other elements of my army cleared out his objective or moved up field.

Result: 92 – 68 Victory

Tim and I talked a little bit about what might have gone differently, and how he could use his army into mine a little more efficiently, but by far the biggest loss was the Flying Hive Tyrant – it really handicapped the list after it went down having only taken 3 Wracks with it. Tim would go on to finish in 315^th place, at 3-3.

 

Round Three – Andrew Gonyo – Grey Knights

Vital Intelligence

My secondaries: Herd the Prey, Abhor the Witch, Retrieve Octarius Data

Andrew’s secondaries: Raise the Banners, Data Intercept, Purifying Ritual

Andrew's List - click to expand

One of the names you hope to not cross early in an event is Andrew Gonyo. A long-time top competitive player with a reputation as one of the nicest guys in 40k. I had the opportunity to ref his 40k Invitational game back at NOVA in 2019 and I was just as impressed then as I am now. It is fair to say, as he admitted himself, that Andrew has not played as much competitive 40k now as he did in the past, but he was rolling into NOVA with a fearsome six-Dreadknight Grey Knight list and as I would learn, some things are just like riding a bike. You don’t forget.

I was very familiar with Grey Knights, at one point this year I had played five consecutive league matches into them. Moreover, I had built my original thicc city list at GW NOLA specifically to counter the Grey Knight lists led by Dreadknights – I was confident in my army and with this matchup, but a great player like Andrew can really upend that dynamic.

Vital Intelligence often ends up in a Hammer and Anvil game, and while I typically like that layout, against Grey Knights it can present a unique challenge given their ability to shunt or Gate of Infinity around the board and their long range. I set my terrain along the mid-board line with the largest ruin piece in the thick end of my deployment zone – attempting to screen as much of that end of my board as possible and providing cover to both objectives there – meanwhile a thinner ruin was used to provide a ‘staging point’ to leap onto the skinny deployment end objectives, then another ruin sheltered my home objective. Using the large ruin, Gonyo anchored his home objective and used the smaller ruins more sporadically – giving a wider ‘kill zone’ within his deployment.

I deployed most of my army behind my large ruin, with the Haemoxytes, Kabalites, and a unit of Grotesques out wide behind the ‘skinny’ ruin. The Cronos and Dark Technomancer Wracks were held in reserve. Andrew placed one Dreadknight and one Strike Squad in reserve but otherwise deployed everything else fairly forward – combat-squadded Interceptors and sheltering disbursed through his zone while the Dreadknights loomed near the center of his zone. A Strike Squad and Servitors escorted the Techmarine in his backfield near the home objective.

Andrew Goes First

Not having a lot of firing lanes would limit Gonyo in his first phase, but he was able to press the advantage and try to strike early on his Data Intercept secondary. Given the near certainty that he’d max Purifying Ritual, I needed to make sure he did not score highly on another secondary. One of his Dreadknights toed-into the center-right objective while an Interceptor squad claimed the right-most objective. Three Dreadknights held steady near his home objective while the fifth, escorted by 2×5 Interceptors moved up to threaten but not hold the center-left, and left-most objectives.

On my turn I advanced my Kabalites out from behind the skinny-ruin wall, stringing them to ObSec away both center-right, and right-most objectives and ensuring a 0 on Primary, and only 1 point on each of Banners and Data Intercept. However, I also made a huge mistake here – in my enthusiasm to take down a Dreadknight early, I decided to send out my Grotesque squad clustered there to try for a mid-range charge on that NDK holding the center-right objective. On the left side my Wracks moved up to claim the left-most objective while the Talos positioned to threaten on the following turn – with most of Andrew’s forces clustered around his home objective he wouldn’t be able to easily push me off these three – the Archon and Court made a charge into one of the Interceptor squads pushing back Andrew’s options on the left side, meanwhile my Grotesques failed their charge into the Dreadknight on the right and were now hanging out in the open – for no reason, I already had taken the objectives. Big misplay here and an intentional trap on his part.

With my Grotesques facing down 4 Dreadknights, Andrew pushed – having lost the objectives he couldn’t afford that to continue into Turn 3. One of the Grandmaster’s moved forward to charge the Grotesques and he began bringing a Strike Squad forward from his backfield to ObSec the center-right objective, but wouldn’t quite make it until T3. Two Interceptor squads fanned out to block in my Haemoxytes from advancing out of the ruin onto both objectives, while a squad of Servitors moved forward to plant a banner on the right-most objective and claim it.  On the other side of the board, the Dreadknight and what was left of one of the Interceptor squads started to fall back, while a second Dreadknight came onto the board near his center to bolster that end – the combined firepower mostly cleared the Kabalites and Grotesques on the right, and severely handicapped my now exposed Court. The Grandmaster finished the last of the Grotesques on my right – he again held 3 objectives, his home, the center-right, and the left-most.

On my turn 2 I pushed out the Haemoxytes around one edge of the screening Interceptors, then used the strat reserve rule for coming off my board edge, wholly in my deployment zone, to place Cronos in a position to flame both screening squads of Interceptors and put their 18″ flamers into the back Servitors holding the center-right. My Wracks in the backfield fanned out to limit shunt/Gate of Infinity and held firm despite being able to walk off the objectives in this mission. A second squad of Wracks moved onto the left-most, while my Talos pushed forward in a fist to claim the center-left with my Grotesques, Succubus, and Archon nearby. The Cronos opened up on all three targets and cleared one squad of Interceptors, and most of the second, but failed to kill the Servitors leaving a couple left to maintain the objective. Meanwhile, the Talos severely wounded one of the Dreadknights before the Grotesques and Archon stormed the building it was in and finished it off. The Haemoxytes charged the non-Grandmaster Dreadknight holding the center-right objective with the intention of bogging it down by surrounding it and ObSec’ing away the objective.

Andrew picked up 5 on Primary for his home and right-most objective, but only netted 3 on Data Intercept and 2 on Banners to this point. With a unit of Grotesques and slough of characters threatening, he focused first on limiting their impact. The Grandmaster closed on my Cronos seeking to tie both up and prevent me from finishing the Interceptors and Servitors, which fell back to his center-right objective to further secure it. Meanwhile his still reserved Strike Squad came in near the left-most objective to try to bolter the Wracks there while the other Strike Squad positioned to charge and assist the combat-stricken NDK and regain the center-right objective. The remaining NDK’s focused down the Grotesques sheltering in the building enough to open up shots on the Archon there – and cleared him. Then the Grandmaster charged my Cronos, picking one up but otherwise simply tying both squads down. The charging Strike Squad were successful in overtaking the objective but could not kill the Haemoxytes who remained tied up with them and the Dreadknight.

The Strike Squad failed to kill the Wracks, and failed the charge allowing me to retain my three objectives and giving me a Primary advantage on the bottom T3 at 10-5 – big as I had the advantage on T5 as well. Sending in a strat reserve squad to reinforce my right side, in the hopes of getting to an objective the following turn, I deep struck in my final Wracks unit to bolster my objective on the center-left. The Talos moved out with the Succubus in tow to challenge the three Dreadknights immediately in front of them. Meanwhile the Haemoxytes remained in combat with another Dreadknight and the other Strike Squad. The Cronos squad with two Cronos remaining fell back and shot, again attempting to clear the right-most objective. This time they were successful, bringing down the most of the Interceptors there as well as the Servitors – a single Interceptor remained to hold it. This was important because it gave him a unit to Purify that objective with, event though he would already hold it since had it in his previous command phase. The Cronos in combat took a calculated risk and shot the Grandmaster it was in combat with – which promptly used the Relic to jump away and threaten my home objective Wracks. This was dangerous, but it also freed my Cronos from the threat of that Grandmaster, and it retargeted the remaining Interceptor and brought it down. The Talos continued to push forward, Heat Lances ineffective on the Invulnerable Saves, and challenged again in combat. The Succubus targeted out hte threatening Strike Squad and made short work of them, while a single Talos unit made their charge – severely damaging but failing to kill a Dreadknight. The Haemoxytes again remained locked in combat.

Andrew’s Turn 4 was pivotal – the Talos not bringing down a Dreadknight gave him a life preserver – using Gate he was able to threaten multiple objectives with his Grandmaster having jumped into my backfield. Placing well-timed shots into the Cronos he brought down two, then expected to finish my backfield Wracks on the charge. A gated Dreadknight charged my newly arrived Wracks and brought them down, taking me off one objective and threatening to blank me on Primary with the second Grandmaster charge. However, the Wracks proved durable and all but one died to the Gransmaster’s swings – living long enough to hold that objective and net me 5 points. A true hero.

On my Turn 4 we were tied on the Primary at 15-15, and his various movements had kept my Herd score low – on secondaries we were tied at 10-10 not counting Purify and Abhor which we were likely to both max by the end of the game. It was still tight. However, I was freed to not have to worry about Primary again until the end of the Turn 5 and so focused solely on pulling Andrew off of his. The last living Cronos moved on to the right-most objective, removing a banner there while my Talos barreled into the Dreadknight in the left-most and center-right objectives. I succeeded in killing the left-most, but only succeeded in killing the Strike Squad on the center-right objective – taking the objective but leaving the threat of the NDK alive. However, as tight it was, it was becoming clear that Andrew could not stop a T5 15-point max on the Primary, and with me having removed him from all but his home objective and my home objective, the primary would end at 30-20 in my favor – he would not be able to score enough on Banners or Data Intercept to overcome that deficit.

Result: 71 – 60 Victory

Gonyo played a brilliant game into an army that was built to take his on. I will say that I felt the exhaustion of the third game, not realizing the trap laid for the Grotesques and the little value there was to racing out there. I took a risk with the Cronos and it could have backfired spectacularly had Gonyo been able to clear my home objective that turn, but ultimately it came down to my Talos just being too much in the late game and being able to push him around. Many games have taught me to focus on the little guys when playing Grey Knights and it worked out to my favor here. Andrew would go on to finish in 32^nd place, at 5-1 – he was every bit as excellent an opponent as his reputation holds.

 

Round Four – Wyatt Swift-Ramirez – Crusher Stampede Tyranids

Overrun

My secondaries: Herd the Prey, Retrieve Octarius Data, Bring It Down

Wyatt’s secondaries: Retrieve Octarius Data, Stranglehold, Bring It Down

Wyatt's List - click to expand

This pairing went up the night prior, which gave me a minute to take a look at what Wyatt was packing and think about how this game might play out. On first look it was very similar to Tim’s round 2 list and I felt confident in how to handle it, but on second look there were some nuances that made this list a little more challenging than I expected.

First, the Flying Hive Tyrant wasn’t built with only murder in mind – instead of ignoring invulnerable saves he was built with some defense in mind – carrying a relic for -1 to incomeing wound rolls to go along with his -1D, 4++ and probable 5++. In addition, it was likely to get +2d3 extra attacks stacked on it that could be as high as 5D with a Warlord trait that shifted each turn – and could also potentially heal itself if it didn’t die immediately. Then of course Wyatt found the points to bring the Dimachaeron, something that can really put me on the back foot if not screened properly – slamming in, fighting, fighting again, potentially fighting on death – the Dimachaeron can be a lot if it’s not handled correctly. These two units were my big watch-outs for the game.

In deployment I took cues from my round 2 game and pushed the terrain out a bit to give me more room to maneuver up the field without being targeted out by the Barbed Heirodules, but otherwise we created two lines of ruins with a street down the center. Similar to the last game, I deployed my forces mostly huddled in front of the left-center objective, while a few elements such as the Archon, Court, and a couple of Wracks floated out to my right – the Cronos and Dark Technomancer Wracks remained reserved. Wyatt placed his Barbed Heirodule and Scythed Heirodule to my right with his Hive Guard deep in his backfield. The Swarmlord, Hive Tyrant, and Dimachaeron deployed center-right, and the other Barbed Heirodule off to my left with Warriors on each backfield objective. His Lictors in reserve gave him some options on secondaries that Tim did not have in my earlier game. As with last time I hoped to go second.

I Go First

Like last time I tried to keep a tight screen around my Talos to prevent a charge on them while I moved out to isolate that Barbed Hierodule on my right. The goal here was to remove the Hierodule and the objective and force Wyatt to defend rather than attack. The Haemoxytes, Succubus, Grotesques, and Talos all advanced Turn 1 with the Grotesques taking obscuring cover and screening for the Talos. Some buildings deployed to my left gave the Haemoxytes plenty of cover. My units on my right side of the board also moved forward towards the center, albeit slowly and sort of acted as a rearguard – unsure of the direction they needed to go. I was in position to take his back left objective on Turn 2 and make this a Hammer & Anvil game.

Wyatt responded by moving out his Hierodules on my right, the Scythed first, then the Barbed. The Swarmlord positioned to move the Scythed Hierodule in the shooting phase so he could sit that center objective there. Meanwhile, apprehensive of my army’s lurch towards his corner, the Hive Tyrant and Dimachaeron moved down the center towards his home objective trying to support the Barbed Hierodule and Warriors there. In his shooting phase Wyatt attempted to pick up my back-objective Wrack squads with his Hive Guard, but after the mostly unbuffed first round of shots failed to kill a full squad of Wracks, he didn’t like rolling the dice on a split shot for his second round and instead lobbed some bullets into my Talos, doing a few wounds that would be healed back next turn.

On my Turn 2 I brought on a third set of Wracks to reinforce my home objective on my right and ensure they couldn’t be easily shot off. With the Barbed and Scythed Hierodules pushing for the center objectives, there was nothing to really screen his Hive Guard and Warriors in the backfield and so my Cronos came in on the side board edges to line up shots against his Warriors sitting on each objective. The Haemoxycytes with the Succubus advanced out of their building and into short-charge range of the Barbed Hierodule – these were a key lockdown unit as their improved invulnerable (5++ prior to T4 Power from Pain when it goes to 4++) and their shrug of the first failed save meant that they could really limit how much damage a Barbed Hierodule was going to do with it’s 4 attacks while burying it in ObSec bodies. Directly across, a mid-sized charge away from my Talos, sat the Flying Hive Tyrant and the Dima not far behind. I did not have a good way to deal with that bug – powered up on a 4+ invulnerable, with it’s 5+ Feel No Pain (Catalyst), and the inherent -1W and -1D, it was likely to shrug my Talos shots and assaults and do massive damage in return – so instead I opted to launch my Grotesques at it. They wouldn’t do much damage at all but if they could land the charge they could bog down the beast and remove it from my immediate list of threats. So, I moved out my screening Grotesques straight at it, with the second squad coming along the board edge near the Cronos to my left. The Court and the Archon moved up to challenge the Scythed Hierodule on the center-right objective – they wouldn’t be able to seriously challenge it, but they could knock a few wounds with their bevy of attacks and slow down those bugs while I dealt with the left side. Both squads of Talos held back in their central position and opened up on the Barbed Hierodule on my left, softening it up for the Haemoxytes and Succubus. The lances punched through and nearly killed it where the charge could finish it. Meanwhile both Cronos squads were successful in destroying the Warriors on each objective – it was a devastating shooting phase. To close out, the Groteques, Succubus, and Haemoxytes all made their charges, with the latter killing the Barbed Hierodule and taking the objective. The Court and the Archon also made their charge into the Scythed Hierodule, using the Bodyguard dynamic of the Court and the Archon to ignore the flamer’s overwatch. There swings were underwhelming but they did manage to chip a few wounds off the big beast and only lost a couple of Ur-Ghul in the return, benefiting from the stratragem to -1 the hit roll.

Wyatt’s turn 2 saw him in a precarious situation, he now had one less big-bad, lost his key buff units (Warriors, +1 to hit), lost a home objective, and his best unit was mired in combat with a meat wall of Grotesques which he’d either fall back and do nothing for a turn (then get charged again) or slowly chew through. The combat with the Scythed Hierodule prevented the Barbed Hierodule over there from moving out and barely left him enough room to charge in and assist. The Hive Guard were facing down the Cronos and the Swarmlord and Dima were his only ‘free’ units remaining. He brought in a lictor which came in to ROD a table quarter, and deciding on a course of action, opted to run his Dima straight at the Haemoxytes and Succubus while the Swarmlord followed. Shooting is was much more limited this turn, as Wyatt focused both the Barbed Heirodule and the Hive Guard into my Cronos threatening them, killing one and severely wounding the second. Then it was on to charges – the Dima getting a boost from the Swarmlord jumped into combat with my Haemoxycytes, the Succubus choosing not to intervene, and the Barbed Hierodule on my right jumped in against the Court and Archon. In combat, the Barbed Hierodule killed another Ur-Ghul through the -1 to-hit stratagem, who then swung into the Scythed Hierodule (Fight Last from the Archon). After both swung, a few more wounds had been taken off the Scythed Hierodule leaving the Barbed Hierodule unscathed – the Scythed Hierodule then picked up another Court member leaving just two Sslyth to guard the Archon who had effortlessly passed his Shadowfield saves. Over on the other end of the board, the Dima roared, dropped it’s attacks, and promptly killed one Haemoxyte who then passed their strength test against the Spine Maw ability – in their return, they used the reroll wounds stratagem (1 CP for 10 or less Wracks) and punched through a fairly significant amount of damage – as they were the only ObSec they retained the objective. The Flying Hive Tyrant continued to slowly mulch Grotesques but remained buried with two more to go. 

It wasn’t looking good for Wyatt at this point – he had all his beasts in combat but they weren’t able to put out enough damage and importantly, weren’t in combat with the right units – my Talos were free to roam. The Succubus and Grotesques to my left moved out, the Succubus preparing to deliver a charge into the Dima while the Grotesques looked to add more meat to the pile the Hive Tyrant was busy chopping up. Meanwhile both Talos squads shifted out towards the Scythed Hierodule and Barbed Hierodule in combat with the beleaguered Court and Archon, who then fell back (Archon spends CP to charge) to allow the heat lances to do their thing. Only one Talos squad would make it within charge range. My Cronos on the left moved out to support where possible but did not have a good target as everything on the left was engaged – on the right, the lone wounded Cronos with the fallen back Archon threatened the Hive Guard. The Talos heat lances opened, straight fire, and burned out the Barbed Hierodule in one volley – punching through 4 wounds and doing 18 damage after a reroll. Its dying gasp was a death knell of sorts – the lead Talos unit would then charge and take the Scythed Hierodule all the way to its bottom profile. Meanwhile, the Succubus and Haemoxytes combined to bring the Dima down to its bottom profile, and the Grotesques buried the Hive Tyrant even further in a fresh wave of bodies. The Cronos and Archon combined to take out a few Hive Guard. 

Wyatt’s turn 3 was a salvaging action – with just a Swarmlord left unengaged and both the Dima and remaining Hierodule likely to go down in this turn’s fight phase, the Hive Tyrant swarmed under, he chose to save the points and retreated the Swarmlord to buoy his Hive Guard. At this point the game was all but wrapped and he finished out the final phases as the Haemoxytes finished the Dima and the Talos finished the Scythed Hierodule – on the next turn the Hive Tyrant would go down after the Grotesques free’d it and it faced the combined Heat Lances and charges from the army. 

Result: 94 – 47 Victory

Afterwards we discussed a bit about how I thought he should have committed to offense rather than defense, pressing my own home objective rather than attempting to defend his on the far side – critically, he allowed my Grotesques to range his Hive Tyrant and bury it – taking it out of the game completely. As with my round 2 opponent, the Hive Tyrant being neutralized freed me to focus on parts of his army at a time and overwhelm them, and with the Dima hitting the worst possible target out of desperation it all but sealed it. Ideally, Wyatt’s Dima would have led a T1 charge on something, likely my Court, then followed it with the Hive Tyrant on T2, and the Hierodules bringing up the rear on T3. In any case, it was a great game and Wyatt would go on to finish ahead of me in 62nd place, at 5-1.

 

Round Five – Cameron Pinerio – Thicc City Drukhari

Battle Lines

My secondaries: Herd the Prey, Assassination, Retrieve Octarius Data

Cameron’s secondaries: Herd the Prey, Bring It Down, Retrieve Octarius Data

Cameron's List - click to expand

Cameron, I think, faced the toughest road of anyone at this event. In total his opponents combined to win 27 of their 36 games which was good for the highest strength of schedule outside of the top-8 finalists. Funny enough we had last faced off in a round five game in Las Vegas, that time at the Las Vegas Team Tournament.

Running Thicc City, Cameron opted to add a third Talos unit and Drazhar rather than souping in Dark Technomancer Cronos and a Court of the Archon but otherwise we had very similar lists. The trade-off amounted to a little more flexibility (my Cronos and Court) vs leaning even harder into the extreme durability and combat potential (his additional Talos and Drazhar) – it was a well-matched game where Cameron may have had a slight edge in damage output due to the additional heat lances his three extra Talos carried – they were the most significant threat to our armies with their D2 + d6 damage. In the Thicc City mirror, the damage advantage is important if you’re not full-on infantry skew like Mani Cheema’s Wrack hate crime list.

In setup we essentially mirrored each other’s terrain layout with the largest obscuring buildings deployed along the center-line to shelter approaches to the table-edge side objectives with remaining terrain elements plugging gaps or sheltering the home objective. We both favored balanced approaches along the deployment line with our forces equally distributed across the Hammer & Anvil deployment line – he held some action-infantry in reserve and I reserved my Cronos and a couple of action-infantry and we both made sure we had a 26” separation (threat range of Talos/Cronos). It was a true mirror.

Cameron Goes first

Battle Lines is a hard mission and not one of my favorites. It usually defaults to a grind game where the player going second has a significant primary advantage due to the ease of removing an opponent from an objective early. However, Cameron was able to tag an objective behind an obscuring wall with one of this three Talos squads on his Turn 1 and I was not positioned to challenge it with ObSec units. His other Grotesque and Talos units took up position to leverage a T2 advance + charge, distributed equally with one on each side and in the center sheltered by obscuring. His infantry fanned out to prevent my reserved units from coming out in his backfield.

On my turn I knew I had to at minimum keep him to 10 points on the Primary, so I pushed forward my Haemoxytes to sit my table-edge center objective with a block of Grotesques behind them – keeping an inch from the wall to prevent the Talos from charging in. I felt confident in my ability to outfight Cameron’s list if I could keep the Talos from engaging my Grotesques or Hameoxycytes and because of my heavier infantry skew, I thought I could force Cameron to commit his Talos into heat lance range first. With his heavier investment into Talos he could not afford to just sit back with half of his army and I did not think he could outfight me on the objectives if he didn’t commit, so I maintained the 26” buffer and prepared my own counter-charge on T2 while fanning out my screens behind me. The Court and Archon took position in a ruin that sheltered my objective and prepared to charge onto his table-edge center objective on T2. I walked some screening Kalabites backwards hoping to not give his Talos extra movement via charge while still screening my back corner.

On Turn 2 Cameron pushed his objective-siting Talos into charge range against my Court of the Archon while moving the central Talos squad, his Cronos, and Drazhar to cover down on that objective from behind the ruin, essentially limiting my options to threaten that objective on my turn. A squad of Wracks walked on the edge to support his Retreive Octarius Data in the space my backwards moving Kabalites had cleared out. On my near edge, Cameron kept his third Talos squad within striking distance of my objective (held from within the large ruin) – while his Archon and a squad of Grotesques shifted over to help push in the following turn. His Talos made their charge on the Court and I opted not to intervene with my Archon who would get mortal-wounded off the planet by Ichor Injectors. Instead he watched as the Court was unceremoniously slaughtered and was surprised when the hulking monsters piled into-him. He took the opportunity to swing twice (normal activation and datasheet ability to fight at the end of the phase once per game) and managed to tear down a Talos with some timely wound rolls.

In my turn I fell back with the Archon from the Talos and spent the CP to charge and I brought in both Cronos squads, one on each long table edge, and an action-unit of Wracks on my own side of the board due to Cameron’s screening. Having to deal with one of his Talos units in my backfield, I kept one squad of Talos behind the obscuring large ruin to help with my objective and positioned to use their heat lances only. The other zoomed right in with a squad of Grotesques. The other Grotesque squad pushed forward out of the ruin to proactively defend the objective and anchor his third Talos unit, so my Haemoxytes moved out to engage and tarpit that Talos squad. At a minimum forcing CP spend if he wanted to use those up the board, but likely holding them on his table half. By doing this I could force one unit of Talos out of action while I focused on crushing the unit in my deployment zone. If executed correctly, Cameron would see his Talos go from a 3:2 advantage to a 1:2 disadvantage with one of his units mired down. I opened up with my heat lances which removed a second Talos from the squad in my backfield, but a series of 6’s resulted in saving one, probably two of them in his central Talos unit – this was big as it would enable him to get some significant heat lance shots back into me on his following turn and prevent his Talos advantage from slipping even further. My Cronos flamed his action-Wracks in my table quarter, clearing them, while the other squad flamed a three-man unit of Grotesques to minimal effect.

In the following charge phase, one squad of Talos, my Archon, and Succubus jumped in with a unit of Grotesques who used the charge distance to string out towards his objective and contest on the consolidation. My Haemoxytes charged his Talos and the nearby Grotesques, while my other squad of Grotesques charged his Grotesques only – his Archon intervened and forced a fight last on the Haemoxytes. In the fighting, my Talos and Succubus cleared his two Talos remaining in my deployment zone and the whole pile consolidated towards his objective, rebalancing my board half and overtaking his objective. Meanwhile the Haemoxytes started dying but were able to effectively maintain combat on the Talos and hold the objective via ObSec. My Grotesques whiffed on his but remained locked in combat none-the-less on the objective which was securely mine for now.

On Cameron’s turn 3 the game still felt on the precipice. His Succubus and Drazhar launched out of his ruin to threaten my home objective and the Wracks holding it while he brought his central Talos unit forward to challenge my Talos and Grotesques, stalling them over his table-edge objective with his Cronos and some ObSec Wracks in support to hold it. The calculated risk was that Cameron would trade the Assassination points now rather than a turn or two later to strip me of primary points in my turn. It was assumed that with both Draz and the Succubus it wasb4 only a matter of time until I got them. Using a second Grotesque squad he’d held back, Cameron moved them up in support of the Grotesques tangled with mine on the objective then spent the points to fallback, shoot, and charge with his Talos in combat with my Haemoxytes. It was an attempt to clear the objective and blank me on what was essentially a strong-point objective for me. If successful it could swing the game heavily and mitigate my turn 5 primary advantage.

His Talos shot into mine, picking one up and damaging another, while his other Talos shot my Cronos coming in off the board edge, heavily wounding one. Then the charges came – Drazhar failed his mid-distance charge but the Succubus landed. Meanwhile his backfield Talos charged in to my Haemoxytes and Grotesques while his Grotesques charged in to support his other embattled squad on the objective, evening the odds. His mid-field Talos charged in on my Talos and opted to fight first. He killed another Talos and left my last on its last legs which then swung back and finished off one of his three. My home objective Wracks then interrupted – narrowly missing on killing off the Succubus before she cleared the squad and dropped me off my home primary. However, his home Talos were ineffective in killing off my Haemoxytes after splitting attacks into the Grotesques. The piled into my Cronos to tag them in the combat. I would lose the point eventually as my Grotesques took a pounding, but as I held on to my Haemoxytes I’d secure the objective with ObSec for at least another turn.

Despite the loss of the home primary, holding my table-edge objective put me in a position to start to break away. My Cronos lined up their shots on Drazhar as my Succubus and a second Wrack squad prepared to drown his Succubus and take back my home objective. The Archon moved up to support the lone Talos and contest his objective in combination with my Kabalites now freed to move up the field and capable of offsetting his Wracks on the objective. Looking at my table-edge objective I determined that it was ultimately a losing battle – his Talos and Grotesques were going to win eventually and some Wyches moving up would ensure he’d take the objective on his turn. So instead I focused on taking his far objective and shifted my free Talos unit to bog down anything that could reinforce his table-edge. With just a Cronos, 5 Wracks, and 2 Talos facing down my Grotesques, Archon, and a single remaining Talos I was confident in my ability to take his objective with the Kabalites ensuring it would at least be contested.  My Haemoxytes fell back out of combat to the far side of the ruin wall, maintaining a position on the objective so I wouldn’t lose it before his turn in my fight phase.

The Cronos cleared Draz while my other Cronos fell back and targeted the Archon lagging slightly behind the Talos and cleared him. The rest of the charges and combats played out as expected – my Archon forcing his two remaining Talos to fight last so I could deal with his Succubus. After she fell my Grotesques and Archon killed off another Talos before my Talos finished his last – leaving just his Cronos and 5 Wracks alive on that board-edge and contesting the objective (neither held).  He finished off most of my remaining Grotesques and the Cronos with his Talos/Grotesques but one Grot simply refused to die, nevertheless I held the objective with my two remaining Haemoxytes tucked back.

On Cameron’s turn 4 we were still locked in a tight game but he’d need to start racking up primary points and extending a secondary point lead if he was going to ward off a turn 5 primary dump in my favor. He was positioned to dominate my table-edge objective but was thin on the other side of the board, and with only a couple of Wrack squads holding both his home objective and far table-edge and he didn’t have a lot left to push into my backfield. He committed to taking my table-edge objective while picking up his Mandrakes to complete a final ROD and max that secondary. His Wyches came in to seal the deal against my remaining Grotesque and Haemoxytes and take the objective. The Cronos flamed my Archon off the board before dying to the Talos in combat.

At this point, I needed to clear any remaining challenge on the top-objective which meant flaming the Wracks with my Cronos and moving out to position myself to deny Herd points and potentially threaten his home objective on Turn 5 to get the 15 primary points. My Talos continued to tangle with his pile and tie units up, limiting his moves on T5 to block me out. My Grotesques strung out in his board half looking to complete a T5 charge if I couldn’t advance my Cronos far enough to flame his Wracks off his home objective. I was able to secure six points on Herd this turn which was a significant enough swing to secure a likely win.

Cameron picked up his first 10 primary since Turn 2 and made my charge or shots on his Wracks as difficult as possible before securing his final ROD and taking as many points as possible from my Talos/Cronos on the near table-edge. Then I advanced and flamed his Wracks and secured my first Primary points of 10 or more since Turn 2. As time wound down we totaled our scores.

Result: 78-66 Victory

It was a fantastic game that shows the nuance of a Thicc City matchup, despite how otherwise boring it may appear. Cameron played a great game, but ultimately, I think being forced to commit without committing fully allowed me to focus my forces on smaller elements at a time and it ended up costing him.

Cameron would go on to finish in 201^st place, at 4-2

 

Round Six – Matt Lorah – Shadowkeepers Custodes

The Scouring

My secondaries: Herd the Prey, Retrieve Octarius Data, To The Last

Matt’s secondaries: Stand Vigil, Retrieve Octarius Data, Assassination

Matt's List - click to expand

Oh man here we go. Round 6 – the final round before the Shadow/Finals. The game was streamed live and starts at the 3:50:30 mark. Up to this point I’d avoided Custodes and after looking at Matt’s list I would be lying to you readers if I said that I didn’t think I had an excellent matchup here – it had none of the things I was terrified of (Praetors), no 4+ Feel no Pain against Mortals, and had a mass of 2D that I would ignore on my -1D or try to minimize with obscuring. What I had not well considered in this matchup was the impact of the mission, The Scouring, would eventually have on this game. For those of you not familiar, and it’s fair to say that’s many of you since The Scouring has been the black sheep of the mission pack since its introduction, the average distance between objectives is only 9” – this is a huge boon to an army that is mostly ObSec and counts as two models per that is otherwise fairly slow moving.

My plan approaching this was to use the obscuring terrain to block his vehicles shooting to my Talos and Grotesques, as I maneuvered along the edges. I expected him to move up the center and claim the central objective, fortify it, then fan out from there. What I wanted to do was let him take that center, but then use my Cronos and Talos/Grotesques along the edges to pull him selectively off objectives and limit his primary scoring – forcing him to commit one way or the other and securing the side of the board he chose not to reinforce. Matt withheld his Allarus Terminators while I withheld my typical Dark Technomancer Wracks and Cronos. The Scouring deployment zones offer a long board edge to bring Strat Reserves in which offered me a significant advantage with the Cronos. Ideally, I wanted to go second so I could have the last run on the objectives and secure the win.

I Go First

Moving out along the edges I kept obscuring between my forces and his and tried to get up field on each side. I leaned heavy to my left with just the Archon, Court, and some screening Wrack units to my right – one squad of To The Last Grotesques hanging back to screen and avoid any threats while securing my nearest two objectives. After some quick positioning, I turned over to Matt.

On his turn Matt moved as I thought he might – on either side Guardians secured the objectives nearest him while the bulk of his forces moved up the center with just a single Warden squad hanging back – Trajan advanced to toe-on the center objective through a ruin wall while the dreadnoughts and bike captain flanked on either side of the ruin. In his backfield, the two Caladius lined up shots on a Talos unit I couldn’t fully tuck away – they succeeded in pushing 6 dmg, but half would be healed in my next turn. 

On Turn 2 I went for a back-breaking turn. The Cronos came in on the same edge, directly threatening his lone Guardians holding his left-most objective while the Haemoxytes moved up to ensure the steal if the shooting failed. Meanwhile a single Wrack unit ran for the center objective offsetting Trajan’s ObSec with my own ensuring that I’d blank his primary on T2. On my lower-right objective I otherwise screened off from Dreadnoughts with the Court and moved my backfield Grotesques to counter anything coming towards it. Meanwhile my Talos lined up shots on his Dreadnoughts, seeking to take one down the one on the Cronos side in the early going. Powering up the Heat Lances the combined shooting succeeded in pushing four wounds on his nearest Galatus. All saved. Goddamnit. The closest Talos squad then fire-and-faded back behind the Obscuring wall. My Cronos seeking redemption, fired up their flamers and unleashed on the Guardians, only putting through 3 wounds through a mess of 4+ saves, killing one and wounding another. It was a devastating shooting phase that never materialized, and I was a bit taken aback. The Haemoxytes now had to be heroes charging not only through a wood but through a tanglefoot grenade that popped a 6 – I needed an 11… so I rolled a 12. Sure, why not. One Cronos squad also leaned in and decided to try and do what they couldn’t in the shooting phase – kill Guardians.

In combat the Praetorian Plate Captain jumped into the fray, giving him 3 ObSec models (counts as 6) to my 10 Haemoxytes and 2 Cronos – the attack reduction came in big here as my Haemoxytes were limited to just 11 attacks which they focused on the Guardians, killing one with the 1 wound they put through. In his return, the Guardian and Captain were successful in killing one Haemoxyte after a series of 5+ invulnerables, ignoring one failed, and 5+ feel no pains kept me in the fight and on the objective. This was bad though – I expected to clear these Guardians entirely with the Cronos but a combination of poor wounds and great saves mitigated their effect and left me tangled up on an objective I expected to own.

Seizing on this, Matt immediately pivoted one of his Dreadnoughts and the unit of backfield Wardens to help with the objective under duress. The other Dreadnought, Bike Captain, and Guardians in the center further fortified his hold on the center objective with Trajan – prepared to pivot and face down the Talos threatening it, while the two Caladius pulled back to line shots on my Cronos across his backfield. The shooting was effective at killing a single Cronos, but otherwise it was about the charges – the Warden’s came in first, then the dreadnought. The first unit to swing was the Wardens, who succeeded in only killing two Haemoxytes – however, this afforded me an opportunity – I pulled the two engaged with the Dreadnought then immediately interrupted and piled-in my nearest Haemoxytes into the nearby Captain and Wardens, effectively pulling his Dreadnought out of engagement and move blocking it with his Wardens and Terminator Captain. It saved the unit, but I’d still lose the objective on account of being outnumbered 12 to 10. However, the Wracks knocked a wound into the remaining Guardian and the Cronos then finished one unexpectedly with an unsaved wound of 6 (two damage). The Cronos Resevoir of Pain ability brought a Haemoxyte back, which by the end of the combat resulted in a split on the objective 10 to 10 and denying Matt’s secondary for a turn. This series was probably my best individual play of the tournament and despite the unexpected tarpit on that objective it gave me a strong wind heading into turn 3. 

Leading on the Primary 10-0 at this point, I looked to secure my lead there by now pressing his other near-edge objective. The Court, Archon, and Talos all lept out to threaten the Allarus and 3 Guardians holding it – the Talos pushing their mortal wounds would be devastating here with a 4+ Feel No Pain, and any failed saves from a Gauntlet would be a dead Custode – everything else from the Archon and Court should be enough to clean up. On the other side my Haemonculus walked forward to chuck his grenade with the Succubus, Grotesques and my other Talos unit. Finally, my Wracks in the back field continued to fan out with my second Grotesque unit to screen the backfield and hold objectives.  One reserved Wrack squad came in on my backfield to bolster the screens while a second came in on the contested quarter to ROD – leaving me with just his back quarter with the Caladius to ROD but no more reserved units. The single Cronos targeted the exposed Dreadnought but failing to get through its saves. The other two targeted the Captain in combat with them and succeeded in only leaving him with one wound remaining. My Talos, forced to advance to minimize charge risks, did not shoot and so we moved right into the charge phase. And this is where I realized I made a crushing mistake – in my eagerness to throw an utterly inconsequential grenade, I walked the Haemonculus off my near objective and didn’t replace it – requiring my charging Talos to string out and limiting their combat impact. Just a terribly stupid mistake that gets made after 6 rounds of very intense, exhausting competitive play. Looking for good news elsewhere, I charged my now tanglefooted Archon, which also suffered a 6” penalty and needed a 9, which failed. The Court made it, then my Talos needing a 4, failed and leaving them stranded with an underpower Court likely to get smacked around in combat. Just devastating. 

The near-edge Talos swung into the Dreadnought which promptly made 2 out 3 saves and passed it’s Mortal Wound Feel No Pains, taking only 2 damage. The Grotesques piled more into the Dreadnought, but it similarly passed it’s saves. It was the unkillable 4+ invulnerable dreadnought. We otherwise exchanged blows but did give any further significant damage – though the Captain took down one of the three remaining Cronos. Prior to this turn, I would have given myself an 80% chance to win this game. After this turn, I would have put it at 5% – it was a critical turn that failed on every front, and now it was Matt’s chance to drive this train. 

Matt got his first Primary 5 points on T3. With the Talos now past the center on both sides, Matt began by opening up on the center objective – pulling Trajan and the Dreadnought back to engage my Talos flailing around in the middle of nowhere, while the Bike Captain lurched towards the pile with the unkillable Dreadnought. The center remained held by 3 Guardians, his remaining squad in combat with a mangled Court. The Caladius now moved forward to press down on my objective in the next turn. The remaining Allarus came in near the table center on my half of the board, able to threaten both objectives next turn. Trajan and his Dreadnought charged the Talos and ignored the Archon who intervened into the passing Caladius. On the other side, the Bike Captain charged my Talos and Succubus, who remained exposed behind the Talos line because they were forced to string back so far. The combined assaults and engagements picked up the Talos on the far side while the Bike Captain obliterated my Succubus. The Archon pinged some wounds of the Caladius after fighting twice, but that was small potatoes at this point – the remaining Court were cleared by the Guardians ending any threat to his home objective there. I lost the To The Last Talos which meant I couldn’t lose any more and still win. My Grotesques cleared his remaining Wardens but the Dreadnought remained with just a single wound – the unkillable dread.  I still held the objective, but the Caladius my Archon intervened into had cleared my Wracks and taken that objective. 

By my Turn 4 I was deeply on the back foot. My goal was to limit the damage done – saving my To The Last (backfield Grotesques and remaining Talos) and not give up any further points for Assassination (Archon and Haemonculus). I still held two objectives but I needed to limit his scoring any further on T4 and prevent a max 15 on T5. Tall order.

It was right about this time the judges walked over to inform us that although Matt and I both had about 15 minutes remaining on our clocks, we actually only had about half of that time. In the moment I didn’t register it, but as time wound down on this top table game I increasingly became bitter about the situation – we had lost time in moving and setting up and it wasn’t just us – this also caused problems on the neighbor stream table. I thought this was incredibly bad form from a team that gave us the initial time once we completed setup. I would end up timing out on my T5 and watch as Matt cleared my last Grotesques in the final swings to seal the victory. I was a bit chippy about the clock in those moments, and I did apologize to Matt afterwards – it wasn’t his fault, and I would ask that the FLG team review how they handled those final moments. I don’t believe it’s good form to provide the initial clock time, then halve it late in the game. Not on a top table, not on a bottom table, but definitely not in a situation you’ve otherwise overseen start to finish.

Result: 46 – 53 Loss

In the moment the loss didn’t hurt as I knew from Turn 3 on that it was likely coming and I’d already made my peace with it. But reflecting back now it’s a little more painful knowing how close it really was. For those who’ve never played in a 6-round or larger event, just know that the mental exhaustion is real and can deeply impact decision making. I think back on the Haemonculus walking off the objective to no gain and just cringe at that mistake – it’ll stick with me for a long time, I think. I will say that the Shadowkeepers -1A trait was more impactful than I originally credited it for, but I wouldn’t have done anything differently in planning should I play this again – I had the right plan, executed appropriately, but it unfortunately fell apart at the seams. I wish it had gone differently with my Cronos on Turn 2 or my Talos on Turn 3, but it is what it is – he had some good saves on the Dreadnought and Guardians, but I also had some good saves on my Haemoxytes. Ultimately, if I don’t walk off that objective I don’t string my Talos, I don’t lose my Succubus, and I think I force Matt off that objective and save enough points to swing the game.

That said, Matt was the perfect gentleman. He was very technically skilled and knowledgeable to boot. He played the game right and did everything he needed to ensure the win – and did. I cannot think of any major mistakes on his part and his use of stratagems was particulary on point throughout the game. Matt would go on to finish in 2nd place at 8-1, only losing to the champion Richard Siegler. I would not be surprised to find that Matt pushes the top 10 in the ITC next year if he’s able to hit the right events. Frankly, if I’m going to lose I’m glad I lost to Matt. Congratulations again Matt, and I look forward to seeing you in the new season!

 

What’s Next: The Season Ahead

The 2021 season was a good year and one in which I proved to myself that I can compete at the top of the game, but ultimately I fell a little short. So next year I’ll look to be back at it with another goal of breaking the ITC top-10 by year’s end. Time is running out – this year I’ll be married, I can’t imagine kids are too far down the road, and I don’t expect I’ll be able to compete at this level again for some time after. The clock pressure is real; time to get at it.

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