Making Friends and Purging Heretics: Going 2-1 at the Bel Air Games RTT

Introduction

Hola my dudes and dudettes, Scott Horras “Heresy” here with my debut Goonhammer article. Today I’ve got a hot and spicy 2-1 RTT performance recap for you all to be marginally disappointed with. Oh yeah, I make my memes in Paint. Deal with it.

Event Details

This weekend I hit up the monthly RTT (Rogue Trader Tournament for the newbies out there) held at Bel Air Games in Bel Air, Maryland, which had 22 attendees. As the name implies, Bel Air Games hosts a monthly 40k ITC tournament series with a quarterly GT circuit in conjunction with Titan Games and Hobbies. From my perspective these two stores form the nexus of the MD competitive community. The meta ’round these parts tends to be pretty cutthroat with some interesting twists which I think are fairly uncommon across the rest of the US.

First off my team, Peace through Dakka, tends to show up in force at these events. We typically have anywhere between 5 and 8 of our 10 members at any given event. This results in a bit of a ‘PtD Thunderdome’ effect with PtD players body slamming each other every round after the first (thanks, BCP pairing algorithms!). This typically results in some extremely satisfying shit talk and some delicious, salty tears from vanquished teammates. To be honest, friends dunking on each other in 40k tournaments is what gets me through the work week.

The second thing of note is the interesting mix of terrain and missions we tend to use here in the MD meta. We use “NOVA Ls”*, made famous by the NOVA GT, on all of our tables in combination with the ITC Champions Mission Pack for the vast majority of our events, with no ‘enclosed’ ruins.
*Editor’s Note: The NOVA L is a large, L-shaped piece of terrain that blocks line of sight. Usually, two are placed in the middle of the battlefield mirroring each other. For an example of this, see the photo of a battle below.

Finally, we use chess clocks on EVERY. SINGLE. TABLE. While this requires a little on-ramping for newer players to our scene, it means that EVERY. SINGLE. GAME. is played to completion. Admittedly I was very skeptical of chess clocks when our scene first moved to them, but now I have to say it’s perhaps my favorite thing about the MD meta. It takes so much pressure off of you as a player to KNOW that the game will go to completion. Knowing you’re never going to have to try and drag your opponent to turn 6, it takes away the nasty lurking threat of getting scummed (intentionally or not) by a 3-turn game and gets rid of any question whether another player is using a disproportionate amount of time.

My List

I brought my Imperial Guard with a Knight this weekend. I’ve been running a similar tournament list to this for about 15 to 18 months at this point, juggling around about 300 to 400 points between iterations to try and feel out what I prefer. I’ve recently switched back to Cadian after running Catachans Chads for a number of months because I felt the pain of trying to address 3 Flawless Host Discolords one too many times. For the record, I think I only had to play against them twice before I decided I wanted to try and dumpster that match-up in a single turn of shooting address that match-up with Relic of Lost Cadia rather than 90 buff idiots Guardsmen punching them to death with S4 AP0 bayonets (Chads + Straken + Priest).

Anyways. The general game-plan for this list to attempt to shoot down the biggest target each turn through use of the Overlapping Fields of Fire stratagem (which for 2 CP gives all Cadian units in the army +1 to hit against a unit that has already been wounded by another Cadian unit), while protecting the Tank Commanders from the nastiest of my opponent’s shooting. While doing this, I’ve got the Gallant acting as either a counter-charge or a punchy threat. I run him as House Terryn for the Glory in Honour! stratagem (this lets him fight twice for 3 CP). The ability to pretty reliably move + advance + charge 26″-28″ (using the Land Strider Warlord Trait and Full Tilt stratagem) and then fight twice when you get to your target turns this little guy into an absolute bowling ball if you need him to do that. Meanwhile, I have Company Commanders able to order my idiots Guardsmen onto objectives to score my progressive points while the tanks and artillery are doing the heavy lifting.

All in all, it’s meant to be a take all comers list that has some way of engaging with or addressing a wide variety of threats out there.

My Army List - Click to expand

Tactics

For each round we’ll cover the following:

• The Competition – Details of my opponent’s army
• The Mission – Details of mission and deployment
• The Plan – how I aimed to play out the game and target priorities.
• The Summary – how the game played out at a high level
• The Takeaways – points of interest and things I learnt from the game
• The Score – my score after the game.

 

Round 1 – Chaos Dreadnoughts and Discobois

The Competition

 

Army List - Click to expand

The Mission

ITC Champion’s: Scenario 2 – Cut to the Heart
Deployment: Search and Destroy

The Plan

Alright, here we go baybee. Not exactly the reason I switched back to Cadians, but certainly some collateral damage I appreciate. We’ve got Search and Destroy as our deployment corners, so the plan is to turn the table to the right so he’s got to fight me longways. Besides his Cool Ranch Dorito Dreadnoughts*, he didn’t really have a ton of ways to threaten my base of fire. Furthermore, I actually wanted to go second in this matchup, as I want to be able to yeet my idiots Guardsmen onto the middle objective at the end of every turn to score ‘Hold more’ at the end of the Battle Round. I want to position my Knighty boi in the middle of my NOVA L and screen him from being charged directly by the Discolords to be sure to impose cost on him if he wants to approach me.

My Secondaries

• Kingslayer – Warlord Discolord
• Marked for Death – other Discolord, 3xCool Ranch Doritos
• Big Game Hunter

Their Secondaries

• Kingslayer – Knighty Boi
• Recon
• Big Game Hunter

The Summary

It’s an even-numbered scenario in the ITC pack, meaning we’re deploying our entire armies at once. Nick gets to choose to deploy his army first or second; he chooses to deploy first. He deploys pretty conservatively, largely shoving everything behind his L to make sure he’s not gonna get powerwashed by a bunch of Tank Commanders who are still mad about that whole Cadia thing a couple years ago.

I do some big brain math to calculate what the threat range of the majority of his soulburners is, and deploy the critical portions of my army out of soulburner range for turn 1. Given his deployment, I decide I pretty much want to line my Tank Commanders up on the middle line to turn the board as fast as possible. I decided not to seize, and no Prepared Positions.

Nick opens up by running his Decimators, Contemptors, and Discolords around my left side of his NOVA L. His Cool Ranch Doritos largely hold position on my right side of his NOVA L. His turn one shooting consisted of killing about 20 to 25 Guardsmen and putting 11 wounds on Knighty Boi with soulburners. Nick passes the turn.

At this point, I look at the board-state and I look at Nick. We lock eyes. We both know what’s about to happen, and we both feel bad about it. I reveal the Relic of Lost Cadia. For those of you who don’t know, the Relic of Lost Cadia is a one use relic for Cadians that allows you to reroll hit and wound rolls of 1 for all Cadians within 12″. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE: furthermore, they may re-roll all failed hit and wound rolls against units with the CHAOS keyword.

My turn 1 consists of powerwashing everything in sight and one Cool Ranch Dorito out of line of sight with my base of fire. At the end of my turn 1, I had killed:

• 2x Decimators
• 2x Contemptors
• 1x Cool Ranch Dorito
• 1x Discolord

For those of you keeping track at home, that’s over half of the units in Nick’s army. We chat a little bit after that turn and both agree that he’s in a pretty unrecoverable nosedive at this point. He’s got no way to feasibly kill any of my heavy lifters and his movement on his Discolord is completely locked down by 10 idiots standing 3.1″ away from him. We decide to just play it out anyways because there’s still ways for him to score some pretty fast and easy points.

The rest of the game consisted of me cleaning up whatever was left on the board with the Knight, Tank Commanders, and my artillery element; ending in a tabling on the bottom of turn 4.

The Takeaways

Frankly, I don’t think Nick necessarily played anything wrong. There was no way I was going to let him get to my tanks with his Discos, and the Doritos are just not going to out-shoot them at range. The soulburners were an interesting tool, but they’re not going to do a whole lot until turns 2 and 3. Even then I can play really cagey with my Knight to keep him out of range of those things until turn 3 given our deployment. It was a really terrible matchup for him in my opinion.

The Score

Scott: 36 – Nick: 10
Result: Win

Round 2 – Chaos Sample Platter

The Competition

 

Army List - Click to expand

The Mission

ITC Champion’s: Scenario 2 – Cut to the Heart
Deployment: Search and Destroy

The Plan

Wait… Scott… there’s something wrong… you literally just played that deployment and mission! That must be some sort of typo… how could this have possibly made it through the illustrious Goonhammer editorial process?!?!? What kind of half rate writing is this site trying to deliver to my brain?

NOPE! You read that correctly dear unfortunate reader. I’m playing the same mission as last episode WITH the same deployment against a similar matchup. Don’t worry it gets better. It’s at the same table. But fear not dear readers, upon receiving this pairing I made sure to convey my feelings on the matter to Ivan, the TO. Don’t worry we’re probably still friends. Probably.

Alright, here we go baybee. Not exactly the reason I switched back to Cadians, but certainly some collateral damage I appreciate. We’ve got Search and Destroy as our deployment (corners), so the plan is to turn the table to the right so he’s got to fight me longways. Besides his Cool Ranch Dorito Dreadnoughts, he didn’t really have a ton of ways to threaten my base of fire. Furthermore, I actually wanted to go second in this matchup, as I want to be able to yeet my idiots Guardsmen onto the middle objective at the end of every turn to score ‘Hold more’ at the end of the Battle Round. Yes… this is intentional repetition…

Editor’s note: Thanks for making me think I was losing my mind…

The biggest difference between this matchup and the last is that I do my best to make sure that my Knight can’t get charged by the Flawless Host Discolords. He’s taken Warptime which means his Discolord can move up to 40″ and then charge. Furthermore, his Demon Prince can move 36″ and then charge with fly. While juggling those three speedy bois, I gotta make sure I have enough idiots left on turn 3 to mitigate the charge targets for his ‘Zerkers. With the potential for them to fight 3 times after a charge, if I’m not careful he could lock up almost all of my tanks with that single chonky unit.

My Secondaries

• Kingslayer – Warlord Discolord
• Headhunter
• Big Game Hunter

Their Secondaries

• Kingslayer – Knighty Boi
• Marked For Death – 3xTank Commanders, Pask
• Big Game Hunter

The Summary

It’s an even numbered scenario in the ITC pack, meaning we’re deploying our entire army at once. Nick gets to choose to deploy his army first or second; he chooses to deploy first. He deploys pretty conservatively, largely shoving everything behind his L to make sure he’s not gonna get power-washed by a bunch of Tank Commanders who are still mad about that whole Cadia thing a couple years ago. Yes, more intentional repetition…

More big brain math ensues. This time I’ve got to set my first layer of screening on the deployment line. The Tanks can’t start with toes on the starting line this time cause you’ve got the Discolords that can come in on turn 1 and turn them into extremely faithful piles of scrap from pretty much any point on the board. Furthermore, I have to deploy all of my idiots right out of the gate to make sure that damn Daemon Prince doesn’t have anywhere to land and high five the hull of my tanks. Man… when you have to deploy the bulk of your forces >11″ back from the front of your deployment zone shit gets crowded for Imperial Guard. I largely end up in a parking lot in my back corner.

At this point my turn goals are as follows:

1. Kill Discolords with tanks or artillery to limit his melee threat range and damage potential
2. Survive potential deepstrike with bulk of firepower intact
3. Present countercharge threat with Knighty boi to free shooting or threaten Sam’s mid-board or back-board control

I decline to seize; Sam is deployed too defensively for my first shooting phase to be sufficiently devastating. Sam opens by making a strong play for the center. He dives between he NOVA L’s with his Discolords, Demon Prince, Sorcerer, the chainsword CSM squad, and the large cultist squad. His turn one shooting and charging consisted of killing about 25 to 30 Guardsmen and failing an 11″ charge on my Knight. Nick Sam passes the turn.

At this point, I look at the boardstate and I look at Nick Sam. We lock eyes. We both know what’s about to happen, and we both feel bad about it. I reveal the Relic of Lost Cadia. For those of you who don’t know, the Relic of Lost Cadia is a one use Relic for Cadians that allows you to reroll hit and wound rolls of 1 for all Cadians within 12″. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE: furthermore, they may reroll all failed hit and wound rolls against units with the Chaos keyword. Yeah baby, I’m doing this all on purpose.

My turn 1 consists of power-washing everything in sight with my base of fire. I decided to toss my artillery element at his objective holders in the backfield. He had left 5 CSM and 10 Cultists to babysit his backfield objective. I figured that they were a soft target, and if I could make anything in this list turn around and have to go hold it, that’s going to work in my favor turns 2+. At the end of my turn 1, I had killed:

• 2xDiscolords
• All Cultists but 2 on the back objective
• 1xSorcerer
• 1xDaemon Prince
• All CSM but 1 on the back objective

For those of you keeping track at home, that’s over half of the units in Sam’s army. Well not exactly, but it’s a ton of capability gone from his army. He’s completely lost his mobility advantage, and he’s faced with a situation where’s got to turn one of his Cool Ranch Doritos around to go hold the rear objective (effectively taking it out of the fight) or cede his own backfield objective. I’ve got my screen intact with about 30 more idiots standing in tactical places so that it’s going to be really difficult to get to any of my tanks off the deep strike and he’s rapidly looking at a potential tabling. My Knight is about the only heavy hitter he’s got a charge on for the deep strike.

Sam’s turn 2, he brings in his ‘Zerkers on my extreme left with the chance to charge my knight and a squad of Guardsmen. He doesn’t turn around with a Dorito and focuses on shooting what he’s able to, which mostly consists of clearing out Guardsmen. He makes the charge on my Knight with ‘Zerkers but fails with his drill. The Gallant is left with 1 wound after the first ‘Zerker activation. I interrupt and kill 5-6. He kills me with his second activation. I fight on death with my Gallant and kill 5-6 more ‘Zerkers. He ends with 5-6 of his ‘Zerkers and his drill, ass in the wind hanging out in front of pissed off Cadians.

Turn 2 goes about as you’d expect, I power-wash everything I see on the board and 1.5 of the Doritos with artillery and Tank Commanders.

Turn 3 he’s able to pop a Tank Commander with Doritos to pick up a few points, and I finish it there with tanks and artillery.

The Takeaways

To be honest, I was surprised that Sam dove the middle as aggressively as he did. I thought he’d take turn 1 pretty slow, focus on clearing screens and set up for a devastating turn 2 or turn 3 assault. He said he felt like it was worth it to get a potential charge on the Knight and ace him with the Discolord right off the bat. Had that 11″ charge gone off, I agreed that it would’ve been a very different game.

That being said, he didn’t make the charge. So this game ended very similarly to the first. Man this Cadian thing is really coming in handy so far.

The Score

Scott: 35 – Sam: 10
Result: Win

Round 3 – Iron Hands

The Competition

 

Army List - Click to expand

The Mission

ITC Champion’s: Scenario 5 – Cut to the Heart
Deployment: Spearhead Assault

The Plan

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. Oh Emperor I’m so screwed. I know the Iron Hands Supplement isn’t out yet, but oh man is this list already a bitch and a half for me to deal with. Furthermore, Alex is a good friend of mine. I KNOW he’s a good player. He’s not going to lazily pilot this thing into the ground. What’s worse… this brutal ass list is PAINTED BEAUTIFULLY. He’s been working on it for a while, so I’m legitimately happy for him that it’s good now.

Anyways, my plan this game… Alex and I are pretty much gonna play this thing the exact same way. The problem: his list does everything mine does, but does it way better and way more consistently. I can’t hold any objectives with idiots cause anything that sneezes in their direction in this list is going to kill them. I can try to apply pressure with the Knight to try and pull some shooting off of my Tanks, but I know Alex is too good for that trick. He’s just gonna toss units in the way to keep the Knight from getting to the Repulsors. Even then I have to try and make shooting the Knight difficult with the Repulsors by using the NOVA L’s to the best of my ability. If he’s able to focus his 111 yes, that’s how many they have at 24″ S4/5 ap-1/2 shots on my Knight between his three Repulsors, he’s probably only going to be able to survive one round of shooting before he’s put down by Alex’s ‘small arms’.

Furthermore, picking secondaries against this this is a total pain in the ass. Board control is largely off the table, and he doesn’t have enough big units to double up on Marked for Death and Big Game Hunter. This is gonna be rough…

My only chance against this list piloted by a good player… is to go first and kill 2 Repulsors. Trust me, I’ve been thinking about this matchup since the new Marine Codex dropped.

My Secondaries

• Big Game Hunter
• Kingslayer: Gravis Captain
• Engineers: Trojan, Guardsmen

Their Secondaries

• Kingslayer: Gallant
• Headhunter
• Big Game Hunter

The Summary

Alright, here we go. Alternating deployment. We’re playing longways. I have significantly more drops than Alex, so at least I can deploy my Tank Commander last and try and save some of them if I go second. Granted, I feel like if I go second. I’m likely losing 4 vehicles right out of the gate, which is gonna be game right there.

Alex deploys almost all of his Marines and bikes on the front-most point of his deployment zone hanging out in the NOVA L. He’s got his Repulsors playing the center line of the board like a smart boi so he can hop to either side of the NOVA L. He wants to be able respond to either way I try and turn the board. I’ve got all my idiots hanging out pretty close to my backline. This match-up, all they’re going to do is yield kill points if they come within 30″ of Alex’s army. I want to try and force him to shoot them with weapons that he doesn’t really want to – Stormtalon assault cannons and such. Knighty Boi is deployed with his toes on the starting line, I need to get this guy up as soon as possible. If I can drawn some Heavy Laser Destroyer shots or Stormtalon missiles off of my Tank Commanders, he needs to do that. If Alex rolls poorly or I roll phenomenally, I might be able to squeeze the value out of him to kill most of his board control. Furthermore, he’s about the only play I’m going to have on the Gravis Captain, if I can get lucky and get in there with a Death Grip or something, that’s gonna get my 4 secondary points that I’m gonna have no shot on otherwise. Last to go down are my Tank Commanders. They’re huddled as well as they can be in the dead space of the NOVA L. I’m feeling decent, because he wouldn’t be able to see 3 of my Tank Commanders and fire twice with the Repulsors. Granted, he will probably just kill 1 Tank Commander and my artillery pieces in a single turn so I’m not sure how much it’s actually gonna matter.

We roll to go first. Alex rolls a 4. I roll a 5. I breath a huge sigh of relief. I have a shot bois! I Old Grudges his forward most Repulsor, reveal the Relic of Lost Cadia, and run the Gallant straight at him. If I don’t kill TWO WHOLE Repulsors to open this match, Alex is going to be picking up 3 tanks of his choice each turn between the surviving 2 Repulsors and Stormtalons. I open with Pask with his battle cannon/hunter killer into the Old Grudges Repulsor, and his lascannon into the rear one. I need to do about 4-5 damage between the battle cannon/hunter killer to stay on pace here, and I need the lascannon to procc Overlapping Fields of Fire on the rear Repulsor. The idea here is that I can lay my S9 shooting into the rear guy and reliably take him down with my re-roll 1’s to wound, and lay my S8 shooting into the front guy and take him down with my full wound re-rolls, putting me in the game. Pask does 1 wound to the front Repulsor and 2 to the rear. Shit. Gotta stay on pace here though. Keep my head up. I’ve run the numbers… I gotta trust my math, if I don’t get ’em both I’m screwed anyways. I Overlapping Fields of Fire the rear non-OG Repulsor.

I open up with my flat 3 damage battle cannon, this is could be the shooting that’s going to make or break this game. Roll up my shooting: 12 shots. After all is said and done I’ve got Alex rolling for 9 4+ saves on the front Repulsor. He makes 7 out of 9 saves. I’m pretty deflated, my two heavy hitters have already shot and I’m looking at less than 10 wounds inflicted on these things between the two of them. I continue my turn 1 shooting, sticking to my meticulously rehearsed shooting plan. I end my shooting phase with the OG Repulsor killed and the other sitting on a single wound. Gallant has no charge available on turn 1, so I pass my turn.

Okay this isn’t so bad, the Iron Hands supplement isn’t out yet. Sidenote: Once the IH supplement comes out, I’m so beyond screwed in this match-up. I have no idea what I’m going to do. So he’s not going to be shooting at his highest bracket, the math says that the potential for a Repulsor to one shot a Tank Commander goes down significantly if you can at least get it hitting on 4’s, and Repulsors one shotting Tank Commanders is the primary thing we’re trying to avoid here. That’s the thing that’s going to knock me out of this game the quickest.

Alex starts his turn 1. Moveblocks the Gallant on the left side of the NOVA Ls, and shift his Repulsors to the right side of the board where the bulk of my Tank Commanders took their firing angles. He finishes my Relic Tank Commander with his Stormtalons; he had taken 6 wound from Alex’s first Repulsor firing when he died. Alex opens up with his bracketed Repulsor. He one shots Pask. Shiiiiiiiiiiit this is really bad. Next Repulsor fires and takes down the third Tank Commander on the right side of the board.

While this isn’t completely unexpected… by the Emperor, it’s exactly how I didn’t want his turn to go. I’m heading into turn 2 thinking; Okay, not so bad. I need a stronk turn 2 shooting phase. If I can finish the 3 wound Repulsor and take a good 8-12 wounds off of the other somehow I might be able to pull this off.

Turn 2: I can’t pull this off. I finished the 3 wound Repulsor, but between the Manticore and 2 Basilisks, I couldn’t wound the third Repulsor a single time. Turn 2 Alex picks up the last Tank Commander with Stormtalons, a Basilisk with his Repulsor, and finishes the Gallant with his small arms from everything else.

At this point, there’s no way I’m coming back from this. I’ve got one turn left of shooting before my Manticore and Basilisk are completely vaporized by Alex’s shooting. I’ve got one play to squeeze some more points out of this shitshow though. Let loose my shooting into the Repulsor in case I get wildly lucky. Turn 3 Alex kills my Basilisk, and I get lucky and my Manticore survives the Stormtalons.

I fire one last time with the Manticore to try and get ‘Kill One’ by magically acing the Repulsor, Combine Squad two squads of idiots, and use my charge/consolidations to wrap a depleted squad of Intercessors and get onto one of his backfield objectives. We’re just fishing for points at this point in the game. He kills my guys on his turn in melee, cleans up the Manticore, and tables me the following turn on turn 4.

The Takeaways

Alex did everything right this game. We were talking about it afterwards, neither one of use could identify a clear area where either of us misplayed. I felt like I only took the risks I needed to to get in the game, and they just didn’t pan out. He agreed that if I downed a second Repulsor on the top of turn 1, it would’ve been a VERY different game. But hey, sometimes it be like that. I always love when I get to play Alex, he’s a legit great player and I personally can’t wait for him to run rampant on the greater Maryland meta with his new Iron Hands Repulsors when the supplement comes out. It was the tightest game of the day with some really close and excited moments as top table should be.

The Score

Scott: 13 – Alex: 32
Result: Loss

 

Wrap Up

Alex took 1st, and I ended up in 4th. There was one other 3-0 player on the day, my teammate and friend Ken Knox, who took 2nd. One more player finished ahead of me, another friend of mine Ole H., finishing 2-0-1; who did so by pulling out a tie with his Dark Angels against YET ANOTHER friend and teammate, Shane Watts’ Genestealer Cults.

Overall, I was proud of my performance. Even though I didn’t end the day undefeated, I pride myself in the fact that I try to play every game to my best potential. Fighting to put as many points on the board as possible even when I’ve found myself in a game that I’m clearly losing. It was a shame to finish just shy of getting a prize in some of that sweet sweet store credit. But hey, I think the real prize is the friends I made along the way.