Rainbow Warriors at A Grimdark New Year’s

My 2024 was surprisingly event-light for me. I normally like to try to make it to most of the big Warhammer tournaments in my area, along with some the high profile national ones. However, due to moving and other mishegas like hurricanes, I only ended up going to two actual competitive events. The first was A Grimdark New Year’s in early January 2024, and the second was participating in the spec-ops portion of the Baltimore Goonhammer Open’s narrative event, where more competitive-minded individuals are sequestered to avoid ruining the days of the more casual players. I’m not counting more “for-fun” events like the Nova or Grand Narratives, as winning isn’t really the goal at those.

The Spec-Ops games really opened my eyes to how out of practice I was. I did pretty well at the Tampa Open in 2023, going 6-2 and winning the Lieutenant’s bracket (ed: 4-0 after starting 2-2). However, about nine months of inactivity dulled my senses and I did pretty poorly at the GHO. My main memory of the event is Scott’s triple Rogals Dorn grinding my Rainbow Warriors into the dirt on two non-consecutive occasions.

The list I was running was a fairly standard early 10th edition generic marines beater: Aggressors with a beatface Gravis Captain in a Land Raider Redeemer, a pair of Redemptors holding the flanks, a big block of Bladeguard with a Judiciar, and a 10 man strong unit of Hellblasters with Fire Discipline. It did me well in 2023, but by mid 2024 everyone knew how to beat it and with balance changes it just didn’t hit the way it used to.

I needed a change. I hit up 40k Stats’s top results by faction page and started browsing the various marine lists. I found a couple that I liked in the Dark Angels section – the concept of a Dark Angels Gladius list looked like it could be a fun time. The Deathwing Knights and Inner Circle companions units were a little lackluster when the codex dropped, and had just both gotten huge glow ups. The models were also gorgeous as hell, and I definitely wanted to paint them in my scheme.

I’m not the fastest painter, so I wasn’t able to just jump straight into a meta list, but over the last six months I’ve made some pretty good progress.

My List for the Event

The Gladius Detachment has taken quite a few hits while I’ve been preparing to run it. Most notably, the Fire Discipline enhancement has been completely gutted, no longer allowing the gladius access to that sweet lethal sussy five plussy. GW didn’t even have the courtesy to reduce the price of the enhancement down from that sky-high 40-point mark.

My List: Rainbow Warriors - Dark Angels Gladius Task Force - click to expand

I am still rocking the Eradicator + Biologis in a Repulsor combo, even with the nerf. They desperately miss Sustained Hits though, and truly are a shadow of their former self. I wish I could afford the 40 points for it, but it just isn’t feasible. I still need them in the list in order to hopefully push through other tough-to-kill units like opposing Deathwing Knights, C’tan, and Land Raiders. The Repulsor Executioner is my other primary shooting piece. It can hit hard, when the Heavy Laser Destroyer decides to not roll a 2 to wound at least. Hopefully it doesn’t come up against too many invulnerable saves.

The rest of the list is a pretty standard modern Gladius. I’d like to get one more squad of Deathwing Knights in there. With the change to Armour of Contempt, I cannot rely nearly as much on the ability to march one directly into the line of fire and escape mostly unscathed. Fifteen is still quite the tall order to handle, though.

I have some flexibility with how and where I attach the Judiciar and Azrael. Az can go with the Inner Circle when I expect them to be shot with high AP weapons and the Judiciar is better with them if there are more combat threats. The one hiccup is taking on armies which can fight on death – Az might be better there, but mostly just play it by ear. The other character then hangs out with the Assault Intercessors, and I hope not to forget their ability to re-roll wound rolls (I will forget this).

The Combi-weapon LT, Scouts, jump pack and regular Intercessors, and ATV are my scoring pieces. I still need a ton of practice with Scouts – I almost always put them in a bad position and lose them too early. This is my first time using the LT again in quite a while. He’s a fun unit but playing around that 9.001″-12″ kill zone is harder than it seems.

There’s a full army shot up at the top from the day of, but I’m also going to attach some glamor shots as I’ve worked hard on them and haven’t really had a place to put them yet:

Rainbow Warriors Azrael by Craig “MasterSlowPoke” Sniffen

Rainbow Warriors Captain by Craig “MasterSlowPoke” Sniffen

Rainbow Warriors Inner Circle Companions by Craig “MasterSlowPoke” Sniffen

Rainbow Warriors Deathwing Knights by Craig “MasterSlowPoke” Sniffen

Rainbow Warriors Jump Pack Intercessors by Craig “MasterSlowPoke” Sniffen

Deathwing Knights with Maces of Absolution by Craig “MasterSlowPoke” Sniffen

I also included a regular Captain converted from Lazarus in there. He’s not in the list, but I think he’s my favorite model I painted in 2024 so I had to include him in the cohort.

Arrival

The Grimdark New Year’s is being held in a new venue for Battle Ready Games, the Rainwater Conference center. It’s a pretty nice venue, especially for Valdosta, Georgia. This was a bit of a last-minute scramble – the normal venue was destroyed in last year’s hurricanes, and it looked like the event would have to be cancelled. They were able to find this place that had availability, but the cost was far greater, to the point where it might just not be feasible. The players rallied and voted to not have traditional prize support in order to throw as much money into the venue as possible. Regional stores like The Nerd Store in Albany and Rose City Tabletop Gaming in Thomasville donated some stock to be used as prizes, and it was very much appreciated.

As I was setting up my army, I looked around the room. This isn’t a huge event – about 40 players in attendance, and most of these are very good. There’s at least 3 Art of War members, local titans like Mark Perry, and nearly everyone is wearing a competitive team jersey like By Brush and Bolter, the Tampa Bay Corsairs, or the Hunter Killers. This is a room full of sharks, and my lack of experience frightens me a bit.

My normal goal of at least 3-2 is going to be hard to win, hopefully I don’t draw one of the big sharks round 1.

Round 1: vs. Nick Nanavati’s Genestealer Cults

Well, fuck.

I drew one of the short straws and matched first thing into Nick’s new Final Day GSC army, which he was using here to get practice for the LVO. Spoiler: He did pretty well with it at LVO, taking it to a 5-1 finish and dropping a round to Josh Roberts’ Ultramarines.

Round 1 - Nick Nanavati - Final Day GSC - click to expand

I listened to our video on Final Day when that Grotmas detachment dropped, but seeing as there were 30 of the damn things I barely remembered what it did. Nick thankfully gave me a quick overview before the game started. There is a lot of synergy in this detachment, and you get a LOT of value out of about 500 points spent on Tyranids.

Mission: A (Take and Hold, Raise Banners, Tipping Point) – Layout 2

I am going first.

This is actually my first ever game on layout 2, I somehow have avoided playing it for nearly two years. It constrains sight lines in a very interesting way – theres a straight shot down the center, but getting that angle isn’t the easiest.

One thing I will see myself saying a lot over this tournament report is that my ability to judge threat ranges without measuring them is sorely lacking. I’ve been playing 40k a long time, nearly 15 years, and I’m still stuck in that move 6″, charge 2d6″ mindset. It’s very different when Genestealers move 8″, then advance, and then charge.

Nick deployed with most of his main combat units – a big Purestrain and Patriarch brick, and a ten man metamorph unit in a goliath deployed centrally. I felt the best move going forward would be to push hard on both flanks and cede the center to him. On the left side he had a small unit of genestealers and a Lictor, and a Deathleaper and another lictor holding the other flank. In both cases I was just short of victory. On the left, my JPIs only killed 4/5 Genestealers, and I messed up and forgot to pile in my Assault Intercessors to finish the job. On the right, I advanced up my Invader and only did 5/6 wounds to the Lictor holding the objective there, then failed the charge with my DWK, allowing Nick to score a frankly obscene number of points with a near dead bug.

Nick responded by rapid Ingressing a 10 strong Heavy Mining Tool Hybrids unit on my top left backfield, and surged the central Genestealers to the left to eliminate everything over there. I counter-rapid ingressed my second unit of DWK in position to heroically intervene against the Hybrids after they charged my repulsor. Armour of Contempt still works pretty good in combat, so I was able to save my Repulsor and eliminate the Hybrids with minimal damage. On the right, the Nick’s counter of the flamer Metamorphs and a bunch of ridgerunners totally collapsed that flank. I was able to get Deathleaper murdered by my DWKs for a clutch 5 points on Assassinate, but that opened them up to Final Day’s Avenge the Star Children stratagem, making them easy fodder for all the shooting on that side of the board. In the center, my Repulsors and ICCs made quick work of all the massive amount of Gargoyles, but otherwise they made very little progress.

I was largely able to hold onto my home and fought the left side to a standstill, but it just wasn’t enough and Nick ran away with the game for a 66-100 loss. I’m not broken up about it, though. A free coaching game is a great way to start a tournament.

Round 2: vs. Andy Powell’s Grey Knights

I played Andy at last year’s Grimdark New Year’s, in an exciting finale game that was a nailbiter 91-88 victory for me. I was stoked to play him again.

Round 2 - Andy Powell - Teleport Assault Grey Knights - click to expand

Andy opted to avoid the shiny newness of the Warpbane detachment in favor of the old reliable Teleport Assault. He’s running a skew list of 6 Dreadknights and 3 solo Librarians. It is quite scary, and something I haven’t played against since 9th edition.

Mission: A (Scorched Earth, Stalwarts, Search & Destroy) – Layout 2

Deja vu – I’m on the same exact table and orientation as last round. I’m going second.

My inexperience versus Dreadknights really bit in this game. I’ve played against Grey Knights quite a few times, but never a list like this. I should have ate a few minutes at the start of the game just looking at them in the app before the game started.

Because Grey Knights can just teleport everything around at will, doubly so in a small unit count list like this, I planned to be more reactive than having an actual plan here. The first turn was largely uneventful – he stuck some Strike marines out to estabish locus on his first turn, and I nosed out just enough to kill 4/5 of them. I should have pushed forward with the Invader and stolen the bottom right objective from the Callidus – instead I left it in a position where it just died for no benefit to me.

Turn two he got all 6 Dreadknights angles into my Repulsors. This is where I think I made a number of key blunders. First, not knowing that Dreadnights ignore cover on everything. Second, forgetting that popping smoke is an option – taking DKs down to 4+s to hit is pretty powerful, and isn’t activation limied like AoC. Third, I didn’t look at the card and took it on faith that Scorched Earth didn’t count the home objective for primary scoring. Fourth, I didn’t realize that Andy thought Repulsors were T10 until he was literally rolling the wounds on his 6th Dreadknight’s weapons. This is why I always announce the S v T when I’m rolling. I would have probably been in a much better spot if I had a little more experience. It was far too late to even attempt to think about asking to roll it back. I also should have been a litle more on the eye with premeasuring my oppoent’s moves – I’m only just now seeing that DKs have 8″ movement, and after pivots there were probably a few impossible moves made, though they did not end up really mattering to the result of the game.

At the end of the fusliade, my Repulsor was gone, I was down to 2 Eradicators, and my RepEx was smoking on 3 wounds remaining. My strikebacks netted me 2 dead Librarians (including one which was 360 no scoped by a Heavy Laser Destroyer) and 2 dead GMDKs. However, it just wasn’t enough. The remaining dreadknights corralled me into the center. With only combat units left, any attempt I could make to try and charge one would just see it Mists of Deimos into the aether and leave my guys standing in the wind.

In the end it came down to a disappointing 66-83 Loss. This was definitely a winnable game for me, and if we were to rerack I’m sure I could pull it out 50% of the time. Andy is a great opponent and I’m looking forward to our best-of-three match at next Grimdark New Year’s.

Round 3: vs. James Kurtz’s Space Wolves

0-2 is a disappointing way to start, but considering the average ELO of the room, it’s not as disheartening as it could have been. I was originally paired into Ron Newlin, a local team player to south Georgia, but after a repairing, I matched into James, another member of the same team.

Round 3 - James Kurtz - Champions of Fenris Space Wolves - click to expand

James is opting to try out the new Champions of Fenris detachment. I have no idea why GW decided having two Champions detachments for Space Wolves, it’s very confusing. He’s going Dreadnought and Terminator heavy here, relying on a big go-turn where Logan Grimnar gives a mighty awooo and grants everyone reroll charges and reroll hits.

Mission: M (Purge the Foe, Rapid Escalation, Crucible of Battle) – Layout 1

I’m going first.

I deploy just far enough back that James isn’t able to get out of his deployment zone on Turn 1 enough to threaten charges on me with his Thunderwolves or get a critical turn 1 Kill-Any purge score. On turn two I push hard into him – meltaing down enough TWCs to give my central Deathwing Knights room to comfortably wipe the squad on their charge, and dropping another squad of DWKs into his deployment to steal his home objective and score me Behind Enemy Lines. Both maneuvers are successful, and James is forced to drop his big Logan and friends Terminator squad in his own backfield to deal with my DWK. He charges a Brutalis, Wulfen Dread, and Arjac’s Terminator squad into the central Deathwing squad and wipe it out, while Logan’s squad is surprisingly able to eliminate the other  squad in his backfield single handedly. I should have given the old wolf king a little more respect.

Unfortunately for James this is all too little too late, and he’s not able to regain enough momentum to get back into the scoring game. The game ends in a 96-34 Win. I had a blast with James and I hope he enjoyed his weekend.

A 1-2 record is not exactly where I wanted to end day 1, but I was able to get a nice, early night’s sleep in and be well prepared for the next day. Having the hotel be within walking distance of the Rainwater center was an unexpected nicety.

Round 4: vs. Jonathan Thomas’s World Eaters

World Eaters were my last practice game before this weekend, so I was feeling a little hopeful about my chances. My friend’s list didn’t look anything like this, though:

Round 4 - Jonathan Thomas - Vessels of Wrath World Eaters - click to expand

A dirty thirty Terminators and the big man, Angron, himself. I’ve also not really read too much about Vessels – they were like the second to last Grotmas detachment and my brain was fried by too many Campbell name games to think too hard about them. Jonathan gave me the run down, including the key information that there is a blood surge strat. That ability is something I’m incapable of remembering most of the time, so at the very least I’m glad there’s no Berserkers here.

Mission: D (Scorched Earth, Swift Action, Tipping Point) – Layout 4

I’m going second.

Every time I play against Orks or World Eaters, I have to hold myself back. I want to play far more aggressively than I need to, when I need to be drawing them into a killzone. I tell myself this before every game against them.

When my turn comes around, I decide to play super aggressively. He’s advanced all three Terminator squads up the board, and I don’t think I can let them just get to me all at once. My Inner Circle companions are in my RepEx in the middle of my deployment there, and after he moves forward with his central termies, I’m only about 15″ away. With Assault Doctrine up, that should be an easy charge, and I can try to cripple them before Angron gets a chance to come in and try to save them. I’m hoping my native -1 to hit and AoC can let them survive long enough to then get all my meltaguns on him and send him back to the warp for as long as possible.

I roll a 2″ on my advance and fail the charge, even with a CP reroll. They’re hanging out in the wind. While fights first does help them, this is exactly where I don’t want to be. When Angron and the Terminators try get up and close to them, I play my Squad Tactics stratagem, and attempt to flee. I tell my opponent that I’m going to roll a 1. I roll 1.

This is another game where I need to be more cognizant of my opponent’s threat ranges – with a near free access to +2″ move and advance and charge, I am not nearly as safe as I think. On the bottom right, one of his Eightbound units gets a turn 1 charge off on my Scouts and wipes them out. I even thought that I had put them far enough back, but evidently not. My power sword Deathwing Knights move in to try to secure my backfield, but they flub their rolls and only kill two Eightbound, who promptly decides to somehow kill 2 DWKs before he eventually goes. In the center, Jonathan is sure to stay >9″ from my Combi-weapon LT, and blast him to smithereens with his own combi-weapons. This causes me to fail Sabotage, and that secondary becomes an albatross around my neck for the next few turns.

There is a silver lining, though – by staying that far away, and the mighty 1″ squad tactics move, his terminators fail their charge against the Inner Circle. Only Angron can make it in, and with some poor rolling and a lucky AoC, I only lose two Companions. I’m back in this.

My turn two, I declare Tactical Doctrine, and line all my guys up around the central terminators. During his turn, I rapid ingressed my mace DWKs, and my plan is to shoot down the terminators enough for my ICCs to easily dispatch them, while the mace DWK can easily take care of Angron, who was brought down to only 6 wounds by the ICCs last turn. I start by shooting the Eradicators into the terminators, ignoring the big red man staring them down. I kill two, and then Jonathan activates his Blood Surge stratagem. Damn it, I knew I was going to forget! I wanted to shoot down a lot more, and should have opened up with some grenades and the RepEx. No matter. I can call an audible and shoot down Angron instead. Every lascannon in my army misses. I do zero wounds to him with everything else. Back to the original plan.

These idiots, with 16 Anti Monster 4+ AP-2 D2 attacks, plus 5 Sustained Dev Wounds attacks, only do 4 wounds to Angron. One dies in shame. The depleted ICCs just don’t have enough juice to fully kill the remaining 8 terminators.

On the right side, my ATV tries to sabotage again, while my Sword DWKs are trying to hold their own against 10 Terminators. He’s able to pile in against the bike, and takes it down to a single remaining wound.

On his turn, his third brick of Terminators makes its appearance and takes a commanding lead in the center. My ATV just isn’t able to hang on and I have to have Sabotage in my hand for a third turn in a row. Jonathan’s terminator stocks are depleted, but I just don’t have the tools or score to realistically make a comeback. The game eventually ends in a crushing 37-94 Loss.

We both had terrible dice – this game was constantly swinging on failed charges and failed attacks. Definitely a memorable game, and probably my most entertaining one of the weekend. I hope to see Jonathan again at one of these tournaments.

I skipped lunch – today was the Adepticon registration day, and that is always a hot mess. Last year’s event was also on the registration day, and I actually dropped round 5 just to give myself enough time to register. Luckily lunchtime matched up perfectly with registration, and it only took half an hour of refreshing and frantically typing on my phone to get settled. I got mostly what I wanted, and walked back into the hall just as pairings went up.

Round 5: vs. Ron Newlin’s Dark Angels

After our near-pairing round 3, Ron is back! We’re both 1-3 at this point, so there’s no one getting sweaty to get a positive record, and we’re in for a great game.

Round 5 - Ron Newlin - Inner Circle Task Force Dark Angels - click to expand

Ron is running a different flavor of Dark Angels than I am – he’s got Azrael with a giant brick of Hellblasters, a Chaplain with a giant brick of Assault Terminators, a Judiciar lead squad of Bladeguard in a Land Raider Redeemer, and a smattering of smaller threats and tech pieces. It’s very similar to some of my older lists, so I feel comfortable playing against it.

Mission: N (The Ritual, Swift Action, Crucible of Battle) – Layout 4

I am going second.

Ron starts off going strong by deep striking his giant Assault Terminator blob in front of my lines in turn 1, and driving up the Redeemer near the center. I misdeployed and allowed his Redemptor to get a Macro-plasma shot into the Inner Circle, but luckily he only rolled a 1 for the number of shots and only two ICCs got vaporized.

He is able to make a charge off into my scouts with the Assault Termis, but my entire army then shoots the crap out of them, and the Inner Circle are able to just barely the entire squad in combat. I was actually hoping to leave the Chaplain alive – it would let me pile into him and avoid retribution. On the other side of the board, my Eradicators turn his Redeemer into slag – so sad when they never get to use their Flamestorm cannons.

Retribution came next turn, and the Azrael-lead Hellblasters destroy the rest of the Inner Circle, and leave my Azrael on 2 remaining wounds. He takes the center with his bladeguard, deep strikes in his Deathwing Knights in the top left, and I rapid ingress to threaten his Redemptor. Unfortunately for Ron, he fails both the deep strike charge and the Redemptor charge into my Knights.

On my turn two, my repulsors eliminate most of his Hellblasters, my Eradicators and Power Sword Deathwing Knights move to engage the Bladeguard in the center, and the Mace DWK threaten Ron’s Redemptor. I don’t have enough firepower to also deal with his squad of Deathwing Knights, so I advance my Jump Pack Intercessors and play rodeo clown in a ring around them, effectively neutralizing the Knights for a turn.

Ron doesn’t really have the momentum to come back from this, and the game ends in a 98-39 Win. Ron is a really nice guy, and I’m sure I’ll see him around at more Battle Ready Events.

Final Thoughts

I’m ending this event with a 2-3 record. I’m a little disappointed that I couldn’t get a win against any of the three stronger opponents of the weekend, but I’m out of practice and I had a severe knowledge gap to overcome. I’m hoping to get in a lot more practice this year, and hopefully I can bring a better showing to the next one.

I was lucky enough to win Best Painted at the awards show, and I’m absolutely stoked about that. There were some other strong armies in attendance and I didn’t think that was a sure thing.

I’m not sure what my next tournament is, but I want to at least make it out to one US Open. Only two this year is kind of disappointing, but I’d love to make an attempt for best overall at one of those. I think the shooting element of my army needs the most work. The Eradicators and RepEx occasionally did their job, but most of the time they just disappointed. I’ve picked up a couple Vindicator upgrade frames for my old Rhinos, and now I’m racing to get them on the table before they go to the big legends farm in the sky.

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