“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of Genestealer Cults, it was the epoch of Dark Angels… in short, it was a meta so far like the past meta that the only thing to do for it was to roll sixes and dodge the matchup” -Charles Dickens, when asked about Arks of Omen meta.

Welcome again to The Badman Chronicles! Previously on this series, I spoke about my games in the Parasbine Secundus Crusade campaign during the first campaign cycle. My Chaos Space Marines of the Warhost of the Soulbinder met the Astartes of Strike Force Gladius four times in the field, and four times repelled their attempts to secure a beach head at Miltner’s Docks. Getting these Crusade games in was a nice sabbatical from competitive play, but like moth to flame I’m drawn back in to the tournament scene to prove my mettle.

I ended up playing in two different GTs in the space of three weeks: first was the Heroic Scale Gamers GT and the second was the Clutch City GT. Rather than write two articles back to back about these events, I’ve decided to talk about both of them in this article. God help me.

Before I do though, lets talk about the hobby progress I’ve made!

Hobby Progress

I know in my heart of hearts the first question on your mind is “Did Dan finish those damn Havocs, I’m so tired of hearing about them?”

I did, I finally did. And they turned out pretty good.

Chaos Space Marine Havocs. Credit: Swiftblade

I also finished painting that Word Bearers Terminator Praetor to use in crusade. The armor has engraved runes that don’t really show well on black armor, even with edge highlights. So, since I plan to give this model the Exalted Possession warlord trait anyways, I thought it would be a neat effect to make the runes glow. I think with the OSL from the flame mace it doesn’t pop quite as much as I’d like, but I’m still satisfied with it.

Chaos Lord in Terminator Armor. Credit: Swiftblade

Lastly, before the Heroic Scale Gamers GT I took a few days to touch up my Chaos Knights with some freehand and clean up details. The freehand came out really well, especially considering I was painting in white which can be a very frustrating color and a bit chalky.

For each design, I would use Celestra Grey to dot out a rough outline of the design, then connect the dots between them and fill in with a few thin coats. I would then apply a few highlights of Army Painter Spaceship Interior, followed by highlights of White Scar. I shaded some areas of the design with Apothecary White and Soulblight Grey to add depth to the designs. Last, add a little weathering from Black Legion and the design would be done. Here’s some pictures of a few of my favorites.

A few of my favorite bits of freehand to chaos up these models.

So with hobby progress done, lets hop into the first event: The Heroic Scale Gamers GT

Heroic Scale Gamers GT

This was the smaller of the two events at 50 players, hosted at Dragons Lair Comics and Games here in town. More of my friends were going to this event than Clutch, and this would be my first major event of 2023, so I was pumped for this GT. My goal is to go 3-3. I think it’s a little early to expect the 4-2 winning record that I set for myself earlier this year without more practice. 4-2 is there though, in my mind, taunting me. I want it bad. Maybe too bad.

Dan’s Heroic Scale List: Click to Expand

I’m running the same list I got practice with being the ringer at the last RTT I ran in January. The shooting from the 4 executioners came in pretty handy, and with a meta full of targets that don’t like being shot by executioners I hope I can find success with them again.

The terrain is uniform across all the tables, is good quality MDF stuff, and all painted, which is nice. The event is also using layouts similar to the GW Open layouts I get most of my practice on. The thing about the terrain I don’t love is the big open doorways on the large ruins. Each ruin had a large open archway on one of the walls that makes it very difficult to hide models from LOS inside the ruin. When I played last year on this terrain with my Chaos Marines, it meant that often my cheap objective holder cultists could get blasted away from holding a point pretty easily if I wasn’t careful. With Chaos Knights, I hope it means I get to do the blasting, and at least the tall walls of the ruins mean I can hide my war dogs inside.

Onto the event itself!

Day One

I walk into Dragon’s Lair excited for Warhammer and get to catching up with my friends. Round one pairings are always wild, but I feel pretty okay as long as I don’t pair into Guard. I have no game plan into Guard. I’ve seen the Guard list that Astros Militarum team mate Carmine Battitsa is running, it’s real nasty.

Boy actually pairing into Carmine round one would be a nightmare, it’s pretty much the exact pairing I wouldn’t want to happen. He’s got a friendly score to settle with me too, he worked pretty hard on a very elaborate display board and I gave the whole thing low points at the last RTT because I didn’t have time for paint judging and needed to eat. We’re cool now, we talked it over and I’ve since made RTT lunches longer, but I bet he would still love to kick my ass to mars. He and I are on the same team in BCP though, there’s no way we would get paired into-

Game 1- Carmine Battista’s Guard

Mission: Data-Scry Salvage

Carmines List: Click to Expand

This is the one thing we didn’t want to happen.

What happens next is a brutal, brutal beatdown. I go second, and while I do get wildly hot dice on turn one for my saves I just am not prepared for the matchup.

Kasrkin arrive to take away my happiness forever

I strat reserved a bunch of shooting as well, which Carmine thought was the better play but in retrospect I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I had just deployed more on the board I would’ve been able to get a better counterpunch in turn 1 and maybe actually score points in this game. As it goes down, I’m tabled by the end of turn 3 having scored very little. Carmine’s satisfied as my body lies broken in a smoking crater, and returns to supporting me and rooting for me for the rest of the event.

Loss, 19-100

Hey, early lunch though. Dragon’s Lair’s got beer, and that makes the sting of defeat much more palatable.

Game 2- Walker Stevensen’s Dark Angels

Mission: Conversion

Walker’s List: Click to Expand

So this was a stream game the aired on the Heroic Scale YouTube channel, and it’s the first time I’ve ever played on stream. If you want to watch it, I believe the VOD is still there. There really isn’t too much to say about the game itself, Walker is a newer player and doesn’t really have a list tuned to deal with my War Dogs. He’s a great dude, and I do my best to help him out as I can, but it’s still a pretty decisive victory in my favor.

What is notable is how much I sound like a Muppet on stream. Why ahs no one told me I have this discount Kermit the Frog voice? And if you took a shot every time I said “Great!” during the game, you’d be hospitalized before the end of battle round one. It was rough on my psyche to listen to.

Win, 100-38

Alright, now we’re back on track. Blowout loss and blowout win, so I’m at a net neutral. Onto the last game of the day.

Game 3- Colin Coon’s Red Corsairs

Mission: The Scouring

Colin’s List: Click to Expand

When I see a Chaos Marine player, I can’t help but root for them a little bit, especially a player as nice as Colin. The amount of legionaries in his list, inside of durable land raiders, gives him some surprisingly good primary score power here since Red Corsairs trait counts each legionary are two models. Plus, each legionary squad is a decent combat threat in it’s own right, and the lascannons on the Predators and Land Raider are a reasonably substantial threat to my War Dogs.

Legionaries will struggle to deal with War Dogs though, and while he has a strong primary scoring ability mine may be even stronger with all these War Dogs. It won’t be an easy game for either of us, we roll off and he goes first. I’ve gone second all day, so I’m not surprised.

Only one can be the most Chaos of the all

The predators pick up some War Dogs early, but Colin is very conservative in his turn one. He mostly hangs back as much as possible here, which gives me plenty of room to set up for a big push turn 2. Turn two he keeps the discolord back and moves up a Land Raider to block me out. I charge a Karnivore forward and punch out the Land Raider, since Slaughterclaws are pretty good at that. The Legionaries he sends to hold the middle objective get picked up as well, shooting drops them to two remaining and at that point I out-obsec him. The Master of Executions inside the Land Raider picks up one War Dog, and the next turn picks up another, while the Lord Discordant finally gets in the mixup and also starts putting down my War Dogs. He’s also able to use the predators and the MoE to keep me off Storm of Darkness almost the entire game.

Colin’s Lord Discordant does a great job blending some War Dogs in the endgame

It’s not enough to shift the momentum for Colin though, as the War Dogs are still good enough at outing down legionaries that I score Grind consistently throughout the game and keep Colin’s primary score low. Ruthless Tyranny also maxes out very quickly. In the end, Colin’s Chas Marines put up a great fight, but I win the game pretty comfortably.

Win, 86-68

With day one over, I walk away feeling great about 2-1. If I win one game tomorrow, I hit my 3-3 benchmark. If I win 2, I achieve my goal of a winning record at my first GT of the year. I go have dinner at The Hobbit Café here in town with Andrew, Hero of the Imperium, and we talk about Warhammer over craft beer, good food and Lord of the Rings theming. We end the night by getting coffees and a key lime pie to split, like we always do when we come to Hobbit. Dudes rock.

Day 2

On Day 2, I don the Badman shirt. 4-2 is in sight. The only thing between me and a winning record is 3 games. Lets do it, baby.

Game 4: Casey Robert’s Iron Hands

Mission: Secure Missing Artefacts

Casey’s List: Click to Expand

Oh, Iron Hands huh? Not a great matchup for me. Especially since I go second again.

Casey’s got a ton of firepower in this list, and from turn one onwards that’s exactly the strength he is able to lean on. His contemptor pretty reliably kills a War Dog almost every time it shoots, and he has plenty of stuff to pick up a second nearly every turn of the game. What his list struggles with is Primary scoring, and if I want to win I need to strangle him out on the primary. I play cagey turn one until the drop pod comes down, and at that point I push forward hard with my knights on my long table edge. I’m able to shoot the devastators, and the War Dog with Blessing of the Dark Master picks up the drop pod on the charge.

This ends up being critical for me, since it means the War Dog becomes favored and is now transhuman on hit rolls as well as denying rerolls. Plus, this War Dog is now on the objective that I’ve selected to be his Priority objective for the mission tertiary and controls it. So on turn three, Casey puts almost his entire army into trying to shoot this War Dog off the objective but comes up short. Also, his attempt to sneak Infiltrators onto the point on the top left of the table fails as well after I roll hot dice on Warping Presence and do 3 mortals to the squad. I keep pushing forward and continue to pressure him off of the primary.

Iron Hands shooting can’t hurt you if it can’t hit you

On the start of turn four, I use the dread table ability to reduce his leadership by an additional 2 points, which combined with Gheist Storm prevents his Vanguard Veterans from getting any charges off to keep my primary score down, and I’m able to keep the pressure up until the end of the game. Despite getting paired into the meta nightmare matchup, I get the win here and guarantee I’ll be 3-3 at least.

Game 5- David Sokoloski’s Space Wolves

Mission: Tear Down their Icons

David’s List: Click to Expand

I’ve played David a while ago at one of the Ettin Games RTTs in town, he’s good people and I’m looking forward to the game. What I’m not looking forward to is the level of melee nastiness that he’s bringing to the table.

After talking with David a bit pre-game, I figure out two things. First, that the threat range of most of his army is “I’ll get there”, and second thing is that the damage output he has in melee is “I’ll pick up what I charge”. So I don’t want to be as aggressive as I normally like to be with my Chaos Knights, lest I give him easy charges and feed him my knights. I’m going to stay back more than I usually do and try to whittle him down as much as I can before he crashes into me and I start having problems.

Remarkably, I go first, which is a good sign. It is also the only game in the games I’ll talk about in this article where I go first.

So turn one I only move one knight, the Karnivore with Beguiling Majesty, up to hold the center objective to score Ruthless Tyranny, and keep much of the rest of my army back to prevent a turn one charge. This ends up working great, David pushes up and also brings in his devastator drop pod but makes some unlucky rolls, so he doesn’t pick up as many War Dogs that turn as he would’ve liked to. Turn two, my Executioner Autocannons go harder than I’ve ever seen them go, my shooting picks up the Thunderwolf Calvary and two squads of his Wulfen that are stuck out in the open. At this point, I can see on David’s face that he’s understandably frustrated by this, and when one of his buddies asks how the game is going he remarks that he thinks it’s probably already over. I don’t feel as confident in my win as he does though, there’s still plenty of combat nastiness on the table, and I’m pretty stuck on my side of the board.

It turns out I was right to be worried, David’s turn 3 charge is pretty devastating, picking up several war dogs when his remaining Wulfen and Chaplain reach my lines. What ends up being a complete game changer though is his Skyclaws coming out of deepstrike and passing their Gheist Storm Dread test, then making a charge out of Deep strike onto my home objective held by one stalker. I do have the CP for an interrupt here, which I use on the Stalker to try and pick up the Skyclaws, but the Stalker fails to even get one wound through on it’s attacks, and gets stuck in combat with nowhere to fall back to. I’m forced to wheel a War Dog around the long ruin to regain control of my objective, while David picks up the Stalker in the following combat phase and makes a huge points swing here. From this point, I’m not able to put on any primary pressure, and David clever use of marine sticky objectives and Guerilla Tactics lets him score RBD on all four table quarters while dominating primary while his Judiciar and remaining characters I don’t pick up keep on destroying my dogs in combat. I do what I can, but in a nailbiter of a game I lose 82-92. I think had David failed that charge with his Skyclaws, or had I picked up the squad on the interrupt, it would’ve probably ended up in my favor, but it is a dice game and David also had a string of very bad rolls early on. We both walk away from the table feeling like we had a great game, and wish each other luck on game six.

This game was so intense I almost forgot to grab pictures, but I did take a pic of the hero Judiciar

Game Six: Bradley Langford’s Custodes

Mission: Recover the Relics

Bradley’s list: Click to Expand

Custodes are durable, good lord. I knew they were durable before but having not played them recently I forgot how hard to shift the golden dweebos really can be.

On this final mission, the terrain is adjusted to make some longer sight lines for shooting, which is very exciting news for my executioners. His list has two bike squads and the bike captain, and these are my primary targets at the start of the game. Weirdly, the bikes are more fragile than his infantry since he cant use Arcane Genetic Alchemy or The Emperor’s Auspice on them, so I have a much better chance of dealing with them quickly than footslogging Custodians. If I can take out these mobile elements of his list first, my stuff is fast enough that I can keep good board control the whole game and take home a 4-2 record. I try to keep a level head, but I’m hungry for this last win.

Turn one, he leaves only 3 Shield Custodes on his home objective and they’re in the open for shooting. So I think “Easy target, lets take these out and swing primary early.”

I do manage to kill these 3 Custodes, but only on the very last Executioner shooting at them. With him popping transhuman and no rerolls, it’s a huge firepower commitment. At least this time I get lucky.

The next turn he commits his bikes to the center and the bottom objective on my side of the board, and I respond by using my -1 damage in combat stratagem to stunt the bikes charge on one of my War Dogs and then picking up all the bikes the following turn. His Shield Captain on Jetbike and the deepstrikes he brings in do cause problems for me, and then Trajann Valoris causes BIG problems for me, but by turn 4 I use the Dread table to turn off Obsec and shut down his primary scoring. While much of my army is stuck getting walloped by Custodians in my deployment zone, I have enough all over the board that I keep scoring well the whole game and take the win.

Win, 85-76

The first event of the year is a huge success for me. Not only do I reach my goal I set for myself at the start of this year by having a winning record at a major event, but I also take home a prize for best in faction for Chaos Knights and snag the award for best painted for the event. My goal was best painted at an RTT, so best painted at a GT? Incredible.

As I turn to walk away with the best painted trophy, the organizer tells the crowd “Watch out for him folks, he’s a bad guy!” I stop, turn around, and correct him into the mic.

“I’m not a bad guy, I’m the Badman”.

The Best in Faction and Best painted army, with the trophies to prove it

Clutch City GT

Day One

I haven’t been sleeping well, so I roll up to Clutch City pretty tired already and running behind. I’ve made some edits to the list, namely taking advantage of more dreadblade stuff and swapping out an executioner for an extra Brigand. I’m still a little conflicted on Brigands, but maybe this will be their time to shine.

Dan’s Clutch City List: Click to Expand

Clutch city has different kinds of terrain and layouts on every table, which I don’t love honestly. All the terrain is good quality, but it makes the event feel very cobbled together when I have to know multiple styles of terrain layout and keywords. Also, the tables are very low, so my back immediately feels not great leaning over to move models. To the credit of Clutch City GT, they have a QR code on every table that links to the mission, terrain layout for the mission, and exact measurements for that terrain on every table. This rocks, and I honestly might start stealing this idea for my own RTTs.

Time for more Warhammer. Oh god.

Game One: David Villareal’s Salamanders

Mission: Abandoned Sanctuaries

David’s List: Click to Expand

Well, this is not very “Dodge the Matchup” of me.

David is a very cool dude. He was all smiles and energy, and happily made sure I was familiar with what his list could do as we got set up. He offers to let me borrow his spare neoprene objective markers for the event since I don’t own a set, and even buys me a beer after we roll off for first turn so I can get my day drinking off right.

All of this to say, in a weird reversal of how this usually goes, David is a excellent person who promptly dumpstered my sorry Chaos butt.

Once again, I made the mistake of strat reserving my executioners like I did against Carmine. Which once again meant I didn’t have the firepower to slow down the Melta nightmare turn one before the rest of the game I got blasted to pieces. Also his character dread makis his deepstrike charge and takes an entire army’s worth of shooting to go down. It’s a bad matchup for me, and my dice are cold too boot.

Beer’s good though, and it’s hard to be upset with David. Good people, he is.

Loss, 35-92

Alright, that was bad, I didn’t dodge the matchup there at all but that’s okay. I’ll get a better pairing next round to keep it a tighter game and then-

Game 2: Robert Moreland’s Imperial Guard

Mission: Tide of Conviction

Robert’s List: Click to Expand

Let me tell you a story.

It’s November 20^th, 2021. I’m at day two of the Games Workshop Warhammer Open in Austin. The night before, I met up with one of my best and oldest friends that I hadn’t seen in a very long time and we hit up Austin’s infamous sixth street. We drank and laughed till the bars closed, we meandered back to the venue and talked in the lobby for an hour before my friend caught an uber home and I went to bed. So that morning, I was horribly hungover, tired, and worst of all I looked terrible.

I paired into Robert Moreland, who’s one of the better known players in the Texas scene and played his Guard. Whoever won this game would go into the 2-2 pairing bracket for the rest of the event, and the loser would go into the 1-3.

Despite feeling like more headache than person for most of the game, Robert’s dice were exceptionally cold and my Drukhari rolled hot. I take the win on a game that probably should’ve been his, but I don’t care about. I knew Robert was a better player than me, but I won, even though I was hungover. And when Robert would win the 1-3 bracket of the event, I felt a prideful smirk on my face. Robert had won that bracket, and who was the one who had sent him there?

I did, that’s who.

So, when I saw that pairing for game 2, it felt like some sort of cosmic Warhammer reckoning. The hangover game rematch, but I was sober. Oh no.

At first, Robert didn’t remember me. I reminded him we’ve played before, at the Warhammer event in Austin. I was the Drukhari player.

“Oh, I remember that game!”, he cheerfully said.

Oh no. The reckoning.

War Dog Executioner pictured begging Imperial Guardsmen to please let him have the objective

While Robert did win this game, it ended up being a pretty good game. He had far less Executioner Plasma Cannons than Carmine did, so my knights had a little bit better chance, and turn one and two his dice were once again really bad. I guess the beer from round one couldn’t get me enough hangover luck to pull me through the whole game though, by turn three I just didn’t quite have enough left on the board to keep him off primary scoring and a Plasma Executioner Russ that was on two wounds remaining after my turn 2 shooting didn’t finally go down until the end of turn 5 from Ravenous Pterroshades.

Robert was a good opponent, and despite the loss I wasn’t very crushed about it. It felt right, a natural conclusion to the hangover game I’ve spent years bragging about.

Loss, 76-93

Alright round three has to be a good matchup now, round one and two were awful matchups for Chaos Knights round three will be-

Game 3: Koen van Klooster’s T’au

Mission: Conversion

Koen’s List: Click to Expand

Who have I hurt? Why does this keep happening to me?

While the matchup is very, very unfavorable for Chaos Knights, Koen is a newer player to the game and isn’t quite able to take advantage of it. Additionally, this table is based on UKTC terrain, so theres plenty of LoS blocking to be had for me. He has a Stormsurge, which will he a problem, but he’s nervous I’ll shoot it to death and puts it in Strategic reserves.

I push forward with my War Dogs and try to put melee pressure on his stuff, as well as take advantage of his lack of Obsec. For a while, it doesn’t look food for me. T’au are very good at killing War Dogs and the terrain makes it difficult for me to maneuver. Once I’m able to apply -1 to hit when shooting me outside 12” from the dread table though, the onslaught of T’au shooting relents long enough for me to get stuck in and from there start getting some big point turns. Despite the third terrible faction matchup in a row, I come away with my first win of the event.

Chaos Knights bullying Crisis Suits in Melee

We all go to Hobbit again afterwards, this time our friends T and David Miracle join Andrew and I at dinner. Andrew didn’t play at the event, but we have a bit to commit to here and he shows up anyways. Once again, we get coffees and a Key Lime pie after dinner. T and David don’t get coffee and don’t get a Key Lime pie to share, but they just buy their own each to eat? It’s weird, I don’t get it honestly.

Day 2

I wake up only half an hour before the start of round 4, and rush out the door to make it on time. On the drive, I’m exhausted and think about the mess I’ve left in the apartment. I’ve had no time to clean on Friday or Saturday, and my wife has been away this weekend for work. I played at Heroic Scale Gamers GT two weeks earlier, and the week prior was the Asgard RTT I run monthly. I think about it, and if I play all three games today I will have played 15 games in two weeks time between GTs and Crusade.

I realized there, on my way to day 2 of this GT, that maybe this was too much Warhammer.

I paid to be here though, so I decide I’ll play one game and then drop. If I win, I break even at 2-2. If I lose, cool. The last three opponents have been great so as long as this opponent is good people then I’ll get four great games of Warhammer this weekend. What more could I ask for?

Game Four: Robert Wood’s Imperial Knights

Mission: Data Scry Salvage

Robert’s List: Click to Expand

Robert was a good dude, and we had the closest game of any of the ones I’ve spoken about today.

Initially, it looks pretty good for me. He goes first, but he isn’t able to pick up any of my knights on the first turn of shooting. In return, I’m able to get a turn one charge off with a Karnivore and shoot off another Armiger with Executioners. Turn two, his big knights come in from strategic reserve and he does start picking up War Dogs, but not as many as I was worried he would. He makes the charge with his big warlord knight into the Brigand holding the top objective, but I get crazy lucky and the War Dog Survives, keeping the point for me. At this point, I figured I had the game made in the shade.

The problem was that even though I was up on attrition here, Robert was doing a great job to make sure I couldn’t stop him from scoring. Every time I get close to his deployment zone, I can’t quite make it all the way there to keep his score on Yield No Ground low. I charge the big knight with two stalkers, since the Brigand is doing the Storm of Darkness action and can’t fall back. He does interrupt after the first one swings, but again I get really lucky and he fails to kill it. The second stalker puts down the big knight on it’s attack.

The next big knight to get in there though finishes off both stalkers, and now since the army is virtuous is also Obsec so the Brigand alone can’t keep the objective. I’m now starting to run out of ways to deal with the big knight, and Robert’s remaining handful or Armigers are doing the lords work of scoring. The one turn I try to shoot the big it very quickly turns out to be a mistake, so I turn my guns on the one Armiger on an objective I can see, which does die.

And then it stands back up on a 4+ thanks to a stratagem Robert played at the perfect time. Oh no.

On the final turn, Robert had done an incredible job with the comeback. In order to win, I needed to control three objectives, which meant I had to kill the last armiger on 4 wounds left which had stood up the turn before. I try to kill it in shooting, it survives with one wound. I have to charge with a War Dog Executioner, who’s only attacks are it’s kicky feet.

The War Dog decides to be a hero that day, and it works. I kick the last wound off the Armiger, and score enough points to put me up by 3 at the end of the game. It was an ending so intense I needed a moment just to come down from it. Honestly, I couldn’t ask for a better game to end my Clutch time on.

Win, 86-83

I pack my stuff, thank Robert again, and say bye to the crew. I clean the apartment and even get to take an afternoon nap. I pick up groceries, and my wife comes home without anything to worry about. We have a quick dinner, and half an hour later she’s crashed on the couch while we watch TV together. Maybe it’s not as cinematic an ending as the other GT, but it does still feel like a pretty happy ending to this GT if you ask me.

Next time, its back to Crusade, as the Warhost of the Soulbound once again battles the forces of the Imperium on Parasbine Secundus!

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.

The Badman Chronicles, Part 4: A Tale of Two GTs

Hobby Progress

Heroic Scale Gamers GT

Day One

Day 2

Clutch City GT

Day One

Day 2

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The Badman Chronicles, Part 4: A Tale of Two GTs

Hobby Progress

Heroic Scale Gamers GT

Day One

Day 2

Clutch City GT

Day One

Day 2

Related

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