Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing trudge through the year 2022 toward some measure of competitive decency. You may recall that my last update was only a week ago, in which I regaled everyone with my tales of a 4-2 finish at the Dallas Open. Well less than one week later I was hopping on a flight to Seattle to repeat the process at the Games Workshop US Open Seattle event, the first of their US roadshows for 2022.

I’m not going to lie to you, dear reader – doing two three-day events in a row is pretty grueling. I wouldn’t recommend it.

It’s not the games per se – though three consecutive days of games is, in my estimation, too much if you aren’t playing for the grand prize – it’s the travel. Dallas was a fairly brisk 3.5 hour drive for me, made bearable by the presence of some fine company in the cars up and down. SeaTac, on the other hand, is a five-hour flight away, plus a two-hour time difference. Making this even worse was the fact that my flight out was delayed by four hours, at first by weather in Baltimore and later by thunderstorms in Houston. As a result, I wouldn’t arrive at the venue hotel until 1:30am local time, or 3:30 by my body’s internal clock. Not a great way to start things off.

Ultimately, things went pretty well for me at the Seattle event. I had some great games, ended up with a winning record, and got to hang out with some great people. Not all of my games were noteworthy, so I’m going to gloss over the ones that there isn’t a lot to say about and talk instead about some of the more critical ones, and in those try to focus on what I learned and will take with me on future games.

Hobby

Not a lot to do hobby-wise this week; I don’t have time to paint another 5 Terminators so instead I’m going to have to make do with the Leviathan claw. I get that painted up and magnetized pretty quick and I spend a little time touching up and painting the underside of the Heldrake to make it all pretty.

My List

I should talk about my list before I dive into this. It hasn’t changed much. I’ve reposted my photo above from Dallas because that’s the last one I took, but I’ve made a couple of key changes:

• I swapped out one of the Grav-Flux Bombards on the Leviathan for a Siege Claw with built-in Meltagun
• I swapped out the two five-man Scarab Terminator Squads for a single unit of 10
• I changed from Cult of Time to Cult of Duplicity, and swapped the Exalted Sorcerer’s Warlord Trait for Master Misinformator
• I swapped out Cacodaemonic Imps for Glimpse of Eternity on the Infernal Master
• I swapped out Ardent Automata for a third Chaos Spawn Or I would have, but I didn’t pack the third spawn and had to make a last-minute list change to put Automata back on my Terminators. This was a huge waste – I used it zero times.

OK so given those changes, here’s what the list looks like:

My list - click to expand

Overall it’s only a minor set of changes but Duplicity gives the army a lot more mobility and that’s more valuable than the durability afforded by Cult of Time. The fist on the Dreadnought gives me a stronger counterpunch threat, and changing up the Terminators makes To the Last a real option for me now.

Alright, on to the games.

Friday

I slept pretty well, all things considered. First thing I need to do is set up a group Discord chat for our crew on the ground. Because this one’s in Tacoma I get to chill with a ton of people I wouldn’t normally see – Crangle “SRM” McMangle, Colin Ward, Jack Hunter, and Andrew “Pendulin” Haywood are all going to be on the scene, plus a few other folks like JoeK and John Lennon from the Art of War are hanging around. I meet Cronut and Colin in the lobby, then we walk over to a local panini shop that makes a very solid bacon egg n cheese. It’s super walkable in Tacoma and has a downtown feel but the streets are at like a 45 degree slope and it’s raining out so I’m more than a little concerned I’m going to slip and kill myself walking back.

Either way, I’m glad I brought a hoodie for the trip, even if it is damp by the time I get back. It won’t crack 65 degrees all weekend and other than the hoodie all I’ve packed are t-shirts. This is in part because I’m committed to not checking a bag for this trip, so I’ve shoved a bunch of shirts and socks into the leftover space in my minis case.

After eating I meet up with Jack, who is lending me a cookie sheet to use as a minis tray for this event.

Game 1: vs. Andrew Yun’s Death Guard

Andrew is running Death Guard, with a list that’s smart enough to not include psykers.

Andrew's List - click to expand

The Mission: The Scouring

My Secondaries:

• Mutate Landscape
• To the Last – 10 Scarabs | 10 Scarabs | Leviathan
• Stranglehold

Andrew’s Secondaries:

• Abhor the Witch
• No Prisoners
• Engage on All Fronts

I’m Going Second.

Andrew’s list has a bunch of the usual tricks for Death Guard and some nasty ObSec Terminators, but they’re all pretty slow, mostly hitting at 1 damage, and unable to do anything about my cavalcade of mortal wounds in the psychic phase. The flipside of getting Abhor here is having no defense whatsoever for the mind bullets. Andrew’s a nice guy but he’s just completely outmatched – Death Guard, particularly the terminator-heavy list, are just really, really bad right now. Andrew goes first and picks up my Heldrake, then I spend the next two turns tabling him.

Result: 100-51, Win

Andrew’s a good kid and legitimately happy to meet me at the event, which is cool. I’m never quite sure how to react to the very tiny amount of fame that working on Goonhammer affords me – it’s mostly downside, given the shitty little dramas that pop up every now and then. We talk for a bit and then I’m off to lunch. I sit with Lennon and we argue about Wrath of the Wronged, which it turns out does work in the Fight phase – something I had no idea about. I also inform him that the Wrath of Magnus secondary is not Warpcraft, which is something that came up in a game he played recently. Then we make fun of Nick Nanavati, who got a chicken sandwich at the concession stand that is just absolutely dire – the bread is more like a crouton than anything and the whole thing falls apart when he picks it up.

The food at the venue was not good.

Game 2: vs. Mike Garcia’s Custodes

I was actually still pretty afraid of Custodes coming into this game. Even with the nerfs, Custodes can tank a lot of mortal wounds with their 4+ Emperor’s Chosen save, and that makes these games into a bit more of a crapshoot. That said, it’s not as bad as it could be.

Mike's list - click to expand

The Mission: Tide of Conviction

My Secondaries:

• Mutate Landscape
• To the Last – 10 Scarabs | 10 Scarabs | Leviathan
• Engage on All Fronts

Mike’s Secondaries

• Abhor the Witch
• Assassination
• Grind Them Down

On a 6-objective map Mutate isn’t too bad, especially when one puts this many objectives close together. The challenge is getting to them while avoiding a face full of Custodian spear. The way this map is set up, one of my bigger challenges is going to be the Calladius – my Rubrics can’t hold the home objective without being in line of sight, and even with damage -1 that tank can cause me issues.

I’m Going First.

Mike’s made one big mistake, and that’s spreading out too far with his army. If I can keep out of the range of the Vertus Praetors – their big disadvantage is not being able to advance and charge – then I can put in some work against his Pallas Grav-Attacks and hopefully remove them and stunt his mobility. I’m able to take out one Pallas Grav-attack on turn 1 and knock the other down to 2 wounds with my Heldrake. The Heldrake then becomes the target of Mike’s ire on the next turn, which is good news for me since it’s just a big red herring anyways.

The fist on the Leviathan really paid off when I was able to have him do some work against one of the Galatus Dreadnoughts. I had the Leviathan charge in and make the first blow after closing some distance and he was able to knock 6 wounds off the Galatus on that first set of swings while only taking four back. He’d end up finishing the Galatus off the next turn after it fell back and charged him again. Good job, Levi!

The back-breaker for Mike came when he double-failed an 8″ charge into my Scarabs with his three vertus praetors. The Scarabs would end up killing his captain (who did make the charge) in melee, then clean up the rest of the bikes in shooting, ending the game effectively. It wasn’t a sure thing for Mike either way but at this point he’s definitely lost and we can hash out the rest.

Result: 70-52, Win

That was a solid win for me, but only scoring 70 points in a win really puts me in a bad spot for seeding and cutoffs. I’m not totally screwed yet, but another sub-90 win and I’ll definitely need to win all four games to make the top bracket at the event. Here’s hoping I don’t play Custodes again.

 

Game 3: vs. Mitchell Hunter’s Custodes

Ahhhhh, shit.

Mitchell's Custodes - click to expand

Mitchell’s list is running Sagittarum and an extra unit of bikes instead of tanks. It’s more versatile, and can cause me problems on a board like this one. The mission also favors him, since bonus primary points are scored for getting kills, and that’ll largely be easier for him than me.

The Mission: Recover the Relics

My Secondaries: 

• Mutate Landscape
• To the Last – Scarabs | Scarabs | Leviathan
• Engage on All Fronts

Mitchell’s Secondaries:

• Abhor the Witch
• No Prisoners
• Raise the Banners

I’m going second. 

This was a weird game. Mitchell opened by shooting up the board with his bikes and attempting to take out my Terminators, and ended up killing 3 of them. I brought one back the following turn and basically wiped out the entire unit and from there Mitchell spent most of the game on the back foot. I was able to score Engage pretty well, at first with the Heldrake and later with a teleporting squad of Rubrics, and I managed to get a fourth Mutate Landscape off.

To his credit, Mitchell made an admirable comeback attempt, pulling off a long bomb charge with Trajann and parlaying that – via a double fight – into killing one unit of Scarabs before he was laid low. Ultimately however Mitchell couldn’t overcome the initial loss and would only end up killing two psyker units.

Result: 73-62, Win

I’m kind of shocked i was able to beat Emperor’s Chosen Custodes twice in a row. In both games my opponents started out hot on their 4+++ rolls but I think the difference between pre-nerf Custodes and now is that now I survive until later in the game, when those rolls start to balance out and my opponents go from making 2/3 of their saves against mortals to failing 2/3 of them, and that makes a huge difference.

A third win puts me at 3-0 for day 1. As always, my advice on going 3-0 is just to avoid playing against the best players in the field or getting any hard matchups. I managed to dodge Tyranids again for three games and I’ve got an outside shot of getting like, Blood Angels or Orks in round 4.

Colin’s really fiending for steak so we find a local steakhouse that’s still open for dinner (the round ends pretty late). They’re solid, and the steak is well cooked, but it’s not a particularly great cut of meat. We stay out until 11 or so, then head back to the hotel. Shane shoots me his notes on the Chaos Knights codex review so I can finish writing it. It’s due to be scheduled at 10am BST the next day, or in about 2 hours Pacific Time. I start working on it, then fall asleep at the desk in my hotel room. I wake up and see that I’ve typed up 3 paragraphs of illegible garbage and resolve to just finish the damn thing in the morning.

 

Saturday

I wake up Saturday morning and slam out the rest of the review. The good news is, James “One_Wing” Grover got in there while I was asleep and added some more notes, so I don’t need to do as much as I figured. This is the advantage of having our dumb collective of authors around the globe – there’s almost always someone who’s up to work on something.

With the review done I can grab some breakfast in the lounge (it is bad, but free), and then head into the hall for game four. I have not, in fact, dodged Tyranids and instead have to play them now. As I’m setting up, Nick asks if I want to be on stream. Hell yes, I say. If I’m gonna get crushed, may as well be in public.

Game 4: vs. Tyler Bortel’s Tyranids

Tyler’s running some pretty standard Hive Fleet Leviathan bullshit, with a pair of Maleceptors, a pair of Tyrants, and an Obsec Parasite of Mortrex. If there’s a special bit here, it’s the two units of Gargoyles, who can be a real pain in the ass thanks to Overrun and being ObSec.

Tyler's List - click to expand

The big thing I’m worried about here is the winged Hive Tyrant, who has a threat range of 35″ and can zip across the board, completely wipe out a unit of my Scarabs, then peace on out at the end of the turn with Encircle the Prey. I can box him out by stopping him from scoring through the wall but this isn’t an ideal situation for me.

The Mission: Tear Down Their Icons

My Secondaries:

• Stranglehold
• Raise the Banners High
• No Prisoners

Tyler’s Secondaries:

• Stranglehold
• To the Last – Hive Tyrant | Winged Hive Tyrant | Tyrant Guard
• Raise the Banners High

This is a really bad place for me to be in, and I should have taken To the Last instead of No Prisoners, which isn’t a secondary I can actually max. The reason it’s awful is because this mission and terrain layout do not incentivize interaction between our armies at all – I’m much better off trying to score points passively and bait Tyler out than taking him on directly. If I had any real sense, I’d have spent 1 CP to change secondaries to To the Last as well, and tried to force a tie in this game. The hard part is that whoever goes second has a big advantage on that front.

I’m Going Second.

That’s actually the opposite of what I want here, since it makes scoring 15 primary on turn 5 impossible for me. Tyler can likewise just drop units on my side of the table to score Stranglehold every turn, then fly them off the table with Encircle the Prey after they score and never have to risk those models – something I can’t do.

You can actually watch this game on stream on the GW Twitch page. I spend the first two turns trying to trade cheap units for Stranglehold points before finally giving up in the hopes of having a more interesting game – trading was not going to work out for me long-term. The game goes bad for me when I fail my 9″ charge out of deep strike into the southern ruin, even with a Glimpse of Eternity Re-roll active – I roll a 3 into another 3. After I fail the charge, and Tyler uses the opportunity to reposition his gargoyles to block me out of charging through the wall.

Something I fucked up bad: This is where I messed up – I forgot that Tyler wasn’t actually on the top floor of the ruins – he had just put his models there to represent being on the bottom floor. As such I let him block me out when the reality was that I could just go up and over the wall and charge him from the roof. As a result, this is the last time I’m going to let someone do this – I don’t have the brain space to remember it in the moment, and it’s not worth losing a game over.

Otherwise, this game was a showcase for everything fucked up about pre-FAQ Tyranids: The double-venom Hive Tyrant, the quad-casting Maleceptors, the use of Encircle every turn to score Stranglehold and/or drop a bomb before leaving the table – it’s all there. I’m glad the army got nerfed because this was just a punishingly unfun game where I was at a disadvantage from the outset by the simple virtue of needing to interact with my opponent’s army and being unable to score points without putting models at risk.

Result: 80-55, Loss

I don’t have the points to make the top bracket thanks to two 70ish-point wins in rounds 2 and 3 so I’m now shuffled off to the 3-1 pod, where my next 4 games will be against players who also finished 3-1 in their first four games. The first round of this pod is seeded, so the top players in the 3-1 bracket play the bottom. My next match is against another Thousand Sons player.

Game 5: vs. Nicholas’ Thousand Sons

Nicholas has an interesting army but I know immediately I’m not going to lose the game. The reason is because he’s only running 10 terminators, and nothing in the army is better than having 10 more Scarabs. This also isn’t really the list Nicholas wanted to run at the event, but he’s subbing in some models for some others that he wasn’t sure he could run as they weren’t GW official. As a result, he’s running

Nicholas' List - click to expand

The Mission: Data-Scry Salvage

My Secondaries:

• To the Last – Scarabs | Scarabs | Leviathan
• Mutate Landscape
• Engage on All Fronts

Nicholas’s Secondaries:

• Raise the Banners
• To the Last – Scarabs | Ahriman | Exalted Sorcerer
• Mutate Landscape

I’m not comfortable trying to do Wrath of Magnus here, even if Nicholas has more Rubrics to pull off the table. With Mutate Landscape I can power through casts with Cabal points and aim for 12 points on the 6-objective map. For Nicholas’ part, I think he’s made a big mistake here taking banners – he doesn’t have the action economy to do banners and Data Scry and Mutate Landscape, and that’ll come up on turns 2 and 3.

I’m going second.

That’s not terrible here, since I can redeploy away from some of his threats and use his movement to make the first move with my mortal wounds. I power out a few powers, and get off some good shooting on his Rubrics – he biffs his save rolls and ends up losing four scarabs on turn 1 while I wound another, ensuring he only gets 1 back the following turn. My Heldrake shoots across the table and messes with his Rubrics but doesn’t manage to kill a unit – though it does manage to explode and do a ton of mortal wounds to his units, killing another scarab in the process.

Ultimately, that early luck is more than enough to put Nicholas in an unwinnable position and after I clear out his Helbrutes and Scarabs we can call it. His biggest challenge is that he can’t scry and mutate and banners at the same time and that jams him up on early turns when he needs to be scoring more.

Result: 92-60, Win

 

That was a fine rebound win. Finishing off the day with another W would be great but I’m also just into playing another chill game. Fortunately, the universe (or the dark gods, more likely), answer the call and match me up against occasional Goonhammer Chaos contributor Michael Pestilens.

LET’S DO THIS.

Game 6: vs. Michael Pestilens’ Chaos

OH HELL YES.

I’ve been talking to Mike for a while as we’ve collaborated on articles. He’s a good dude, and a far better player than I am, and he’s really, really good at managing combat tricks and movement to get the most out of his melee. He’s also more imaginative than me, and playing a very off-meta list that gives him a lot of chances to do these kinds of nasty tricks.

Mike's List - click to expand

There’s so much cool shit in this list and neat combos. The Lord Discordant with a Mindveil is just money on GW terrain – yes, it feels bad when you roll a 4 or movement, but on the other hand it allows the Lord Discordant to walk right through the big walls that block line of sight on the map, and get off some incredible ambushes with Warptime. The Bloodmaster is sporting the Crimson Crown, which gives friendly Khorne Daemons within 6″ the ability to make another attack each time they roll a 6+ to wound – perfect for getting extra mortals out of the Decimators or dropping extra shots from the Lord of Skulls (and combo-able with Veterans of the Long War). It’s a really clever list, and I love what Mike has done with it. I’m just not sure the tricks are enough – being able to shoot a unit of Bloodletters as they arrive means I can really punish the hell out of Mike if he doesn’t drop in somewhere that’s out of sight. On top of that, it’s very much a “kill the opponent” type list, and I don’t know that it plays the mission very well.

The Mission: Death & Zeal

My Secondaries:

• Wrath of Magnus
• Stranglehold
• Raise the Banners High

Mike’s Secondaries:

• Stranglehold
• Raise the Banners High
• Grind Them Down

One reason the tricks might not be enough is that by taking any psykers, Mike has lost Abhor and given me access to Wrath of Magnus, which is an easy 15 points here if I can take out some cultists on turn 1. On the flip side, there aren’t any good kill secondaries Mike can take for my list, and this isn’t a great mission for banners when you consider I’ve just got way more Obsec bodies than he does.

Worried about his Lord of Skulls, Mike places it in Strategic Reserves. I’m not sure this is the right move, but it pays off a bit when he loses the first-turn roll-off.

I’m Going First.

That’s OK for me. It’s mostly solid because it lets me whittle down Mike’s forces and position for two turns before the Bloodletters and Lord of Skills arrive, which I do. A turn 1 Rubric Teleport gets them dropping a few Cultists, and from there I proceed to max Wrath of Magnus. Likewise my Scarabs hold the middle all game for Stranglehold, and I score the easy 10 on Banners.

Mike puts up a solid defense with his Decimators but ultimately my early moves jam him in his deployment zone, forcing him to deal with them before exiting and leaving him on the back foot – this is really what the Heldrake is all about, even if you can just move away from it thanks to it being an AIRCRAFT.

Mike still manages to put up a solid score, and gets off some impressive combat tricks, but it’s not enough.

Result: 95-78, Win

I’m 5-1 after two days and that’s pretty great – probably my best start to an event yet. We grab sushi that night but I am dragging ass through the entire thing – I’m tired as hell and completely jetlagged and I’ve been up since 4am.  I absolutely crash when I get back to my hotel room.

Sunday

Here’s the thing: I never planned on playing game 8. My flight back is at 4:30, and I need to leave around 2:45 to make the flight, while round 8 starts at 1:30pm. That means best-case scenario I need to win round 8 quickly or drop before the round starts. Either way, I’ve only got one more round in me. I make quick plans to play Jack after this so I can drop and get a ride to the airport with him.

Game 7: vs. Ben Jurek’s Orks

Ben’s playing Goffs and I haven’t played against Orks since the nerf. I’m not really sure how bad this is going to be but I know getting into melee is going to be bad.

Ben's list - click to expand

The stars here are Ghaz, the Killrigs, and the trukk full of trukkboy Meganobz. I spend deployment baiting Ben into deploying against the south side of the table, then pull my second unit of terminators north, hoping to put them far enough back to avoid a turn 1 charge after Ben wins the roll-off.

The Mission: Secure Missing Artefacts

My Secondaries:

• Wrath of Magnus
• Assassination
• Stranglehold

Ben’s Secondaries: 

• Retrieve Nachmund Data
• Stomp ‘Em Good
• Engage on All Fronts

Stomp ‘Em good is particular bullshit here because I’m not likely to kill Ben’s units in the fight phase but rather the psychic phase. That said, there should be enough chaff here that I can score big on Wrath of Magnus. Assassination probably makes more sense than Bring it Down here, and I think I can make Stranglehold work if I can get first turn.

I’m Going Second.

Unfortunately I don’t get first turn. Ben gets off a long charge into my Terminators on turn 1 at the northern point after I fail to kill a single model in Overwatch, then I completely fuck my saves and end up losing all 10 terminators to the two charges (the meganobz and the warboss). That pretty much fucks me for the game, while the Kill Rigs wipe the Heldrake. It’s not completely unsalvageable at this point, but my dice are just not cooperating with my comeback attempt and Ben’s never really in danger of losing it. He plays a solid game and has pressure on me the entire time, never giving me an opportunity to score Stranglehold until turn 5, jamming me in my Deployment zone for most of the game and successfully screening out my smites.

Also: Kill Rigs are bullshit.

Result: 78-91, Loss

It’s a tough loss but not the end of the world – I think I put Ben on tilt a little when I suggested that I’d probably drop if I won, but wasn’t going to concede, and I’m glad someone that actually plans to play the next round is advancing to the pod finals. Jack informs me that mother’s day brunch has run long for him and so he can’t meet me for a game or help me get to the airport, which sucks. I toss his cookie pan in the trash. That’ll show him.

I end up 43rd at the event, or 23rd before the final round happens, and I’m happy with either. It’s not my highest final finish, but the final finish game kinda feels like bullshit now that I’m out of contention for the pod prize anyways. I finished higher at Austin, but again that’s only because I stuck it out to play my last game and a 5-3 finish. I kind of want the ITC points, but not bad enough to stay another night instead of taking the 4:30 back to Houston.

I hang out with Andrew and Congo for a while as they play the final narrative mission, then I begin the long process of “trying to get an Uber to the airport on Mother’s Day,” finally just having the concierge call me a yellow cab after deciding that no, actually I do not want to pay $200 to get to SeaTac.

The flight back is largely fine. Until the end, at least. The flight gets in at 10:45, then after arriving at the gate some idiot crashes the jetway into the plane and I have to sit on the plane for another hour, staring at the gate as they try to figure out the process of “opening the goddamn door.” I won’t get home until after midnight as a result.

What’s Next?

Well, I’m going to take a week off Warhammer. It was a good couple weeks of games, but I can use the break. My next big engagement is next weekend, when I’m doing the May Asgard RTT, and I like my chances at that event now that I have a better list and a few more games under my belt with Thousand Sons. It took a while but I’ve ironed out a lot of the uncertainty I have with the factions and a lot of the bad misplays I was making even as late as Dallas. The army is much more complicated than the Death Guard, and so it has taken me longer to get to this point, but I’m happy here at the moment. Now I just need to execute.

In terms of the list – the Heldrake is coming out. He never did any of the things I wanted him to do, instead just being kind of annoying – but not so much so as to actually inhibit my opponents, thanks to being an AIRCRAFT they can walk away from – and mostly just being lucky enough to explode at good times. Instead I’m going to replace him in the short term with a Mutalith Vortex Beast – mostly because I have one painted – and add a disc to Ahriman and another Chaos Spawn. I may double up one unit of Spawn or even put them as a 3-of so they can score Engage on their own, but right now they do pretty fine as individual models for doing mission actions and harassing enemy units. I may also look at adding an Icon of Flame to one unit of Rubrics to get a 14th cabal point, since 13 is every now and then not quite enough – I’d really like to have the 5-5-4 option, though the Mutalith can help me get there too.

Either way, I’ll iron out what I want to take next weekend and post a quick update at some point.

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