Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing attempts to chronicle my journey through 2023 in the same way I’ve covered the past two years. In my previous article, I covered the first day of Warhammer Fest 2023, and my blisteringly hot 3-0 start to the event. If you missed that, you can find the article here. Today I’m covering the latter half of the event.

A Quick Recap

Before we jump in, a quick reminder: I’m playing Death Guard at the event. They’re easy to remember how to play and I could fit the army in 3/4 of a large Citadel minis case, which left room for some clothes and helped ensure that I could take a 5-day trip without having to check a bag. Here’s my list:

My Death Guard list - click to expand

Ok, with that out of the way, we can get back to the event.

Day 2

I slept surprisingly well after day 1 of the event, and so felt pretty rested heading into day 2. That’s almost unheard of for me – I usually sleep like shit in hotels. That said, jetlag still had me groggy in the morning, but not so much I couldn’t get up and head over to the event in time. I didn’t have a chance to eat the hotel breakfast, so I grabbed a shitty breakfast at the venue – a gluten-free avocado wrap that might have been the single driest food I’ve ever eaten. It was like eating sand. Also the avocado was more like a spread with hummus or some shit. Just awful.

Game 4: vs. Lee Martin’s Chaos Daemons

Lee’s not a big competitive player, but he’s 2-0-1 at this point and playing a very solid list. His list has a few things for me to worry about – that Bloodthirster is a real problem, and Be’lakor is going to wreak havoc against my army with his ability to blow through the Terminators. Lee has a beautiful army and he plays it well.

Lee's List - click to expand

The Mission: Conversion

This mission is a problem for me going up against Daemons. Specifically, this mission puts the smallest possible distance between our two armies – only 18″. That means I need to deploy way back if I want to ensure I’m not going to be the target of a turn 1 charge. I can project myself a little by blocking out the corner of the ruin and preventing Lee from fighting through the walls, but everything else will need to deploy back a bit to ensure that I’m at least 22″ back from Lee’s deployment zone (that’s a 12″ move + 12″ charge if I use the Inexorable strat.

My Secondaries:

• Spread the Sickness
• Grind Them Down
• Warp Ritual

Lee’s Secondaries:

• Reality Rebels
• Assassination
• Despoilers of Reality

Lee’s army just doesn’t give up much in the way of secondary objectives and so I’m left picking the best of a bad set. I like Grind better than Fleeing Vectors here, in part because it can get me extra CP and Lee isn’t likely to fail a Morale test. But for a third secondary I just don’t have good options. I settle on Warp Ritual, which is an incredibly risky pick here – Lee has two psykers and so getting it off three times is fairly unlikely, but I like my odds of getting off 1-2 and that’s better than my odds of scoring Despoiled Ground or Behind Enemy Lines (though BEL would have been a better pick in retrospect). It’s tough here because Reality Rebels is basically free points for Lee and Assassination can quickly score 15 if I’m not careful. Despoilers of Reality is the bad pick here – it’s tough for Lee to get off without committing units he doesn’t want to.

Generally speaking, I want to go second here – I need to kill the Bloodthirster before I can press forward and so the ideal scenario is Lee goes first, charges forward, and I can focus down the Thirster and counter-charge. If I can do that, I’ll just need to figure out how to handle Be’lakor.

I’m Going Second.

That is what I want here, and my plan to deploy conservatively T1 pays off – Lee advances forward with the Daemonettes and Fiends (which means they can’t action for Despoilers of Reality), and swings around to the south with his Flesh Hounds and Screamers (who also can’t action). He also moves forward with Be’lakor and the Bloodthirster but I’m able to prevent him from charging T1 with the thirster using the Inexorable strat to force a longer charge.

This sets the stage for my first turn and the plan here is pretty simple: I’m either going to kill the Bloodthirster on turn 1, or I’m going to lose the game as he sweeps through my army. The good news is that I have ways to hurt him in four different phases:

1. In the Movement phase, I push up and lob the Plague Skull of Glothila from the champion in my Blightlords. This only gets off 3 mortal wounds, but that means I only need one more in the Psychic phase.
2. In the Psychic phase, I fire off two Smites at the thirster and get one for 3 mortal wounds, dropping the Thirster to 14. I only needed one, but 3 is a welcome help.
3. In the Shooting phase, my Blightlords and PBCs combine to knock off 8 more wounds, dropping the thirster to 6.
4. The terminators charge the Bloodthirster and end up doing the remaining 6 damage.

While this is going on the PBCs and Plague Marines press north and take care of the fiends and daemonettes, clearing the objective and putting me in a great position after turn 1.

This puts me in a good place to press to the middle with the Blightlords and confront the Bloodletters, who aren’t really a threat with their D2 swords. After some back-and-forth and losing a couple of characters to Screamers, I’ll eventually clear off pretty much every one of Lee’s units except for Be’lakor, who mostly sat around in my deployment zone causing problems and getting completely missed by all of my PBCs. On the upside, I was able to tank him for a turn with my Poxwalkers, who survived his 12 attacks thanks to having 12 models.

The game with Lee was a fun one, although not without some challenges – mostly related to the odd rule Lee just wasn’t aware of, such as the need to slow roll saves if you plan to re-roll one. That said, lee put up a hell of a fight.

Result: 79-66, Win

It’s worth pointing out here that this is both my first 4-0 start ever and my first TiWP, and it is ironically happening with Death Guard, an army which is not particularly competitive. This also meant that I was the only one of the Team Goonhammer folks still in contention at the event, and I was damn sure to let them know it.

As always, my secret to starting well at an event is to just not play any bad matchups or great players. Now that’s not entirely true – I’ve played some decent players so far, but my real challenges are still ahead of me. I need one more win to make the 5-0 bracket of the event. I grab a quick lunch – a very bad venue hot dog – and then run to game 5.

Game 5: vs. Anthony Chew’s Genestealer Cults

Now it’s for reals – Corrode has informed me before the game that Chew is one of the best players in the world and while he’s not super familiar with Genestealer Cults, he’s a very tough opponent. On top of that, I’m not super familiar with GSC, having only played a few games against them, but I know they can score more easily than I can. This is a tough matchup to navigate and I’ll need a bit of luck to pull this one out.

Anthony's List - click to expand

The Mission: Data-Scry Salvage

This is a terrible mission to play against GSC on. There’s no mid-table objective to occupy with force and the 6 objectives spread wide heavily favor a horde army of deep-striking threats.

My Secondaries:

• Grind Them Down
• Spread the Sickness
• Warp Ritual

Chew’s Secondaries:

• Behind Enemy Lines
• Retrieve Battlefield Data
• Ambush

This is a really rough set of picks for me. Grind is the best of a bad set of choices – again, I think it’s better than Vectors, but not by much and in retrospect I should have picked Vectors. Warp Ritual is also a real iffy one since there will be two psykers around to deny but again, I don’t have any better options. Keeping GSC out of my DZ is basically impossible so BEL is likely to be a free 15 for Anthony and it’s unlikely he’ll fail on Retrieve Battlefield Data so my plan has to be to outscore him on primary and hold hi mon Ambush while maxing Spread and getting three casts on Warp Ritual.

I’m Going First.

This is actually not what I wanted, since it means I have to act without having any knowledge of what Chew will have on the table. Going second is a better option against GSC since it allows me to better react to their true deployment.

This game ends up being an absolute grind and it goes about 20 minutes over time as we get to the late rounds with the game still very much undecided. What ultimately flips the game to Anthony is that he manages to deny two of my Warp Ritual casts and hold me to only a single cast. (and so 3 VP), and I fail my attempt to Spread the Sickness with a character twice, ensuring I’d only get 11 VP for the secondary. Some late rolls go Anthony’s way and I mess up trying to screen him out in my backfield for a turn against his 3″ deep strikers and that ultimately gives him the game in an effort that was closer than the final score indicated.

This was an uphill battle due to the mission and matchup and I also got outplayed through most of it, but I’m happy with the showing I put up.

Result: 63-81, Loss

Losing that game punts me out of the 5-0 bracket and into the 4-1 bracket, filled with exceptionally sweaty players looking to salvage their weekends and finish 8-1. That’s not something I’m likely to do, but I do want to let it ride and see if I can claw out a prize by going 4-0 in the bracket just on matchup luck.

As it turns out, I’d get the worst possible matchup luck in round 6.

Round 6: vs. Ruud Steenbakkers’ Craftworlds Eldar

This is an unwinnable matchup for Death Guard. I know because I’ve played this exact goddamn matchup before. On top of that, Ruud is captain of the Netherlands’ WTC team and an even better player than my regular sparring partner, Erik. This one is over when I walk up to the table, but other factors will make it even worse.

Ruud's List - click to expand

Ruud’s list is lab-engineered to wreck mine, sporting two goddamn Death Jesters to shoot up my characters. Assassination is a no-brainer for him, and he’ll take Behind Enemy Lines and one of those goddamn Eldar secondaries to score free VP without having to interact much with my army.

The Mission: Tear Down Their Icons

This mission further tips the scales in Ruud’s favor, making it near-impossible for me to hold his forces out of my DZ and he’ll be able to drop bombs pretty freely as well to score extra primary VP.

My Secondaries: 

• Grind Them Down
• Spread the Sickness
• Despoiled Ground

Ruud’s Secondaries:

• Behind Enemy Lines
• Assassination
• Scout the Enemy

scout is basically free VP for Ruud as well as Behind Enemy Lines, while those Death Jesters can trivially slip behind my lines and kill two characters per turn to get Ruud to 15 on Assassination. My best bet there is to use Cloud of Flies to protect my Warlord but that’s only a marginal improvement and losing those characters is going to hurt.

On my end there just aren’t any good choices – I just got burned on Warp Ritual and can’t risk it again here, and once again Grind is the best of a bad choice, only beating other options because of the CP upside.

I’m going second.

That’s basically game. In order to even have a chance here I need to go first and push forward aggressively while getting lucky with the PBCs and destroying one or both Starweavers to keep the Death Jesters off me for a turn. Going first also means the striking scorpions have to redeploy back to avoid getting killed T1, and I can potentially press forward to a spot where when they do charge it’s out of my DZ and not getting them free BEL points.

Instead the Striking Scorpions crash into my lines on T1 as usual, kill my poxwalkers, and unsuccessfully attempt to wrap my Rhino, thanks to some clever pre-game spacing on my part. The Harlequins zoom around the top of the board and start killing my characters from inside their transports. From here I’ll spend the rest of the game trying to kill Ruud out of my deployment zone without being able to press forward effectively.

I had some OK plays during this one, including a fun moment where I killed Baharroth with my Death Shrouds but I was never in this game. It was over before I got to the table and both Ruud and I knew it.

Result: 50-91, Loss

That second loss was a real gut punch – although I knew in advance what the outcome was going to be it’s still a real shitty, demoralizing experience to lose a game at list building so utterly. Ruud was a fine opponent and a chill guy but this was a game that sucked to play. That said, he’s also done me a favor – I am now out of contention for any kind of prizes on day 3 and largely unable to move up in the standings thanks to how the bracket system works.

We hang out at the venue for a bit and look at some of the stuff we missed for the last couple of days. At some point one of the GW reps asked me what I thought of the event and I told them “it seemed cool but I hadn’t seen any of it” since I’d been playing in the GT. I certainly didn’t have the time to wait in any lines to play 10th edition. So it was cool to see the Golden Demon entries and walk to some of the booths before closing. I took a couple of photos of my favorite Golden Demon entries, which both ended up being tiny planes.

That night we end up getting pizza at a local Italian place which graciously remained open late for us. They’ve got some solid pasta as well but I completely house a margherita pizza. I’ll end up crashing closer to 1am as a result.

Day 3

I roll over as my alarm goes off at 7am, take one look at the standings, and drop from the event. I’ve got no reason to play today and I was already talking about dropping for day three a couple days prior. I end up sleeping in until around 10:30, then mosey over to the venue to meet up with the Goonhammer peeps. I’ll end up finishing 58th at the event, which is still pretty good for me, given the event size and quality of opponents.

It’s a much lower-key day today – most of the players have dropped from the tournament, and the floor is open enough to actually walk around and do things. I hit up the store and find out they aren’t selling event shirts (boo), and then walk over to the table where Condit and Bair are playing Titanicus. I chat for a while with the other GH crew and we have a few more site business discussions, talking about the event and how we’d have improved it.

Then it was time to say goodbye. To some of the crew, anyways. Soggy graciously offered to give me a lift back to Heathrow for my flight the next day. I’m happy to take him up on it, as even in a crowded car a 4.5-hour drive back with friends is better than a train ride alone. We talk until there’s nothing left to say, and by that point we’re at my hotel. Or rather, the hotel next to mine, but I have plenty of time to walk to the correct hotel.

I once again sleep pretty well and then it’s off to Heathrow for the flight home. The flight back is never as bad; you get back the same day and worst-case you spend a few nights going to bed and waking up early, which just means I’m on my son’s schedule.

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot to cover here but I’m going to try to hit the major beats. I won’t retread too much of the ground trod by my heroic colleagues who braved the lines, but I’ll offer up a few thoughts there.

On the GT

The GT was fun – all of my opponents were swell people and I enjoyed every game I played save the final one, and that had nothing to do with Ruud and everything to do with the sorry state of 9th edition GT missions and game balance. I’m still incredibly pumped about a 4-2 finish, in part because it contains my first 4-0 start, and with Death Guard, an army that is extremely limited along certain axes. I had surprisingly good play into astra militarum and daemons, but I suspect World Eaters would have been more of a struggle and Space Marines probably would have just done me in on pure d1 volume. While we’re on that part, let’s talk about the list.

What Worked:

• The Blightlord Terminators were pretty solid, and banking on holding the midtable objective on the 5-obj maps was a fine strategy. 2x Flail/2x Blight launcher is pretty great, and they can reliably wreck bigger targets in a pinch.
• The Noxious Blightbringer continues to be a stealth MVP, and that +1″ to movement can make a big difference when you’re pushing 5″ Movement models around the table.
• The 2×5 Plague Marines in Rhinos did a fine job, although next time I want to adjust their gear a bit – the maces were a bit of a dud, and I legit think going 2x on the heavy plague spewers is a solid idea.
• The Blightspawn rarely got to use his fights last ability, but his sewer cannon remains an amazing gun to work with, particularly since you can up its range in a pinch.
• The double Plaguecasters were fine – having some extra output was good – but ultimately I didn’t need a ton of redundancy on my Warp Ritual attempts – I just shouldn’t be taking it if denying it is an option for an opponent.

What Didn’t Work: 

• Taking the bell on the Blightbringer was a big nothingburger. It never mattered and I’m cutting it from the list.
• Likewise, the weapon upgrades on the Blightlord and Deathshroud champion didn’t amount to much, either. I would spend those points elsewhere in the future.
• My secondary plan wasn’t great. A lot of that is just the state of Death Guard, but I needed a replacement option for when Warp Ritual wasn’t a good pick and my opponent wasn’t offering a good kill secondary. I didn’t really have that answer against GSC or Craftworlds and thinking about it I probably need to shift some things around so Deathshrouds can be a BEL option in those games, teleporting in and making that work.
• The PBCs really struggled. My dice with them weren’t great, and while they helped a ton in the guard matchup, they weren’t as good as I needed them to be in other matchups. They were better at eating firepower in some games, but I think some opponents smartly sussed that they could be ignored a lot of the time in favor of killing the things around them. I remain mixed on them.

How to Improve it:

I think Death Guard have a surprising amount of play in the waning days of 9th, but they clearly still need a little work. I’ve recently seen some successful lists running Death Guard + Daemons with Mamon Transfigured, the Forge World Daemon Prince. And I think that’s honestly the best possible option here – Mamon has the game’s only NURGLE DAEMON re-roll 1s to hit aura, and so can help a trio of PBCs significantly improve their output. Couple that with Nurglings to forward deploy and you can build an impressive shooting base around daemon engines. Paul Gurney recently went 5-0 with a list doing this and it’s pretty impressive. I think there are some other options to build around here that don’t involve Soul Grinders (at least, I hope), and I may try them out.

On the Event

The event was fine. It was a big event and while GW did some things well, their reach exceeded their grasp on this one. There wasn’t quite enough stuff to do – especially for kids – and there was a little too much unused space. The decorations were great, the venue was cool, the GTs were well run, but the four hour line to play one round of 10th edition was pretty bad and there were only a few booths for GW licensees. Not ideal, and I suspect a shortage of manpower/staffing is the issue – if you’re GW you don’t want to close an entire country’s worth of one-man stores on a holiday weekend to staff your event, but without the support of other companies and vendors, you can’t match the con aspects of Adepticon or NOVA. Tough line to walk.

What’s Next: Crusade and Teams

That wraps up the story of Warhammer Fest 2023 for me but as always there’s more to come. I’ve got two big events on the horizon right now – the first is the big local campaign finale to Vadinax we’re running in Houston, and the other is the Games Workshop Teams event in Kansas City in early June. These two events represent a kind of last hurrah for me for 9th edition, and I’m honestly glad to be done with it – already looking forward to 10th and a chance to pick up old armies with fresh eyes.

Stay tuned for a future post on hobby prep and getting my World Eaters painted. In the meantime, if you have any questions or feedback, drop me a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.