TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2024, Part 19: Tacoma GT Prep, Part 1

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing log of personal, hobby, and competitive progress for Warhammer 40,000. Last time around I was mostly focused on hobby progress, helping my son build an Invictor Warsuit while prepping some new models for my Thousand Sons army. This week I have more hobby progress to talk about, plus another practice game using the new army.

Hobby Prep: Tacoma Edition

Last time around, I talked about settling on a list concept and prepping it for the event. After some back and forth, this is what I’ve decided to run:

My Thousand Sons List - Click to Expand

This list gives me a lot to work with in terms of doing actions and speeding around the board, but it’s a little low on raw beef. This list also has the challenge of putting me on the back foot from a hobby standpoint – I need to get some painting done to actually field it. Specifically, I need to paint:

• 2x Infernal Master
• 6x Tzaangor Enlightened

and if I really want to field it exactly, I also need to paint three new Rubric marines, each with an Icon of Flame – two of these have Warpflamers and one has a Soulreaper cannon. In a pinch I’ll just swap the Warpflamers for bolters because no one can tell the difference, but I’d like to have the official models on the table if I can. That said, I only have a week left to paint and those Infernal Masters will take a while on their own. What I’m saying is, don’t be surprised if you see me audible to the Mutalith Vortex Beast in the next week or so because I already have one of those painted.

Hobby Prep: Goonhammer Open Edition

The other big hobby project I’ve been working on over the past few weeks is prepping things for the 2024 US Goonhammer Open Narrative event. Now that’s behind us (it was last weekend), I can share a few details from what I was working on. Specifically two projects. The first was painting these sweet Dawn-of-War style power generators:

I got these as part of a larger set and while they’re going to eventually be painted black legion colors for now I wanted them gray to match the Sons of Ash colors – a key part of our narrative was having Chaos assault the Sons’ Battle Barge in orbit around the planet. In the final mission while the normal players were assaulting the ship’s bridge the Spec Ops (our upper level) players would be attempting to sabotage the ship’s main reactor core, which featured one massive plasma coil and these two smaller coils. It was a cool table and the concept worked out great:

On the other side of the narrative, I’d been working on a special (read: nasty) surprise for the renegade and raider teams: Buried deep below the planet’s surface, tucked away in a sealed Necron tomb is a stolen shard of the Flayer. We wanted this to be a surprise for players so we didn’t showcase most of it but now that it’s over I can show off the model I made.

Pretty gross, right? I went back and forth on this model more than a few times, trying to figure out how to actually build the damn thing, with help from Norman and Max. We were all generally agreed on using the Gothizzar Harvester as the base, but actually building it out from there was a bit tougher.

I knew I wanted to have some kind of gory pillar for the Flayer to be standing on and that was going to be the make-or-break part of the model. I’d long been inspired by the insanely cool custom C’Tan of the Warsinger, and while I’m nowhere near the wizard they are with hot glue, I figured I could still do something similar on my own. So I drilled a hole in the model and the base, ran a twisted piece of coat hanger wire through them, and started dropping big globs of glue around the wire.

As I did this I periodically added additional skulls and arms to the mix, working to add more details and help flesh out the visual profile of the flayer’s gorenado a bit more. I also added lots of gobs and drips to the upper body. I’m not necessarily trying to hide the Harvester, but I don’t want this to obviously just be that model.

Despite being a first attempt I’m really happy with how that turned out. It could be better, but it’s very solid and gross and my inexperience is saved by the fact that I’m working with gore, where having strands and goopy mess is a feature, not a bug. From here I made the arms using the arms from an old plastic daemon prince and the hands from a MacFarlane toys flayed one, then I draped sheets of green stuff all over the model to help hide those details and give it the right look.

The whole thing turned out delightfully gross and I think made for a really cool “oh shit” moment in the final round as the players tried to figure out how to stop the Flayer and trap it again. Then they fought over the trapped shard.

Tacoma Prep: A Practice Game

I made it back from the Goonhammer Open, but only just: Hurricane Beryl hit Houston while I was away and did a number on the city. As I write this I and most of my friends still don’t have power (I have a back-up generator, however), and my return flights were canceled three times before I finally made it onto the 6am flight back out of Baltimore on Tuesday. As my buddy Andrew “Hero of the Imperium” Corban was still without power last night, I had him over for dinner and wouldn’t you know it, we slammed hams.

The Mission: C – Linchpin – Tipping Point – Fog of War

Andrew’s running Imperial Guard, and those are a problem for me. They were before, with lots of indirect to really punish Rubrics left in the open but the new list is equally a problem, as triple Rogal Dorn tanks are really difficult to take down with the firepower I’ve got. My hope is that Andrew’s list is light on infantry, and the infantry he has can’t handle being shot by flamers. If I can take those away from him he’ll have to do actions with tanks. Unfortunately this mission isn’t helping me a ton there. I briefly consider taking Fixed objectives here with Bring it Down and Cleanse but settle on Tactical.

I made a number of mistakes this game, and it’s worth diving into them in detail.

I’m going second.

That’s good – going second on the Linchpin can lead to some massive late-game swings. Plus, I want Andrew to walk into my lines and put himself in range, and that’s what he does, drawing Sabotage and Cleanse turn 1. He moves both Scout Sentinels up to Cleanse, scores 4 VP, and chucks Sabotage. I want those sentinels gone – they can tag a unit to let other units re-roll 1s to hit and that’s a problem. On my turn I draw No Prisoners and Bring it Down. I move forward, drop 7 mortals on the Dorn with Doombolt, and kill the sentinel. I drop the Dorn to 4 wounds with the Terminator shooting, as I split the missile racks, terminator sorcerer, and soulreaper cannons that way.

Mistake 1: I can say that I did too much over-committing to the Sentinel, and I needed to put another gun or two on the Dorn. I also put Magnus out of line of sight, hoping to save him a turn. While both big targets were on the table I should have gone hard, using Magnus to finish the Dorn and ensure two big threats were off the table. Instead I used Magnus to drop the Chimera at the top of the table to 2 wounds remaining.

On Andrew’s turn he draws No Prisoners and Defend Stronghold, then rumbles forward and throws everything into the Terminators, reanimating one Scout Sentinel and bringing it in from reserves. He ends up killing all but the Aspiring Sorcerer, which he finishes off with a tank shock from the full health Dorn. Up top he brings his Chimera and crew around, and here’s where I make mistake 2.

Mistake 2: I make the bone-headed decision to shoot the Chimera, thinking I can shave two wounds off it with my full squad of flamers re-rolling all wound rolls. Instead I do zero damage to it on some piss-poor rolls, while I should have just shot the Kasrkin when they got out. Really bad mistake here but it’s late.

Andrew kills two Rubrics with his Kasrkin, then blows the rest off the table with his Basilisk – I shit you not, that thing never rolled fewer than a 5 on it shot count all game and that made a MASSIVE difference. More on that in a bit. Andrew scores 5 for No Prisoners and 3 on Defend Stronghold on my turn.

I draw Sabotage and Behind Enemy Lines. BEL is dead but Sabotage is doable. That said, I should have just discarded it because that secondary is a fucking trap on this mission/layout – the ruin closest to me doesn’t count for Sabotage, so my only chance to do this secondary is to put the Tzaangors on the south side ruin. Which I do in an attempt to score, but they’re easily blown off the table by Andrew’s third Dorn a turn later. I press forward with Magnus and kill both Dorns, hoping that’s enough with Magnus’ Damage -1 to stop them from just deleting him. It isn’t, and he’s gone the following turn. I pull the Terminator Sorcerer back to mid-table to hold that objective. I’m staying pretty far ahead on primary but not enough to run away with things. I chuck BEL but Sabotage sticks around and I basically blank secondary this turn.

Mistake 3: Attempting to score Sabotage was a mistake. I should have just left that one and used the Tzaangors to tie up a vehicle or hold another objective.

In an effort to take Andrew’s Linchpin and avoid losing more models to the Basilisk, I put Ahriman and the Infernal master and their rubrics in the Rhino and send it to Andrew’s home objective. He charges it to block me, but isn’t able to wrap it and I get out the following turn and kill Leontus, the company commander, and the retinue. I use the unit in the lower left to pop up and doombolt kill the Scout Sentinel, then pop back down. Andrew kills the Tzaangor Enlightened with a single volley from his Basilisk. He draws into free points with Area Denial and Storm Hostile Objective, and will score another 10 essentially free points on turn 5 with Extend Battle Lines and Marked for Death when I have only 5 units on the table. He trivially wipes out an entire rubric squad with the Dorn engaged in melee at midtable using a combination of tons of firepower and just “refusing to roll less than a 5+ to hit.”

It’s still pretty close on the final turn and I need to make something happen. I’ve been holding Storm Hostile Objective since last turn (Mistake #4? not sure tbh) and I’m scoring at the bottom of the round. I pull back my Terminator Sorcerer, double moving him onto the upper left objective, which is now empty. Then I advance Ahriman and his remaining aspiring champion to Andrew’s objective. The Basilisk is inexplicably OC 3 so I need both models to survive this in order to capture it. If I do that’ll net me 5 for Linchpin and 5 for Storm Hostile objective and I’ll win the game. I have 1 CP and 9 Cabal Points. I can use 2 cabal points for a free save re-roll, so I queue those up. Then I can use 1 CP to blank an attack from the Basilisk with a failed save. On top of that, I can use 6 points to get a free use of Command re-roll, giving me another save re-roll if I need it. I can move into cover while staying on the objective, so I’ll be looking at 4+ saves against the Basilisk.

That seems like a lot of setup. But let me tell you that this rat fucking bastard proceeded to roll a 6 for his shots count on the overwatch with the Basilisk, followed by 4 6s to hit in Overwatch, leading to four wounds. I only passed a single goddamn save out of those, then blanked another, and failed both save re-rolls, losing the Aspiring Champion in the process and ensuring I couldn’t take the objective. This was some absolute bullshit.

Final Result: 52-58, Loss

There were some big mistakes in there and I think I’d try a different tack next time committing to killing Dorns, but I’m also still in shock about that final Overwatch pulling off some insane nonsense. I was expecting two hits, not four goddamn wounds and Andrew generally diced me all game with his shot counts on that basilisk. This is a game where the Mutalith would have been more helpful I think, and the Enlightened were more of a liability than I’d have liked. I probably should have pushed harder for center early on and not worried as much about the scout sentinel, forcing Andrew to move more stuff around to actually use his units and keeping more Terminators alive.

I’ll get him next time, though.

Next Week: More Tacoma Prep

That does it for this week’s update. Check back next Thursday when I’ll be frantically painting and likely changing my army after just saying “fuck it” and using what I already have painted for the event.

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