TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2024, Part 20: Final Prep for Tacoma

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing log of personal, hobby, and competitive progress for Warhammer 40,000. Last time around I zeroed in on my Thousand Sons, getting in a practice game with them and logging some hobby progress on the army. This time around I’ll be talking about my final prep work for Tacoma and getting in one more practice game.

Testing a Different List

The day after playing against Andrew’s Astra Militarum list I had him back over for another practice game. Andrew was one of the one million or so Houstonians forced to go without power for a week (or more) following Hurricane Beryl, so I invited him over for dinner both nights. This was a great chance for sweet, sweet revenge.

My list - click to expand

This time around I wanted to test out a list with the Mutalith. I wasn’t super-impressed with the Tzaangor Enlightened last time – they die really fast and I wasn’t certain they were doing enough for me given they just die when I need them to do actions. As I’m already rolling with Magnus and Scarabs, it was worth testing a third “big threat.” Also the Mutalith is painted and the Enlightened are not, representing a lot of crunch if I want to include them in the army.

The Mission: M (Purge the Foe / Rapid Escalation / Crucible of Battle)

Terrain Layout 1

Andrew’s list hasn’t changed – he’s still on triple Dorns, two hellhounds, a Basilisk, and three Chimeras full of Kasrkin. This time around the deployment map isn’t so favorable to him – Crucible won’t let him just dump his whole army on the lower side of the corner ruin, and working his way out of there is a tricky proposition; he opts to put all of his big tanks on the lower half of the table, only putting a Scout Sentinel and a Chimera up top. That works for me – my plan now is to just wheel around the top of the map, control that objective, and try and pick off the tanks as they move back over to fight me.

I put the Scarabs in deep strike this time – Andrew won’t spread out fast enough to screen me out completely and last time I had to double move them into position anyways after he hit them with the Basilisk – and I put one unit of Rubrics into Strategic Reserves in order to use the mission rule.

I’m Going First. 

Not usually what you want on Purge the Foe but I can work with this. I draw Marked for Death and Overwhelming Force on turn 1, both dead draws (Marked for Death is the game’s worst secondary, in my opinion – and I did the math to prove it). I’ll keep Force but discard Marked at the end of the turn. My objective right now is to remove all of Andrew’s threats from the top half of the table, so that means killing a Scout Sentinel, a Chimera, and the Kasrkin inside. I wheel Magnus up that way, pull out the Mutalith, Temporal Surge out Ahriman’s unit, and bring in the reserves.

It all goes according to plan, starting with Ahriman’s doombolt one-shotting the Sentinel. I manage to wipe the entire unit, and while Andrew replaces them, they’ll have to wait a turn to come in from Strategic Reserves. On Andrew’s turn he pulls Secure No Man’s Land and Recover Assets, both of which are pretty easy scores as he moves out of his deployment zone. He doesn’t have line of sight with anything at this point though, so after a half-hearted shot into some Rubrics with the Basilisk, it’s back to me. I draw Establish Locus, push Magnus to the middle of the table, and use Ahriman’s unit to drop the locus while Magnus kills the Scout Sentinel and consolidates back toward the objective. Meanwhile the Scarabs drop in, kill one Dorn, and take another down to half wounds.

Andrew’s in a rough spot coming into his turn – he gets a great draw with No Prisoners and Bring it Down, but basically has to kill Magnus this turn or the game is over. I’m already on -1 damage with Magnus for the round and holding both a save re-roll and 1 CP to blank incoming damage while the Hellhounds won’t reach Magnus and there’s no way to tag him with a Scout Sentinel, so he basically has to survive two Dorns, a Chimera, and Kasrkin.

Ultimately that’s what happens – the Kasrkin get out and grenade Magnus, and all three tanks unload into him but are only able to take 10 wounds off him across the shooting phase while the Terminators tank everything the Hellhound and Dorn throw out at them. Andrew blanks on both of his secondaries and that’s pretty much the game – he won’t survive the return volley at this point as he’s going to lose both Dorns, the Chimera, and the Kasrkin, and that will leave him both down badly on points and sitting on nothing to effectively counter with. We decide to call it as I draw No Prisoners and Bring it Down as my secondary objectives.

Result: 88-64, Victory

Ah yes, the sweet taste of revenge. This game felt much better but mostly it felt like I was just playing much smarter this time around, not leaving units exposed to basilisk fire and putting things where Andrew’s whole army could kill them. The Mutalith did almost nothing this game, and meanwhile I felt like I was wasting two hundred points of Rubrics by having them hold my home objective, while also missing the mobility I got from a Rhino. As much as I liked having the Mutalith, I decided to drop him out of the list. He was a pain to transport, anyways.

This left six or so days of painting, and it was time to make some decisions about the list. As much as I’m unsure about the Scarabs, I’m stuck with them at the moment – I just don’t have the warpflamer rubrics to replace them right now. But for the final bits of the list, I decided I wanted Tzaangors on my home objective (and as an extra Battleline unit), so I swapped out the Mutalith for a Rhino, a unit of Tzaangors, and a disc for Ahriman. After some additional hobby work (more on that in a bit), here’s the final list:

My Tacoma List - Click to Expand

This feels like the list I tested before, only now I can actually use all four Rubrics units, occasionally get some extra cabal points, and still get the protection/mobility of the Rhino. It’s not quite as good at doing actions, but it’s good enough, and the Rhino will help there in a pinch as well. It’s lacking that third “big threat” but that just means I’ll need to play a bit cagey with the units I have. I’m comfortable playing this, and looking forward to a third attempt at Tacoma with Thousand Sons.

Hobby

With the clock ticking down quickly, I had some pretty manageable hobby goals:

• Infernal Master
• Exalted Sorcerer on Disc
• 2x Rubrics with Soulreaper Cannon
• 2x Rubrics with Warpflamer
• 1x Warpflamer Rubric with Icon of Flame
• 1x Tzaangor with Banner

That’s a lot to do in just under a week, but almost all of it had been assembled and primed and I had outs – if I couldn’t finish the Disc Sorcerer, I had a foot one I’d settle for. If I couldn’t finish all the Soulreaper Cannons, I’d comfortably be able to field one unit of just warpflamers (Ahriman’s boys, since they get +1 to wound). And if I couldn’t finish the Tzaangor Banner well, I’d live but I really wanted to have that re-roll for Battle-shock tests.

In the end I was able to get everything but that final Soulreaper done and I could have finished him if I hadn’t just said “fuck it” on the final night and spent time with the family instead. No regrets on that one, and the army will do just fine sans one Soulreaper Cannon. It’s worth showing off the two characters I painted:

The Exalted Sorcerer on Disc I’ve had for a while; his disc/foot are magnetized for transport and so I can easily swap him to be another foot Exalted Sorcerer. He painted up pretty quick and while I want to to come back and add some details to his tabard and inscribed runes later, he turned out pretty solid.

The other model I had to paint was an Infernal Master. I started out planning to paint three of these but walked that back when I started looking at a Disc sorcerer as an option. I wanted them to be different, and I’d had some ideas for the Infernal Master, in particular.

There are three main swaps here: The first is I’ve swapped his head for an unhelmeted one; I think the one I used is from the Chaos Space Marines plastic kit but I don’t remember 100% on that one. The second his the staff – Every single caster in my army has a distinct staff so I swapped the head of this Infernal Master’s staff with the one from the Tzaangor Enlightened champion. And the third is the daemons he’s summoning – while the spell is called Screamer Invocation, I like to think these guys make lots of daemonic pacts and so I used an extra set of Brimstone Horrors I had in my bitz box to make this guy very visually distinct from my other Infernal Master. Also I swapped out his shoulder pad for some extra variety, but that’s a very optional move.

On the whole I’m very happy with how these guys came together and the army is in a great place. plus without the Mutalith it all fits into a single small Citadel foam case. I’m still going to take a larger case, but this means I can put a couple of display board elements into my larger case and take those with me.

Next Time: Tacoma Write-up

That does it for this week, as I prepare to take Thousand Sons to Tacoma for the third time in as many years. What the hell is wrong with me? My plan this time is to once again play on stream but this time not lose – I am 0-4 so far on GW stream games and it’s time to break that shitty streak! Other than that, my goal at Tacoma is to go at least 5-1 in the first six rounds and win Best Overall. It’s a big enough event that I think this is reasonable, but 4-2 probably won’t be good enough as I suspect much better painters will be in the mix in that 5-1 bracket, but we’ll see. I like my Thousand Sons a lot but so much of their paint performance depends on someone noticing that I don’t have any transfers in the army. They’re definitely a much better army visually than my Death Guard, though.

Next time I’ll talk about how Tacoma went, probably in two parts. See you on the other side.

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