Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing log of personal, hobby, and competitive progress for Warhammer 40,000. Last time around I made some final changes to my Thousand Sons and did some hobby work on them as I prepped for Tacoma. I ended up getting most of my target work done in time to get them ready for the event, and knocked out one last practice game against my buddy Andrew. Now it’s time to talk about the event.

Thursday

It’s a 4.5 hour flight from IAH to SeaTac and that means I have to head up Thursday night to make the event’s Friday morning start time. It also means I need to fly back Monday morning if I don’t want to drop early. So I hop a flight leaving around 7pm, getting in at 9. Andrew “Pendulin” Haywood meets me at the airport and we head over to his place. Normally I prefer to stay at the venue but this year I’ve waited too long to book and now there’s nothing available anywhere near the venue. But Andrew’s got a free couch so I opt to save a thousand dollars crashing at his place. We get back pretty light, talk a bit about progress, and I force him to push out the Ork update for Administratum. Seems like everything’s working with the new plugin, so we’re all good there.

Friday

Andrew’s couch is plenty comfortable, but I don’t get a ton of sleep. We’re up the next morning and we discover that I dodged a real bullet flying out the night before: While we slept, the CrowdStrike update was quietly bluescreening half the world’s computers, grounding flights and knocking out systems. That will haunt us all day on the periphery, mostly by knocking out credit card systems and local restaurants. We grab some quick breakfast and make the 40 minute drive in to the Tacoma Convention Center.

Most of the weekend’s events won’t start until begin until Saturday; today it’s just the 40k Grand Tournament and that keeps things pretty quiet. There’s a lot of room to walk around and hang out. I set up my army on a box lid Andrew has lent me. As a refresher, here’s my list:

My Tacoma list - click to expand

And then we wait. We meet up with Jack Hunter and get checked in and set up, then listen to Mike Brandt’s regular speech on competitive play. He hits all the classic notes – look around, you’re all losers, this is a chance to make eight new friends, yadda yadda. I’ve been hearing this speech in his calm, droning tones since I first attended NOVA 2018. Despite his best efforts, the speech falls on deaf ears – I’ve always just been here to win games and make best overall – the travesty is that I keep losing games and making all these goddamn friends in the process.

Let’s go make some friends, I guess.

Round 1: vs. Connor De Gooyer’s Chaos Space Marines

My first round opponent is Connor, who’s running Chaos Space Marines in a Pactbound Zealots Detachment.

Connor's List - Click to Expand

I’ve played lists akin to Connor’s before – he’s running units of Chosen and Legionaries supported by Abaddon and Chaos Lords. They’re nasty if they get into melee, but in order to do that they have to actually get into melee and they’re very squishy targets for Overwatch and warpflamers. The big threats here are the Forgefiends, who can push through some nasty devastating wounds on Magnus and my Terminators – or rather, they could, if Connor knew about that. He’s not actually aware of the rule, but I explain it to him during the game to help him get the most out of them. More on that in a bit. Anyways I need to take care of the Forgefiends before they can become a problem.

The Mission: The Ritual / Hammer and Anvil / Stalwarts

Starting out on the Ritual is rough; it’s a complicated mission and Connor’s not super familiar with it. Having Stalwarts in play makes it doubly good for me, as I can drop objectives and still murder things with Warpflamers.

I’m going second.

Fine by me on this mission – Connor needs to move forward to meet me, and if he’s going to do that I’d love to just let him, since it puts him in a much more assailable position. He doesn’t have any meaningful turn 1 plays and forgets to drop an objective with the Ritual, and I follow up on my turn by double-7″ moving my Terminators and Magnus forward, popping his Rhino, and killing everything inside and around it.

It’s at this point I should point out that Connor was very unlucky this game with his dice – he failed something like 14/16 Dark Pacts, reminding me again why I no longer play Chaos Space Marines and Pactbound Zealots in particular. That did a number on his Forgefiends, who became easy pickings as they wounded themselves for 3 damage every time they did a pact before shooting. Once the Forgefiends were gone taking out Abaddon was pretty easy and between Magnus and the Infernal Master I made short work of him.

Connor’s army just wasn’t set up to tussle with mine – infantry CSM crumple to Thousand Sons shooting and only having two Forgefiends isn’t nearly enough to cause me to sweat. This one’s more or less a rout as I start scoring secondaries pretty consistently on rounds 3-5.

Result: 89-44, Win

Connor was a good sport and I wish him luck in the event from here. Unfortunately he’d end up going 1-7 from there, but he did score a win in round 3. Connor was the only blowout game I’d play over the entire weekend.

After the game I grab some lunch with Jack and Andrew. I’m informed by Travis, the Kill Team TO and Goonhammer author, that restaurants are closed all up and down the block, so we grab some concession stand food in the convention hall. It’s better this year than in previous years, at least.

Round 2: vs. Adam Dye’s Chaos Space Marines

Adam's List - Click to Expand

Oh lord, another Chaos Space Marines list. This one’s much more of a problem, packing a Forgefiend and three Vindicators, all of which are nasty threats to take out both Magnus and the Terminators. None of that’s great for me, and it’s unlikely I’ll be able to keep Magnus on the table long after he pokes his head out, especially on this mission.

The Mission: Purge the Foe / Tipping Point / Smoke and Mirrors

My goal is to play cagey here with the Rubrics – they’re the real stars and I start the game by putting Ahriman and his unit back into Strategic Reserves with the mission rule. For his part, Adam hides his army very well, hoping to come out and punish me for moving too early.

I’m going first.

Not what you want to see on Purge the Foe, even with the new adjustments in kill more scoring. I step out to the south with the Terminators and Magnus, hoping to limit Adam’s shots on Magnus. It doesn’t work. I keep the CP to blank damage and re-roll a save, but it isn’t enough. It takes all of his shooting, but Adam takes Magnus down turn 1. That’s bad, but it’s not the end of the game. I have plenty to work with still, and I can easily take down what’s left. The goal here is to take down 1-2 vehicles per turn and all of the infantry who can help Adam score. That said, I end up with some awful secondary luck early on, drawing Engage and Marked for Death turn 1 and Assassination and Recover Assets turn 2, so I go into round 3 with a grand total of 3 VP scored on secondary missions to Adam’s 16 (Containment + Cull + No Prisoners) after he absolutely pastes my Terminators, putting me on the back foot.

I manage to stay ahead of him on primary however, tying him for kills on round 2 and scoring kill more on round 3 and hold more on rounds 4 and 5.

The big turning point here comes mid-game, when Adam gets brave and tries to cross the center table objective with Abaddon and three Chosen. I promptly fire the Arcane Vortex Infernal Master at him in Overwatch, Command re-rolling the hit total and scoring 10 on the second roll. The flamers easily kill the Chosen then the Infernal Master drops 14 mortal wounds on Abaddon with Devastating Wounds using the unit’s ability to re-roll all wound rolls and his own ability to automatically make one a 6. That completely cuts off Adam’s remaining offensive power and I’m able to retake the center and hold it through the final rounds as I kill the other Forgefiend and the Vindicator with Doombolts and Infernal Masters.

Adam was on fire early – I don’t think he ever rolled fewer than a 5 on his shot counts iwth his Vindicators – but I manage to turn it around in the final rounds, grabbing 9 for Establish Locus and Extend Battle Lines on round 4 and Sabotage and Bring it Down for 5 on Round 5. It’s not a lot of points but I’m able to hold him to only 8 on the final turn so despite losing the secondary battle 22-28 I stay ahead 44-28 on primary.

Result: 76-66, Win

Some of it was bad secondary luck but that game was way too close – I needed to play less aggressively with Magnus there but one of the key things about him is that losing him isn’t a game-ender, even if it’s something you generally don’t want to happen early. Here the important part is that he went down only to all of Adam’s turn 1 shooting, allowing the rest of my army to step up and work through threats.

Now it’s on to round 3, and I’d love to have fewer vehicles to take on. Adam was a lovely opponent and a very good player – he’d make the 3-1 bracket and then go 3-1 in that bracket, finishing with an incredibly respectable 6-2 record. His only other loss was to Joseph Hansen’s Astra Militarum in round 5.

Round 3: vs. Scott Mason’s Astra Militarum

Let me start by saying that Scott had an incredibly cool Astra Militarum army. In a move my buddy BuffaloChicken would have been proud of, they were all converted Catachans, including a converted Leontus on a Dinosaur – and it’s all painted very well.

Scott's List - Click to Expand

Tank Guard are my nightmare and while Scott doesn’t have triple Dorns he has plenty of Leman Russ Battle tanks to work with. Guard are just really good right now – they play missions very well and just always seem to be scoring more points over the course of a game. While Scott doesn’t have any indirect fire, he has lots of up-down tricks with Sly Marbo and Gaunt’s Ghosts, deep striking Tempestus Scions, and a squad of Ogryn to scrap in the middle. That last unit is more a liability in this matchup, though.

The Mission: Scorched Earth / Inspired Leadership / Crucible of Battle

This is an interesting one. Inspired Leadership usually doesn’t matter, and it’s rare I keep Magnus late into a game against this many tanks, but it would end up making a bit of a difference in this game, in that Leontus always staying hidden doesn’t let you take advantage of it.

I’m going second.

That’s not what I want against guard, and right away Scott makes moves to attack me, dropping his Vindicare Assassin down to the lower side of the table to fire a penetrator round into my Sorcerer in Terminator Armor. Fortunately for me, he misses (1), then CP re-rolls into another miss (1), and I don’t have to worry as much about whether I can survive the shot with D3+3 damage and 6 wounds. That said, he does manage to pop open my Rhino and he scores an easy 5 on Extend Battle Lines and attempts to Recover Assets with Marbo.

As Scott pulls his tanks south, I swing Magnus and some of my forces up top, using the double move to get into position to be within 12″ of Sly Marbo and blast him off the table. My elation around this is short-lived however, as it turns out Marbo has the REGIMENT keyword and is put back into reserves with the Reinforcements Stratagem. Still, that nets me 5 for Assassinate on turn 1 and I put two units on Recover Assets (the Tzaangors and Ahriman). Killing Marbo had the added bonus of delaying Recover Assets.

Magnus and the Terminators combine with enough firepower to take out a Leman Russ up top and a Chimera, and the Terminators get into position to handle the Ogryn.

On Scott’s turn he pulls No Prisoners and keeps Recover Assets, setting two other units to complete it. This time he can get angles on Magnus and uses the Dorn and Leman Russ to blast Magnus off the table after some truly rancid saves on my part. Magnus ends up being his only kill, though. He throws a Chimera with double heavy flamers into my Rubrics and non-enhanced Infernal Mater, but only manages to kill three in the process, and they’re able to get away. He brings his Ogryn out to play at mid-table in what will be a rough mistake.

At this point Scott’s up on primary, with 10 scored each turn as he’s managed to keep me off scoring the north objective so I’m only on 5 for each. I can make that up in Secondary objectives however and on my turn I finish Recover Assets and pull Engage on All Fronts and Sabotage. Not great – Sabotage is nearly impossible for me but Engage I can score for 3 here. I use the Scarabs to wipe the Ogryn and the Rogal Dorn and take the objective in the middle of the table.

Scott still has plenty to work with and brings out a big unit of Catachan led by Straaken, who proceed to kill all but the Terminator Aspiring Sorcerer and Sorcerer in Terminator Armor with some help from the Leman Russ. Meanwhile the Infernal Master loses the rest of his unit to Chimera shooting. Scott scores an easy 8 here for Storm Hostile Objective and Establish Locus, using a deep striking unit of Tempestus Scions to score 4 for Locus that I have to double back to kill.

On my turn I draw Cleanse and Overwhelming Force and use my remaining units at mid-table to wipe out Straaken’s unit for easy Force points. Here Scott commits his biggest error of the game: He lets me get away with my Infernal Master without overwatching him with the Chimera, and that one will come back to haunt him. Ahriman drops his free Doombolt on the Chimera to soften it up. I score 9 for secondaries on this round but again only 5 for primary.

It’s round 4 and this game is going late. Scott draws Cleanse and Secure No Man’s Land and now has to make some tough choices, opting to cleanse with his Chimera while his Leman Russ opens fire and kills Ahriman but isn’t able to damage the Terminators while splitting fire. There’s not a lot left here to work with.

On my turn I draw Secure No Man’s Land (free) and Defend Stronghold (free), destroy the Chimera with the unenhanced Infernal Master and some bolter help from the Terminators, while Doombolting and using the enhanced Infernal Master to go after the Leman Russ. Despite rolling a 6 for my Doombolt there the Russ stays alive on 1 wound. Thanks to holding two objectives I score 10 VP on primary and start burning one, which will finish in Scott’s turn to give me another 5 VP.

The final round comes around and Scott draws Bring it Down (dead) and Area Denial, and discards the former to draw Assassination. He pulls Leontus and co out of their hiding hole but his Leman Russ fails its Battle-shock test and can’t be given orders this turn. They fail to hurt my Terminators, and he’ll blank on all three secondary objectives. He has his Catachans start burning the objective at the bottom of the table.

Final turn. Here’s the problem: My Terminators fail their Battle-shock test, and so can’t burn an objective. I score 3 for Defend Stronghold and I draw Storm Hostile Objective and Bring it Down. The score is now 72-62 in Scott’s favor. Bring it Down might be scorable but I don’t have that many units. I can start burning the objective at midtable with my Rubrics unit for another 5 VP at end of turn, giving me 15 for the turn, and that’ll give me a 77-72 win… but then Scott points out that he’s started burning an objective and that will give us a 77-77 tie. That’s OK, but not what I want – it’s time to get desperate.

I have 1 CP. I bring my Infernal Master around the bottom of the table, working to keep it out of line of sight by as many models as possible (the Leman Russ can’t Overwatch at this point because it is Battle-Shocked). Then I have him blast the unit with his Screamer Invocation – this is a tense moment because he only has 1 wound left after failing a Hazardous Test the prior turn killing the Chimera. I need to save my CP to re-roll that test (if he dies I give up 5 on Assassinate and lose the game!), and if I pass that, I need to re-roll the charge, and if I pass that, I need it to kill more models. I get lucky – 10 shots with the Invocation – and end up killing 7 of the Catachans on the objective without having to use the Infernal Master’s ability to automatically generate a 6. He passes his Hazardous Test, then makes the 6″ charge into the unit, and using his 6 in the wound step to heroically kill the remaining three guardsmen, giving me Storm Hostile Objective and another objective. That’s a huge swing, and I end up taking it, 81-72.

Result: 81-72, Win

Scott doesn’t love that result, and I feel for him. I pulled that out of my ass, though getting the kill on the Russ instead was possible with the other Infernal Master if I needed him to do that. Scott was an incredibly solid opponent, and like Adam only lost one other game that weekend, making the 3-1 bracket and losing in round 7 to Isaac Terada’s Blood Angels.

Day 1 Results: 3-0

Hell yeah. Day 1 is in the books and I’m 3-0 and ready to try and win at least two games on day 2 to keep my Best Overall hopes alive. I’m invited to Showcase, and we walk up to this place called The Rock to grab dinner – it’s a bar up the hill from the Convention Center with solid pizza and food. We’re joined by Steven Salazaar (formerly of the Astros Militarum team), Travis, and Ben Jurek. Ben’s 2-1 after getting upset by Astra Militarum on day 1, but angling to sneak into the top bracket. Steven is 2-0-1 at this point.

We crush some Shishito Peppers and I eat a burger called Hurts So Good, which has caramelized onions and cherry peppers on it and whips ass. It will, however, give me insane heartburn later, so I pop a couple of Pepto Bismol before I crash on Andrew’s couch that night. It turns out that Andrew’s Orks update for Administratum works for Orks, but has broken updates for every other faction, and so he spends a couple of hours fixing that before crashing. We get to bed around 2am.

Saturday

Here’s the thing: As much as I love saving about a thousand dollars on hotel costs, staying at Andrew’s comes with its own costs. The big one being that it costs about two hours per day in travel time. It’s not a bad drive, but it does cost us an hour each way, and that time has to come out of somewhere. Turns out that somewhere is “time spent sleeping,” since it means going to bed an hour later and waking up an hour earlier. I get around 5 hours of sleep on Friday night and that’s the most I’ll get all weekend.

Andrew’s prepping for the Narrative today so we head over to the event a little early (get there at 8:30) in order for him to register proper. Games won’t start until 9:30 so we have a little time to hang out before round four starts.

Round 4: vs. Chris Powell’s Chaos Daemons

Round 4 starts with a game against Chris and his Daemons. I hate playing against Chaos Daemons – they just do so much shit incredibly well – but Chris is a very fun guy to play against. Which is good, because my dice were absolute dog shit in this game.

Chris' List - Click to Expand

Chris expresses that he’s terrified of playing Thousand Sons before the game and while I get where he’s coming from, his list is an absolute nightmare for mine at the moment – he’s got three big threats, two of which can absolutely soak damage from my smaller units, and plenty of firepower to shoot Magnus off the table the first time he’s visible. Plus, that Knight Tyrant’s 12″ screening bubble is tailor-made to prevent my Scarabs from dropping in and killing it with volume of fire. Chris tries to tell me that his Tyrant usually misses and won’t kill Magnus but I know that’s both 1. a reverse jinx attempt, and 2. not going to be true at all.

The Mission: Take and Hold / Tipping Point / Raise Banners

The mission here isn’t bad for me, but I don’t want to be going first. I can raise lots of banners for extra points but I want to force Chris to walk my way so I can blast him off the table, not step out into the open to get rocked. Chris starts the game by putting his Bloodthirster and a unit of Screamers into deep strike. He forgets to deploy another unit of Screamers and declares them dead, but I tell him to just put them into Deep Strike and bring them in round 3. We’ll come back to that later.

I’m going first.

Ah, fuck. Ok well I can work with this. I draw Secure No Man’s Land and Cull the Horde turn 1, then discard that one for Bring it Down, which is just not going to happen this round. I swing my Rhino full of Rubrics around to the bottom of the table and use it to pick up the Changeling with a Doombolt before he can cause me any more headaches, while at midtable I use the Sorcerer on Disc to tag the Great Unclean One with -2″ to movement/charges – it has to Advance to reach the middle objective and now it needs a good roll to get there. I drop four banners on turn 1 – a good start!

On Chris’ turn he pulls Assassination and Establish Locus. He can drop Locus for free with a turn 1 Deep Strike using his army’s up-down ability (another reason I wanted to go second in this matchup), and holds Assassination as he charges my Infernal Master and rubrics with screamers and Bloodletters and Skulltaker. He doesn’t quite get there on the attacks however, and the Infernal Master survives. His Great Unclean One initially rolls a 1 on the Advance Roll and ends up re-rolling the Advance to get to the objective, which means Chris doesn’t have the CP to Advance and Charge. Fine by me.

On my turn I pull 10 for Primary (Chris holds the center objective), and draw Area Denial and Overwhelming Force. Area Denial isn’t a good pull here as I have to knock 17 wounds off a Great Unclean One (so actually 34, give or take) if I want to score it. I also want to keep CP to blank the volcano cannon shot from the Tyrant next turn. I bring Magnus forward along with the other Rubrics I have at midtable, then I teleport the Terminators into Chris’ Deploment Zone and fall back with one Infernal Master as I bring the other unit out of the Rhino and to bear on the Great Unclean One. The Terminators make short work of the Bloodletters, Skulltaker, and the Screamers, but at midtable things don’t go so hot. My two doombolts only put 3 wounds on the GUO (I rolled a total of five wounds) and I’m generally rolling very badly for my shot counts with the torrent weapons in the army. Magnus and the three Rubric units combine their efforts but the GUO ends up at 1 wound left, blanking me on Area Denial and leaving me in a really bad spot.

Things really break Chris’ way on his second turn. He draws Overwhelming Force and falls back with the Great Unclean One. He heals his Great Unclean One back up to 4 wounds and uses Insane Bravery to guarantee it can fall back without a test, then moves up up a tiny amount to get it away from Magnus. This is my chance – I fire Overwatch with the Arcane Vortex Infernal Master… and roll a 3 on my shot count. This sucks so bad. I need to re-roll the count, but if I spend a CP on that, I won’t have CP to spend on Magnus to blank the damage on one Volcano Cannon shot. I’ll just have to hope for the best. I spend 1 CP to re-roll and this time score 10 shots, just barely killing the GUO as it tries to escape. Then Chris scores three hits the volcano cannon (I manage to save two using the save re-roll with cabal points), hits with all his melta shots, plus every rocket, and Magnus goes down immediately. This exchange sucks so bad. On top of that, Chris uses his flamers to drop in and kill my Infernal Master, scoring 5 for Assasssinate.

I’m in a very bad spot – Chris only has 5 on Primary to my 20 coming into round 3 but he’s beating me 16-10 on secondary missions and it’s not getting much better. On turn 3 I draw Defend Stronghold and Recover Assets – good secondaries but I don’t really want to be doing actions right now. My terminators don’t really have many targets so I walk them up and have them Recover Assets, combining with the Rhino and Tzaangors to score 6 on that one, plus three more for Defend. Good points, but not great board position. I just don’t have the combined arms to take out the Bloodthirster and the Tyrant so my only hope at this point is to stay on objectives and get good secondaries.

Chris is done holding his Bloodthirster at this point and uses Rapid Ingress to drop him in and move on Ahriman and co, killing everyone in the unit except Ahriman, who he’ll get to on the following turn. He can’t kill the Rhino and gets stuck in combat with my Exalted Sorcerer on Disc, who can tank multiple rounds of fights from a Knight Tyrant. The really bad part for me is Chris’ secondary draws – he pulls Extend Battle Lines and Secure No Man’s Land, which are both free as hell and give him 10 VP without any change in his battle plan. There’s a fun moment at the start of his turn where he draws Cull the Horde and I tell him that he’s stuck with it because of my Terminators, then the guy at the table next to him starts telling him that he can discard it. This is both false and generally improper – he’s not aware of the game state, so I tell that person to mind his business and focus on his own game. He does not take this very well (I was pretty rude with my tone) and we shout back and forth for a moment before things calm down and apologies are exchanged. This will become important later in my story.

Anyways, Chris pays the 1 CP to discard Cull the Horde (because, again, the Terminators were on the table and are a legal Horde target with 30 wounds), and draws Secure No Man’s Land, ensuring I’m about to get fucked on secondary scoring.

It’s the end of round 3 and I start moving. I pull my Exalted Sorcerer out of combat and double-move him onto Chris’ home objective. Chris forgot to deep strike his Screamers – the same ones he forgot to deploy. He kills them but I hate that so I tell him to drop them in the corner. This however, is a problem – that corner is ***very*** relevant, as I’ve just moved an Exalted Sorcerer up that way to capture Chris’ home objective. The Screamers are able to move up and kill him the following turn, creating a 5-point swing that becomes relevant to the game. It also scores him Defend Stronghold when he draws it on his turn, for an extra 3 VP. I’ll come back to this in a moment. He picks up Sabotage for 6.

I score No Prisoners and draw Marked for Death, which is extremely bad secondary luck at this point in the game. I get 2 for killing Nurglings but Marked is impossible, so I’m just trying to survive at this point. Chris teleports his Bloodthirster to the bottom of the table to kill my rubrics and hold a third no man’s land objective, and attempts to wipe out my Tzaangors with Flamers, but doesn’t get there.

Final turn of the game and I pull Containment and Sabotage. You have to be kidding me with these secondary draws. Despite all of it, I can easily score Sabotage with the Rubrics for 6, so I’ll have to live with that. Chris then draws Storm Hostile Objective and Engage on All Fronts, another free 8 VP. As we tally up scores, we talk about the outcomes and the Screamers with a judge. It’s a tough situation because I didn’t want to penalize Chris for forgetting a unit, but as Daemons there’s nowhere I can have him put that unit where it won’t immediately be super relevant to the game – and in this case the back of his home corner didn’t even require big teleport shenanigans. After some additional discussion of proper play procedure, we settle on an 85-85 tie for the round, which we can both live with and makes sense given the misplay. Chris doesn’t want to punish me for being too polite, and I appreciate that.

Result: 85-85, Tie

This game was rough. I think I made a mistake early throwing the Terminators across the table but everything just kind of broke Chris’ way during the game and that made this one really tough to fight back from. Even without that I just needed better sequencing on my draws to keep up and it wasn’t happening. But like I said, Chris was a joy to play and I’m glad it worked out for both of us.

3-0-1 isn’t the 4-0 start I wanted but with 60 players at 3 wins coming into round 3 it means that both Chris and I will make the top cut going into round 5, and it’s the first time that has happened for either of us. I’m amped up to play the next game and hoping for some better dice this time around. Let’s see if it holds.

Saturday: Rounds 5-8

That’s it for today but come back on Saturday for the second part of this update, in which I’ll cover rounds 5-8 of the event. The first four rounds set the stage for what comes later, so this made a good stopping point and keeps me from dumping eight battle reports into a single article.

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