TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2024, Part 22: Tacoma, Part Two

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing log of personal, hobby, and competitive progress for Warhammer 40,000. Last time around I talked about my trip to the GW US Open in Tacoma and the first four rounds of the event. In this second instalment I’m going to talk about the four rounds after that, finishing off the story of my time at the tournament.

Making the Top Cut

coming into round 3 there were 60 or so players at Tacoma on a 3-x record, and so that meant that with an 85-85 tie Chris and I both made the top cut at 3-0-1 for the first times in our competitive careers. Tacoma is eight rounds with a hidden “shadow” round after round 6 to cut the top 8 players down to the top 4 for Sunday. I really don’t want to play in the shadow round but if I end up playing in it that’ll be one of those “good” problems.

We grab some quick venue concessions lunch (chicken fingers and fries for me. They’re… adequate), and then pairings are up.

Round 5: vs. Alex MacDougall’s Tyranids

Ah, fuck. This was the last matchup I wanted to see – Alex is one of the best players at the event, and with Ben Jurek out of the top cut, he’s the best player left playing. This is a good way to end my top cut run before it starts, but I’m trying to stay hopeful. Then Nick comes by and asks us if we want to play on stream and I’m pretty sure I’m about to make my run of GW stream games 0-6.

Alex's List - click to expand

This is not a list I want to tussle with. The Vanguard Tyranids play missions incredibly well, and can be content to just avoid me and score VP passively, winning a low-scoring game.

If you want to see the stream of our game, you can find it here:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2202699389?t=04h51m56s

The Mission: Burden of Trust / Prepared Positions / Search and Destroy

That’s a great mission for Alex, since he can get anywhere on the table trivially, and means I have my work cut out for me. I really want to go second here, as it’ll ensure I can get the last score on the mission and Alex will likely have to make the first move. The worst-case scenario here is I go first, get outdrawn on secondary missions, and then Alex can sit back and outscore me without ever engaging.

I’m going first.

Yeah remember that worst-case scenario? That happens here. I draw Engage on All Fronts and Cleanse on turn 1, and I’m only able to cleanse one objective and score baby Engage. I teleport my Terminators to the upper objective and swing a unit of Rubrics around to kill a Neurolictor before it can cause problems.

Alex then draws Overwhelming Force and Behind Enemy Lines. Force is an amazing go-second pick here, as he can now just kill my rubrics with Zoanthropes for 5 free VP and Behind Enemy Lines is always free for a Biovore. This is exactly what I didn’t want and it gets worse when I draw Behind Enemy Lines, Bring it Down, and then have to discard to get Overwhelming Force on turn 2. All I can get there is 3 VP for killing one unit on the lower objective, and now I’m behind 8-5 on secondary as Alex draws Marked for Death and Sabotage. He keeps rolling low on his Advance rolls and so won’t attempt to cross the table, but finally gives it a shot on round 3 when he draws Area Denial and Secure No Man’s Land. He fails his charge into my Terminators but scores 5 VP for those, while I clear his unit of Warriors and potentially take the game.

Then I make a mistake of my own, moving Magnus too close to the middle to score Area Denial. This was 5 VP I think I needed, but really just gave Alex the opening he needed to charge three units into Magnus and kill him, swinging the game back in his favor.

Ultimately I think I played a very good game but Alex got the swing he needed there and I just couldn’t overcome getting outdrawn on the first two turns while also going first. To add insult to injury, I keep drawing bad secondaries all game and end up with Extend Battle Lines and Cull -> Marked for Death round 4, with Containment, Establish Locus, and Sabotage round 5.

Watch my Postgame Interview here

Result: 58-74, Loss

Well, that’s not ideal. My time in winning position is over and I’m now 3-1-1, which isn’t good for Best Overall, either. I absolutely need to win my next game to have any shot.

Round 6: vs. Nicholas Fromme’s Sisters of Battle

Ah, fuck. Nick’s a great guy, and I played him at Tacoma two years ago when he was on Thousand Sons. He’s a blast to play but he’s also gotten very good since I played him then, and he frequently shows up in GT top 4s, though he hasn’t quite broken through yet. He’s on Sisters this weekend, and they’re really good – they can hit every bit as hard as Thousand Sons, and the games I’ve played against them in practice come down to a bit of luck, who goes first, and who can keep units on the board the longest.

Nick's list - click to expand

Nick’s list is pretty much what I expect from Sisters at this point. It’s just full of lots of good units which can hit really hard and has lots of pieces to move around the table and cause problems. It’s pretty fragile except for the tanks and warsuits, and I need to kill the standard sisters quickly to stop Nick from being able to score secondaries effectively.

The Mission: Linchpin / Fog of War / Tipping Point

This is a weird one, and it’s using GW terrain layout 7, the one with lots of vertical terrain features. On top of that, the two ruins opposite the center have big gaps, which Magnus can move through easily. Here Fog of War really hurts – I can’t re-roll any charges or saves on round 1, and I can’t fire Overwatch, which is a very big problem. I don’t want to go first here – I want Nick to move out with the first move – and then I can shoot his units and get the first chance at Overwatch in his following Movement phase.

I’m going first.

Well that sucks. At this point I was really tired, and after deployment I laid it out for Nick: My plan was to just go all-in and try and end the game right then and there. I put Magnus on +2″ Movement, double move the Terminators to mid-table, bring both Rubrics units to the bottom objective, and shoot Magnus across the table, lining him up for an 8″ charge into Nick’s deployment zone. With some OK dice I can make that charge and kill most or all of Nick’s standard bodies and cripple him out the gate.

It doesn’t work. Magnus doesn’t make the charge and I end up in an exposed – but not wholly untenable position. But this was more or less an omen for the rest of the game – I continually came up short on dice, leaving units on one wound (even without miracle dice help), and struggling to close when it came to shooting. Both of my Infernal Masters failed their T1 hazardous tests, and while the game was a long, drawn-out slog with lots of back-and-forth and a close final score, Nick pulled ahead at the end of the game, keeping me from capturing the midtable objective. I did pretty well on Secondaries in this mission, but Nick just held the middle in later rounds and whupped me in primary scoring.

Ultimately I needed to deploy on the line if I wanted to go all-out here, especially with no way to re-roll Magnus’ charge and I didn’t do that – if Magnus has to make a 6″ charge on round 1 it’s a different game and one where Nick is just on the back foot all game and struggling to take Magnus out in his backfield while I can press forward with Terminators. But I knew it was a risky all-or-nothing strategy when I did it and I’m not upset about it.

Result: 63-78, Loss

It’s a tough loss that puts me firmly well out of any contention for Best Overall, and that’s assuming I even had the best-painted army in the top 32, which I probably don’t. I set up my minis for showcase and get Andrew to take a few photos. We swing by Jack’s table where he’s in the middle of a brutal game against a well-meaning gentleman who has maybe played 6 games leading into this one and is just playing very slowly.

I’m pretty happy with my makeshift display board; it’s not a lot, but I can easily fit a small desert mat in my backpack and the extra room in my minis case holds the Tzeentch temple I built, and that all works well enough as a display board for the army. It’s effective and doesn’t take up an inordinate amount of space. Andrew gets some pretty great photos of my minis despite the lighting not being great.

Andrew and I head back early that night, leaving around 10pm. We stop along the way to eat at Dick’s, a place Andrew describes as “modeled after the 1960s version of McDonald’s.” That’s a pretty apt description, given the place just throws out very plain cheeseburgers and shakes with no modifications and a $2.90 price tag. They aren’t amazing, but they hit the spot.

I get to bed around midnight and mostly sleep like shit. We’re up and out the door again by 7:40 and get to the venue around 8:50. We grab breakfast along the way and at 9:30 it’s time for my final two games. I don’t have anything to play for at this point, save improving my standings. Time to go make two more friends.

Round 7: vs. Noah Beddome’s World Eaters

Remember when I got into it with the guy at the next table during my game with Chris Powell? Well turns out that was Noah Beddome, a very good west coast player and occasional Goonhammer author and member of our Discord. While we made up pretty quickly after that, fate would see us squaring off in a game three rounds later. I don’t have anything against Noah at this point, but I’m absolutely going to beat the breaks off him in this game – World Eaters do not play well into Thousand Sons.

Noah's list - click to expand

Noah’s list is pretty standard, though he’s running a few more Eightbound than expected and with no big units. He’s got a nasty threat range, but the key here for me is to sit just over 12″ back from the walls near my Deployment Zone – If I can overwatch a unit coming in I can reliably kill 2 models in the unit and kill their output before they land. I kind of prefer going second here but going first will be fine – in part because of the mission.

The Mission: Terraform / Stalwarts / Crucible of Battle

This mission is an absolute godsend for me – Stalwarts is huge for Rubrics, and going first on Terraform gives you a massive advantage. Noah dropped Angron into the upper right corner and that gives me the advantage I need – I can get far enough away to avoid him for a turn and hopefully, avoid him all game if I have to.

I’m going first.

RIP Noah. I want to absolutely crush Noah early if I can, dismantling his faster units and forcing him to wade through my Terminator tarpit. The Terminators teleport across the table along with Magnus and the Exalted Sorcerer Rubrics. I double-move Magnus down and away from Angron, preventing him from getting a turn 1 charge off on my Primarch. Then I drop everything I have into Noah’s Eightbound and Rhinos. It goes… only OK. I don’t roll great but I take out a Rhino and five of the Eightbound. Not amazing, but it’s a start. I’ll finish off another Eightbound unit coming in on overwatch. More importantly, I get two units doing Terraform on turn 1, and they’re two units Noah can’t really reach. That’s an easy 16 VP on Primary once I pull it off.

On Noah’s turn he goes in for the kill, bringing in the ten Berzerkers with the MOE, a unit of Exalted Eightbound, a single Eightbound, and 5 Berzerkers with Kharn. After the 10 Berzerkers charge I use Heroic Intervention with the Termintors to block Magnus from getting charged by anything else and move in to prevent more models from getting attacks in. This pays off big – I lose a few Terminators but Magnus survives that round of combat on 3 wounds, blanking Noah on Assassination. I finish both Terraform actions and that’s pretty much the game but we play out the rest.

Magnus is able to get some shooting off from combat and while he goes down the following turn I’m able to slowly wipe out the remaining Eightbound and Berzerkers using a mix of shooting and doombolts. Angron eventually makes his way to the top of the table, where he causes a ruckus before being Arcane Vortexed off the table.

I’ll end up tabling Noah, though Angron does come back for one more round of scoring to keep the game more respectable in those lines. This is one of those games where playing aggressively early was the right call, even if the dice didn’t quite work out for it.

Result: 82-50, Win

Noah was a blast to paly despite getting completely wrecked and I had a good time. 10/10 opponent, would play again. With Noah down I’ve got just one more game to go, and again the only thing at stake is my final standing at the event. Let’s fuckin go.

Round 8: vs. Perry’s Drukhari

My final round is against Perry, running Drukhari. His models are beautifully painted and I very much appreciate the work that went into them. He’s running a bit of an off-meta list, with the Realspace Raid detachment instead of the Skysplinter Assault. That’s an immediate yellow flag – it either means he’s some kind of evil mastermind or he’s about to get completely wrecked.

Perry's list - click to expand

Perry has some interesting tools here – those beastmaster units have a buttload of wounds and are super cheap, and against most opponents they’ll trade up and cause headaches. They are at best a slight speedbump for me, and will easily die to Overwatch and flamers. The Grotesques are likewise not a problem, and before the game I ask Perry “where are your dark lances?,” to which he tells me that he has one, on his Raider. He’s instead gone all-in on Haywire, which is great for going up against knights and tanks, but means that he’ll be lucky to kill Magnus in five rounds of shooting, especially if Magnus is on -1 damage. This is a game lost in the list-building stage.

The Mission: Take and Hold / Hidden Supplies / Search and Destroy

Normally this mission doesn’t mean much to me but here having two midtable objectives is an extra gut punch for Perry, as that’s the perfect place for me to sit ten Scarabs.

I’m going second.

That’s also bad for Perry, but it doesn’t really matter. He can’t advance and charge, so even deploying on the line and going for a turn 1 assault can’t help him. He pulls back to play coy, which is probably correct, but nothing can save him.

I move the Terminators and Magnus to the middle of the table and pick up all 18 Grotesques. The Rubrics at the bottom of the table kill one unit of beasts, and the Rubrics at the top get in position to wipe the other.

Perry makes an attempt at attacking Magnus the Terminators with the Talos, throwing everything at them. He ends up getting three terminators in the exchange, then loses all of his Talos.

We call it after round 2 and walk through the rest of our secondary objectives. This game was just a massive mismatch, and there wasn’t much Perry could do to make it competitive. He might have been able to aggressively screen with beasts and force me to deal with his charge if I got too close, but he just didn’t really have the units for that and the Terminators could just go anywhere I needed to destroy anything I could see. It’s the absolute worst possible matchup for Perry’s army.

Result: 99-59, Win

I feel a bit bad for Perry but those are the breaks. That leaves me with a record of 5-2-1 and 21st place in the final standings, which is the best I’ve done yet at a GW event and is out of nearly 500 players. It’s a bittersweet achievement, though – my highest placing yet is also one where I have no chance of Best Overall and that will go to Jaden Iwaasa’s lovely Space Wolves anyways, where he snagged the award two years in a row at Tampa. Next time, Jaden.

We hang out for the awards, mostly to cheer on Battlemaster Ben Jurek and Kill Team winner Adrian Bonivento, then we head up to the Rock again to grab some beers and eat some ridiculously dense food.

I am flat-out exhausted by this point. We end up hanging out with various other folks and drinking until about 10:30, at which point we pack it in and head back to Andrew’s. We get there around 12:30 and I get maybe three hours of sleep before I have to get up at 4:30 to catch an Uber at 5 for a 7am flight back to Houston. In a surefire sign I’m getting too old to keep doing this level of damage to my body, it takes me a full day to recover from the event and then some.

Final Thoughts

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed – 21st is amazing and I’m happy to have finally made top cut, but the only reason I wanted to make top cut was in service of winning Best Overall. That said, I have to admit that while I want to win best overall, I don’t really want to go to the World Championships. I am pretty sure that I do not have the emotional strength to lose 8 consecutive games against superior players running better lists and if I get put into that situation I’ll turn into a shitty pile of salt very quickly. All I really want is that 10-pound square of cast iron with the Warhammer icon in it and the bragging rights that accompany it.

Instead I keep making all these goddamn friends.

That’s it for this week but I’ll be back next Thursday with more! In the meantime if you have any questions or feedback you can drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.