TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2024, Part 28: Warzone Houston Practice

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress for 2024. Last time around I played a couple of practice games with a potential Renegade Raiders list, testing out a few concepts I might run at Warzone Houston and what I’ll eventually play at the Grand Narrative. A dozen or so Ld rolls of 5 later I’d decided that maybe the Raiders weren’t what I wanted to play in a competitive setting. So it’ll be back to my Thousand Sons, running the list I painted for Tacoma. I set up a practice game with my buddy, Dan “Swiftblade” Richardson, who’s also planning to attend with his Renegade Raiders.

Practice Game: vs. Dan’s Renegade Raiders

For this game I’m running my Tacoma list. It’s not the best Thousand Sons list – it’d be much, much better if I were running a trio of Mutalith Vortex Beasts, or even two – but it’s quite a bit more “nerf-proof” in the sense that I expect MVPs to catch a massive points nerf at some point and Scarabs to stay put. Also, I only have one MVB and I’m not going to paint two more. This list is “good enough,” in my estimation.

My Tacoma list - click to expand

This is mission #1 from Warzone Houston, and if you’re wondering what’s up with the terrain well, it’s because although WZH is using layouts from Pariah Nexus, they don’t really have a handle on the terrain, and so are replacing parts of the terrain with these large crates.

See those red and blue boxes? They’re supposed to be these:

Supposedly these act as ruins but you can see over them and they aren’t breachable, which makes them a mix of completely worthless and incredibly bad. It fucks up the whole setup, particularly on this mission, where vehicles just can’t move around them or through spaces they could before. We do our best to model a facsimile of these on my table, using a couple of crates and a blocked off section of terrain.

I’m going Second.

That’s ideal in this mission – going second on Purge is great, even if you don’t get Kill More on turn 1, and Renegade Raiders generally don’t want to go first, preferring to wait for opponents to move on to objectives so they can be the ones to push forward and tear them off using the extra AP. Dan puts a predator and both units of Rubrics into Reserves, and I put a unit of Rubrics into Reserves (the one with the Disc Sorcerer) using the mission rule. My plan is to try and aggressively hold the top objective with Rubrics, and potentially abandon the one in the lower right in favor of the middle, depending on how Dan moves. Scarabs can handle anything he’s got but I need to get the first strike. If he’s too aggressive, I’ll teleport over and decimate him. If he plays conservatively, I’ll let up and match him on VP early, then pull ahead late.

Dan spends turn one pushing a few things forward, but doesn’t have good angles on anything. His big mistake here is that he gets his Chosen out of the Rhino – both units hop out, and that means I have an opportunity to do some work. If I can drop a Predator and a unit of Chosen alongside his Accursed Cultists I can potentially cripple his response. Rhinos are tough for me to crack, but goobers in power armor I can handle. On my turn I teleport the Scarabs forward, zip Magnus around, and double move a unit of Rubrics up top. The Rubrics and Infernal Masters wipe out Dan’s Accursed Cultists, while the Rubrics and Magnus combine to kill a Predator and the Chosen.

In retrospect, charging with the Rubrics – who made their 9″ – was probably a mistake. My plan was to tie units down and while the Rhinos were tied up – they made their Ld tests and fell back, and the remaining three Legionaries units and last Chosen unit put a hurt on my Scarabs, dropping me to only 4 models in the unit (and failing to score Marked for Death). They’d come back by killing a unit of Legionaries in melee, then falling back the next turn. My reserves Rubrics would show up on that side and kill the other unit of chosen.

This one’s over pretty quick. Up top my Rubrics kill one predator, then deal with the other after it arrives. Magnus controls the middle pretty handily and Dan has nothing on the table to challenge him once the predators go down – yeah he has some Lascannons in his Legionaries but he’s down to just two of those. We call it after round 3.

Result: 97-54, Win

A fun game, and Dan’s always a good time when it comes to play. He and I chat for a bit then he heads out – today’s more of a quick practice session than a full afternoon + dinner kind of deal.

Hobby Progress

I’m trying to double my output to two models per week at the moment, and mostly succeeding. This week I finished my first Night Lords Master of Executions. The concept here is based on a suggestion from my buddy Max, and I’m really happy with how it turned out, using Fabius Bile as the base for conversion:

I’m especially happy with how his cloak turned out, using different shades of patchwork skin. On his trophy rack is a helmet form a Fighting Tiger of Veda, a suggestion given to me by Dan “Badcast” Boyd during our Saturday night hobby chat.

For my second model this week, I’ve started painting a unit of Night Lords Raptors. I’m going to need these guys to go with my Chaos Lord with Jump Pack, though I’m still undecided on whether I want to do a full unit of ten. For now the plan is five, because they’re uh, not very good.

The big upside to the Raptors is that they paint pretty fast, so hopefully I can get three done for next week or even the rest of the squad. Most of them don’t have draped flesh, either, making them easier than this guy to paint. Anyways, that’s it for this week’s update. Check back next week for more hobby progress and possibly another practice game in the books – gotta keep my reps up.

Have any questions or feedback? 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.