TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2024, Part 37: Return to Crab

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress for 2024. Last time around I wrapped up painting my Night Lords Vindicator and I got in a practice game with Death Guard testing out a new list. This time around it’s more of the same, with some more hobby progress for the Grand Narrative and practice for a teams event in December.

Teams Practice

There’s a big Texas 5-man Teams event happening in early December and I’m joining up with the local Astros Militarum team to play in it. We’re still in the process of finalizing lists but I’ve been playing around with Death Guard for the event. Right now I’m not set yet on whether I want to run vehicles or infantry for the event – both have their uses, and will pair well into different opponent types. But I’m currently testing the vehicles build because it’s just fun as hell and I had some extra defilers lying around anyways.

One of the more important things you can do for a teams event is testing. Because so much of your team success boils down to getting the best matchups, it helps to have a really good idea of how your list will play into other factions and list types. And while some of that will be academic, it helps to have some games under your belt to understand the nuances of each matchup.

So last Saturday the team got together for some teams practice up at my place. I’ve got the space and terrain to run two tables of GW terrain at the same time, plus I’ve got a pretty comfortable set-up generally. Vinay, Chris, David, and Joel all made the trip up and we spent the day getting in games, talking about matchups, and testing some different list ideas.

It’s a full day of fun games, split up by some pizza. I play two games, first against David’s Necrons, and the second against Vinay’s Chaos Daemons. I already have a solid idea of how this will do into tank-heavy guard so Chris plays some different matchups. We’re not 100% locked in yet on the factions and lists we’re bringing and these games help us solidify some of that. I’m going to avoid going into too much detail on the games out of respect for the team and to keep some secrecy but I’ll talk about the key findings and interesting notes from each game.

As a reminder, my list from last week was this:

Triple Defilers - click to expand

Game 1: vs. Necrons

David’s running a vehicle-heavy Hypercrypt list. I’ve played against Hypercrypt Legion before – the key is to take out the army’s infantry units as soon as possible, and force them to have to do actions and hold objectives with Doomsday Arks. The good news is that the PBCs are perfect for this – two can pretty much kill a 5-model infantry unit like Flayed Ones or Deathmarks with indirect fire, and that’s a good investment of firepower.

Some extra notes:

• The Defiler melee was very solid in this game, where having D6+1 damage on the claws allowed me to drop some massive damage into the Silent King.
• Typhus is pretty resilient as Warlord, and I’ll probably drop him in via Ingress most games.
• I rolled pretty poorly for the Defilers this game most of the time, but they still managed to pull out some good shots and melee hits against bigger Necron threats.
• I went with Rattlejoint Ague, which gives -1 to saves, in order to get extra damage output on the Defiler cannons.
• I tried Tactical objectives this game and was pleasantly surprised by the outcome – the small vehicles become more important in those games, and I need to do some work protecting them.
• The mission had the Stalwarts rule, and I’m used to that being a helpful thing and not something completely irrelevant to my army. Tragic.
• Doomsday Arks are still pretty nasty.
• We played on Layout 2. I think this is a better layout for me than Layout 1, since pushing the home Ls back gives me more ability to forward deploy while staying hidden and my army kind of wants big firing lanes to work with.

After game 1, we break for lunch (pizza) and talk about the results. Joel made it up for a bit but has to dip before a second game. There’s a lot to discuss and we talk about terrain layouts and missions for the event, and who our first/second defenders will be.

Game 2: vs. Daemons

This was a real “back to the drawing board” game. Vinay’s normally a Grey Knights player but was testing a Chaos Daemons list. The problem is that he was running too many greater daemons – three KoS, plus Be’lakor, a Great Unclean One, and Syll’esske. That’s untenable, as it meant I could take Bring it Down and Assassination and score a staggering 8 secondary VP for every greater daemon killed. There’s a reason you typically see lists top out at 4 greater daemons (one KoS + Shelaxi is more common), and that’s a big part of it.

Some notes from the game:

• One key thing to remember is that unless they’re already at full strength and you don’t have any other targets, you never shoot daemon INFANTRY with mortars. It causes them to battleshock and more often than not they’ll end up just healing whatever damage you do, or even less. So you train your mortars on the greater daemons. Or flesh hounds, if they’re available.
• Rattlejoint Ague is useless in this matchup, so you opt for Skullsquirm Blight, giving daemons -1 WS and -1 BS against you. Which is really great for cutting down their effectiveness.
• Fun fact: With that -1 WS a Keeper of Secrets will typically not kill a Defiler, then it’ll usually eat 1-2 claw wounds back. Pinch, pinch motherfucker.
• I took Bring it Down and Assassination and the combo was so brutal we’re just completely rethinking Vinay’s strategy. He either needs to change factions or massively change lists.
• The MBHs are pretty worthless in these matchups since their +1 to wound only affects VEHICLE units, but I did have a good moment where one shot Be’lakor and did the 4 damage needed to kill him from inside melta range. Then Be’lakor exploded and did 6 mortal wounds to the MBH, which then died and also exploded, leaving the two Keepers of Secrets near Be’lakor to take D6+1 mortal wounds. Good stuff.
• As usual, you just kind of ignore the Great Unclean One until you have no other good targets. He’s stupid tough to kill and can’t do that much damage.

All in all it was a good day of games and I learned a lot about the list, what it’s capable of, and how to pilot it. Now I need to get some reps in with the infantry version and see how that feels and what it can do well against and we can build out our matrices.

Also I need to get three defilers painted. Not looking forward to that!

Hobby Progress

We’re getting down to the wire with Atlanta but I’m also pretty close to done. During the weekend I finished putting paint on my last Legionaries squad, giving me two to work with. Check it out:

With the Legionaries done that means I just have a Land Raider left to paint to finish out my Night Lords for the event, and that thing’s already about 50% done. If I can finish it before the weekend I’ll try and hit some of my stretch goals – five more rubrics and some cultists – but if I can’t hit those I’m not going to be upset. I’m very happy with how the army has come along and ready for the event, and will be taking some army shots before I leave.

Next Time: The Grand Narrative

We’re seven days away! Wait, holy shit that’s not a lot of time. Anyways, I’ll be doing posts every day of the Grand Narrative so be sure to check back every day next week for posts Wednesday through Sunday and then again the following Thursday. See you then!

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