Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress for 2025. Last Time Around I was testing a new list for the Chaos Daemons Shadow Legion Detachment. That was pretty cool and while I’m relatively certain I’ll be coming back to the list in the next few weeks, I have a lot of hobby progress to do before I get there. I’m still in the process of painting Be’lakor, rebasing Bloodcrushers, and assembling new Flesh Hounds.
Before I can get games in with the Shadow Legion however, I have to get in games in the League I signed up for! About six weeks ago I signed up for a league through Ettin, a local game store near me. I got in three out of four games in the first round and then was bracketed into a new group for the second half of the league. Now I’ve got (mostly) new opponents to match into, and I need to get those games going. I signed up for that event with my Creations of Bile list that I’ve been playing, and so I’m going to keep playing Creations while I’m in the League. It’s just good practice besides. While we’re on the topic, I’d like to talk about what I’ve learned playing the faction.
Playing Creations of Bile
Playing Creations has been a lot of fun! You get some cool tricks that push you into a much more pressure-based list, and there are a lot of ways you can build around what it does, though I’m pretty sure the only way to not build it is to go for BS +1 and shooting units. It’s a fun consolation prize when you end up with it on Obliterators, but never something you want. Honestly the biggest problem playing the faction is keeping track of unit stats – I find that because my units’ characteristics change every single game, it’s often hard to keep track of or remember the correct stats. Or sometimes I’ll forget a buff until after the first combat is over – though usually after wiping out some screening unit, so it’s seldom a big issue. One way I track this later is by putting in a note on what I got in Tabletop Battles, but I think I’m going to start putting a written note/token on the table at the start of the game.
Rolling vs. Choosing
I have yet to play a game where I chose the trait instead of rolling for two different options. You have about a one in three chance of getting what you want on the first roll with two dice, and if you don’t get it there, you can take another shot. This gives you in total about a 56% chance at getting a single trait you’re looking for in a matchup, but the reality is that most of the time that trait can be easily substituted with the others because half of them are melee buffs. That is, I may want +1 Attack, but if I end up with +1 WS and +1 Strength that’s going to be just fine, and provide more value on the balance.
On that note, the two upgrades I want most of the time are +1 Attack and +2″ Movement. Those are always useful, with the former being the best increase in damage output for the money and the latter being the most broadly useful for getting Plague Marines and Obliterators around the table. +1 WS is fine since it buffs a large number of units, including the Chaos Lord (whose hammer hits on a 3+), and +1S / +1T are pretty situational and depend heavily on matchup. I find that +1T is more likely to be useful for my particular list, since it puts Obliterators on T8 and Plague Marines/chosen on T6, and those are useful breakpoints for a lot of weapons, while +1S seldom gives me much value.
The Obliterators and Plague Marines
I run a bit of an off-meta Bile list in that rather than using 30 Possessed, I’m running Obliterators and Plague Marines. I will say that I’m not a fan of Possessed – they have good speed but I find their output underwhelming and they are very much a unit where you either take a unit of ten of them or don’t take them at all as a result. I suspect running the full 30 of them is a better list than what I’m taking but I really like Plague Marines in a Creations list – they are very points-efficient, they’re BATTLELINE, they hit hard, and they can benefit from every single upgrade in the list – even if I’m stuck with +1 BS, they have two plasma guns and a Blight Launcher they can pop off shots with.
Likewise, the Obliterators tend to give me a ton of value as well – they benefit from +1 BS if I get it, but they also love every single upgrade, and I tend to play pretty aggressively with them, as they come loaded with four attacks each rocking S9 power fists. If I have to get up close and personal with tanks, they often end up finishing the job in melee, and if they get +1 Attack they’ll put out some very solid damage. They’re at their best when they get +2″ movement but I usually keep at least one unit in Deep Strike just in case I need to drop them in.
League Game: vs. Connor’s Astra Militarum
Connor put out the call for a game late last week and I was more than ready to get a game in and answer the call. Before this game I decided that I wanted more redundancy in my list, and jettisoned my Warp Talons for another unit of Obliterators, taking the Enhancement off the Master of Executions. I’m not sure I liked this change, and may switch back.
Connor's List - click to expand Astra Militarum CHARACTERS Cadian Castellan Cadian Command Squad Gaunt’s Ghosts Krieg Command Squad Primaris Psyker Rogal Dorn Commander Ursula Creed BATTLELINE Cadian Shock Troops x20 Cadian Shock Troops x10 Death Korps x20 DEDICATED TRANSPORTS Chimera Chimera OTHER DATASHEETS Catachan Heavy Weapons Catachan Heavy Weapons Catachan Heavy Weapons Field Ordnance Battery Kasrkin Krieg Combat Engineers Krieg Combat Engineers Leman Russ Battle Tank Tempestus Scions Tempestus Scions
Siege Regiment
– Enhancement: Legacy Sidearm
– Enhancement: Stalwart’s Honours
Connor posted a screenshot of his list in the text chat so I don’t have the exact list on hand to copy paste but he’s running the Siege Regiment, and he’s running on older rules. My updated list is only possible because Nurglings dropped 5 points, so we have a brief discussion about lists. This is mostly a mistake on my part – the League is pretty loose on what can be run, and up to now my opponents have been taking lists different to what they originally posted, as they’ve been testing out other lists. That’s fine by me, but Connor isn’t on that wavelength, and he’s technically correct. I didn’t bring the Warp Talons with me, however, so we agree to split the difference – I’ll run new Nurglings and my updated list, and he’ll get to use the older, more powerful Combat Engineers.
Connor’s running the Siege Regiment, which by his own admission isn’t a great way to play and I’m forced to agree after seeing it in action. The big trick he’s got here is depriving three units more than 12″ away from his guys of cover, which makes the mortars and siege battery much more useful – this is the first game I’ve actually seen mortars kill a unit of Cultists with Indirect fire. Usually they kill five, but here’s a PROTIP: The Cultist sticky ability works even if you’re battle-shocked; you just need to control the objective. So always put a second unit on the objective with your Cultists during deployment. If they get battle-shocked you can still sticky it with the corner of that Rhino as your controlling unit.
The Mission: Burden of Trust / Hammer and Anvil / Hidden Supplies
I’m going second.
This is an interesting one. Going second on Burden isn’t ideal, but having 6 objectives changes a lot of that math – it means I’ll be able to defend 3-4 most turns if I can get out there. There’s no way I’ll take an objective from those 20-model bricks of Cadians and Kriegers, but I should be able to tear through them pretty quick with the Nemesis Claw, who specialize in doing buttloads of attacks. Ironically, I’d have been better off keeping the Warp Talons for this matchup as there are really only two tanks to track – though both are liable to be a pain in the ass to deal with.
Going second here may not be ideal on Burden, but it’s great for me. Connor drops his Gaunt’s Ghosts in the middle of the table and I roll +2″ Movement and +1 WS for Creations of Bile. Let’s fuckin go – I’m ready for this boon after six straight games of +1 Toughness (though admittedly +1T would have helped in this game). Connor opts for a more cagey approach this game – and rightly so, keeping the bulk of his units back and out of charge distance while moving forward with a few key pieces. Once he gets stuck in melee with my guys, it’s probably over, though he can fall back and shoot pretty easily.
Connor draws Overwhelming Force and Cleanse turn 1 and uses his mortars and ability to strip cover to take out my Cultists sitting on the home objective, plus my Nurglings with some of his combat engineers. He also manages to pop a Rhino with those mortal wounds and some extra shooting, while snagging two objectives on Cleanse. That gives him a nice little 7-point secondary turn 1 and I start sweating a tiny bit – even if this is a matchup tilted in my favor, it’s possible to lose if I get some bad luck on cards. To that point, I draw Cleanse and Recover Assets turn 1. I can Cleanse for 4 pretty easily, but with the mortar situation I just drop Recover. I use the Obliterators on the table to shoot Gaunt’s Ghosts through the wall while the Chosen and Bile do their Advance + Charge to finish them off and get stuck in with tanks and Kriegers.
On Turn 2 Connor pulls Extend Battle Lines and Recover Assets and I start to see the issue – most of his damage output comes from those big units, and as I’ve killed Gaunt’s Ghosts – he got too aggressive with them early – he’s now in a bad position for scoring. He doesn’t have a safe spot to drop his Scions where he can do a recover action, though I’d argue he should have considered dropping them in my back home corner and doing recover with Creed, a unit in my zone, and a Chimera. That would ensure he’d get at least 3 points and potentially 6 if I can’t kill the Scions with a melee unit or the Vindicator, depending on which corner he’d picked. He drops Recover Assets for 1 CP and scores Extend.
The other big Trick Connor can pull here is stacking a free Stratagem with another one in the Detachment to get extra shots at 6″ distance and full re-rolls to hit and wound. This turns the big blobs of Cadians and Kriegers into something really deadly, and the Kriegers can be even nastier if they’ve lost a model as well. He easily kills Bile and his unit of Chosen by pumping them full of – no joke – something just shy of one hundred shots.
 Of course, it’s now turn 2 on my end and we’re getting into the pressure part. I rapid ingress a unit of Obliterators and drop the other one, and then use them to drop the Dorn to low single-digit wound counts, then charge into it. The Dorn and Russ lived a frustratingly long time as I got them down to something like 1 wound each and they just kind of hung on longer than I expected. That said, my Plague marines put in work up top, while my Chaos Lord and his Legionaries took the brunt of mortar fire before he swept into Connor’s deployment zone and started killing mortar units by himself.
The big swing happens turn 3 when Connor draws Contianment and No Prisoners. He can easily drop three units if he focuses them down – and he’ll score 5 for No Prisoners – but he has no units he can Contain with, and any game where you don’t contain for 6 is a game you’re likely to lose. He scores zero for it, and that’s indicative of the board control issue: I’ve been holding three No Man’s Land objectives and defending four all game, and I’ll end up maxing primary by the bottom of turn 4, while Connor can only hold two and his grip on the No Man’s Land objective is slipping.
Connor puts up a solid fight and hangs on longer than I expect, but eventually the tanks go down and the Obliterators and Plague Marines tear their way through the remaining Cadians in the middle of the table. Connor’s done a decent job on Secondary but really needed to max that and keep pressure on my backfield – killing the Cultists turn 1 was good, but then he needed to put his Scions behind me and kill off the Predator I had defending my home point. That never happened, and I wasn’t ever really forced to move back. This mean keeping pressure up early and stopping Connor from getting onto the middle points of the table.
In all, it’s just a very bad matchup for Connor, generally – I do just fine into hordes and while the volume of shooting on those big units is scary, losing a single five-model unit of Chosen or Plague Marines isn’t a big deal for me. Either way, Connor was a fun opponent and I enjoyed playing him.
Result: 100-57, Win
Hobby Progress
I’m currently working primarily on some [REDACTED] stuff you’ll see soon, but in the meantime, I have also had some time to paint more Emperor’s Children. In particular, I’ve been working on a unit of Infractors, swapping out the arms on some older Noise Marine conversions I did using the new arms and shoulder pads left over after I built Tormentors with my Champions box.
I really like the new kits for the Emperor’s Children; they’re easy to assemble and the flat arm joins make for easy conversions and swappable parts with the CSM kits. I think these guys look just fine as Emperor’s Children and I’m happy enough with this that I’ll be using them as one of my 1-2 units of Infractors moving forward.
Final Thoughts
That’s one game down but I’m looking to get in another next week, probably against Ryan again, who’s in my pod again. I’ll likely go back to running Warp Talons over the Obliterators, just because I like them more for action stuff and their flexibility. And I’ll be able to show off the other models I’ve been working on, plus some more hobby progress.
See you next Thursday.
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.
