TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2025, Part 2: The Ettin January RTT

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress for 2025. Last Time Around I kicked off this new 2025 series, talking about my goals for the year and getting in a test game with Creations of Bile against Genestealer Cults. This week I’m kicking off the competitive year with a bang and talking about my experience at my first RTT of the year. But before that, I got in another practice game.

A Second Test with Creations of Bile

I was pretty happy with my first Creations of Bile test but there were a few problems with the list. The first was that I didn’t like the anti-vehicle output – I had a lot of 2-damage stuff with relatively low AP and nothing ranged outside the Obliterators. And on that note, I also only had three painted Obliterators and three painted Possessed, so if I wanted to run Creations of Bile at the RTT I’d need to figure out something that didn’t require painting three obliterators and seven Possessed. And while sure, the RTT is pretty lenient when it comes to paint standards, I am not going to compromise either my own standards of only bringing painted minis to events and trying to compete for best painted, so I need something that will have me painting at most two models in the week leading up to the event.

That led me to fiddle with some different list options. I could reasonably paint a fourth possessed and an Obliterator in a few days, and finnagle a fifth possessed. Swapping out a third Rhino for a Land Raider would give me some more punch, and I already had a Nemesis Claw painted that I wanted to get into the army as well. That led me to this list:

Creations of Bile Take 2 - click to expand

This list trades out a unit of Plague Marines for the Nemesis Claw, and upgrades a Rhino to a Land Raider by cutting out five possessed, the Master of Possession, and the Enhancements. Finally it swaps out two Obliterators for a Vindicator, which on the whole is the correct move I think. It’s very conservative compared to the more balls-to-the-wall approach of say, Anthony Vanella’s list, but I think there are multiple ways to run Creations of Bile.

My practice game was against my buddy Luke’s Chaos Knights. Another pillar of the local Astros Militarum group, Luke’s Chaos Knights are some of my favorite conversions for the army, kitbashed from all kinds of different kits to create weird dudes. Luke has been testing the Iconoclast Fiefdom, and was running three units of cultists with a big Accursed Cultist + Dark Commune blob and a dozen or so War Dogs.

Our mission was The Ritual / Swift Action / Crucible of Battle. I ended up rolling +1 WS (good) and +1 Toughness, which was worthless against the S10+ and S12+ weapons filling Luke’s army. Turns out +1 Toughness is pretty bad most of the time.

Luke went first in this one and that hurt him. Luke’s not new to the game but he’s not on that hundred games per year diet either and his biggest challenge is being way too aggressive with his knights. He moves his Cultists up to mid-table in an attempt to block me, and goes for a big turn 1 advance-and-charge with his Accursed Cultists. I’ve purposely deployed back to prevent this however and he rolls a 3″ Advance, keeping him well out of the distance he needs to get there, even with the Scout move. That’s bad luck, but he’d have needed an 11 to reach even with a 4+, so not worth banking on. He still pulls 6 for Containment and 5 for Extend to make for a very good turn 1 secondary draw.

My big concerns here are the melta dogs – they can do some real damage – and mostly holding objectives. I draw Bring it Down and Recover Assets on turn 1 and that’s about as bad as you can get on T1 against Chaos Knights – there’s only one war dog I can conceivably destroy and while I get it, I’m only at 2 VP on secondary. This shifts my plan – the Ritual is a bad mission for Chaos Knights if they have to spend activations creating objectives so I make it my goal to kill the cultists instead. I wipe both units at midtable and kill most of the Accursed Cultists in one go, using the Land Raider as extra insurance for the Chaos Lord and his Legionaries.

That was a mistake as it put the land raider further out than I wanted to and it wasn’t helpful anyways. Luke picks it up pretty easily with melta shooting in the following turn, leaving me with little support on that side of the table. Because I took the center of the table, Luke’s only on 5 primary VP but he picks up 2 for Engage on All Fronts and 5 for No Prisoners when he’s able to kill two other units. I pull 10 primary on my turn along withy Establish Locus (easy for the Warp Talons) and Assassination (basically dead, so I huck it for CP). My plan is to go hard now on primary to catch up, and that means keeping Luke off the top objective he made.

This is pretty doable – Luke charged my way to kill things so I outflank him to the objectives he’s made and put him on 0 primary for round 3. Secondaries also go my way when he draws Recover Assets and Marked for Death (0 points) and I pull No Prisoners and Cleanse (9 total), picking up the rest of his cultists and two more war dogs. Luke’s able to claw back an objective on his turn for 5 primary but now he’s running low on units. I’m not in a great condition myself but I still have some power to work with and Luke’s no longer at the point where he can afford to do actions. That doesn’t matter so much though, as he draws Behind Enemy Lines and Assassination in round 4 and scores both for 8 VP.

I don’t have the units to kill Luke off the table or anything but I have enough power to keep him off objectives and he’s overcommitted to the bottom side of the table. Meanwhile I pull 15 VP for primary in each of rounds 4 and 5 to make it 50 on primary, while holding Luke to 15 total. That’s the backbreaker here. If Luke had played a bit more defensively, staying back and forcing me to come to him, then counterpunching me hard with dogs, I’d have had a much harder time. I think his biggest mistake here was getting too aggressive too early and putting himself in exposed position, especially with the Cultists.

This basically reinforces my cardinal rule of 40k against Chaos: If you see cultists on the table, kill them first.

Result: Win, 93-54

This was a solid practice game and helped me get a handle on what I needed to do with the army. I went back and forth on it a number of times but ended up settling on this list for the Ettin RTT. I was able to fill the spot of a player dropping mid-week, making it much easier to plan for the event.

I was originally going to run Black Legion for the event but as I started taking models out of my case I noticed I had all the vehicles better painted in Night Lords colors, plus plenty of legionaries and warp talons, so I ended up switching to Night Lords. Which is fine, because that’s a much better painted army at the moment.

The January Ettin RTT

Ettin isn’t the closest store to my house but it’s not far either and I can’t stress enough how much of a difference it makes to only have a 15 minute drive home after an event. Makes planning Saturday night stuff actually doable. Ettin is a solid store and they’ve massively improved their terrain since the last time I was there, though like most stores they’re still in need of a good terrain hobby day to get all of the stuff painted. We get off to a bit of a late start waiting for the store to open but things run very smooth from there.

This event was a fun look at the new meta – of the 20 players on hand I think like 18 of them were playing Grotmas Detachment lists, including me.

Round 1: vs. Brandon Smith’s Adeptus Custodes

My first game was against the new Solar Spearhead Detachment, with Brandon’s lovely Adpetus Custodes list. This is a matchup that worried me going in as it presents a lot of T6+ threats to handle and my army is a lot of S5 weapons. For this one I rolled +1 Attack and +1 Toughness, and the latter basically did nothing for me.

Brandon's List - Click to Expand

The Mission: Tipping Point – Linchpin – Fog of War

I won the roll-off to go first and that was a pretty big help, letting me pick up Secure No Man’s Land turn 1 and discard Bring it Down for a Command point and it’s on to Brandon. The Jetbikes can’t advance and charge so I’m not super worried about turn 1 charges, but they will absolutely wreck me if they get into combat with me so I’ve tried to stay out of sight on this one. Fortunately for me Brandon’s T1 draws are terrible – Containment and Overwhelming Force – and he doesn’t want to risk coming out to score them. He also rolls horribly on his advance rolls, leading to his Wardens falling short of the south objective.

This means I pick up an easy 13 on turn 2 and I’m in good position to open up. I pull Area Denial (free 5) and Containment (only 3) and use a mix of Vindicator and Obliterator fire to nearly wipe out one bike unit. Brandon aims for the turnaround hard on his turn, coming out with more or less his entire army for a pretty nasty go turn. He s

Brandon drops in his wardens from reserves and gets the charge off with them, plowing through my units up top and onto the objective while at midtable his Telemon comes crashing through the terrain and into my Obliterators. Fortunately he only kills one of them, then is forced to consolidate into the Vindicator after I pull him out. The other stays alive and regenerates its dead comrade, then uses the power of friendship (and Melta) to blast the remaining jetbikes off the table on the southern objective.

Up top is where the Nemesis Claw finally showed their value – Because I had half a dozen melee units on the table I was almost always doing multi-charges, and so having the Nemesis Claw to lock down Brandon’s Wardens/Blade Champion and prevent it from interrupting while I did other fights was massive. My Plague Marines and Possessed were able to finish off the other Jetbike unit while the blade champion and his unit went down to the combined melee of three different units.

I managed to stay ahead of Brandon on primaries and secondaries this game, finishing out strong in an admittedly low-scoring game. That hurt me later but my draws on turn 5 were pretty much dead – Overwhelming Force was unscorable with the board position, my Warp Talons had already been killed and so couldn’t help on Behind Enemy Lines, and 3 points for Sabotage weren’t gonna set the world on fire. That would hurt me later but I had a great game with Brandon – good guy, would play again.

Result: 75-54, Win

After round 1 I join Kevin “KC” Camarata for a drink and lunch over at Brick House. He’s another local I’ve played against a few times and just a generally chill dude. He’s running Dark Angels at this event with the kind of sicko list you’d expect. Brick House has some very good burgs but I go a bit lighter and opt for something I know will be fast, grabbing chicken tenders. It’s not so much about the tendies as it is the really solid honey mustard sauce they make in-house.

Round 2: vs. Gregg’s Death Guard

Ah, the Death Guard. If there’s an army I know well, it’s this one. Gregg’s running Mortarion, Rotigus, a trio of Predator Destructors, Typhus with a huge brick of Poxwalkers, and two units of Deathshroud with Term Sorcerers, plus some Nurglings. That’s a nightmare for me and if he’d chosen -1 WS as his contagion I think I might have struggled a lot more in this matchup. But Gregg chose -1 to saves and while I get why, I think it was the wrong move.

Gregg's List - Click to Expand

I ended up rolling +1 Toughness and +1 WS here and those were fine, I guess. +1 Toughness doesn’t really matter when all it’s doing is cancelling out your opponent’s aura and also they have a bunch of weapons with Lethal Hits and Anti-Infantry 4+.

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

This one was closer than I thought, despite my going first and getting the advantage from that. I had some pretty rough secondary luck in this one, drawing Marked for Death turn 1 and having a turn 4 marked by Sabotage and Recover Assets at a time when I couldn’t afford to spend time doing either. I spent my first turn dropping a predator using the vindicator + land raider, and dropped another on turn 2 while picking off a ton of poxwalkers with small arms fire from the Land Raider and other vehicles.

Gregg pushed Rotigus forward early and held Mortarion in Deep Strike, giving me two turns to deal with one before the other showed up. I managed to dogpile enough damage on Mortarion to take him out after he charged into the fray, and most of the game was spent holding the middle and fighting over the edges. On that front, the Deathshroud were the big issue – I didn’t have the leftover firepower to deal with them and my melee just wasn’t good enough to go into them, plus Gregg kept making his invulnerable saves. This is something worth revisiting in future list builds.

I managed to keep a good hold on the lead most of the game though Gregg hit back with a 17-point turn 5 after drawing Cleanse and Recover Assets. Going first was huge in this game, not just for Burden scoring but also because it helped me screen Gregg out of my half of the table for most of the game, keeping him off Behind Enemy Lines, Establish Locus, and Engage.

Result: 69-61, Win

Another low-scoring win and I know that’ll hurt me if Ettin does points-based tiebreakers, which are pretty common for RTTs where using OGW% makes no sense. It’s a quick turnaround for round 3 and we’re off.

Round 3: vs. Joseph Rexer’s Necrons

Round 3 has me up against Starshatter Arsenal. I was more worried about this until I realized it was just a Hypercrypt list with new tricks and some Lokhusts. There’s a lot of cool tricks in here, but the list really doesn’t want to be touched in combat and won’t handle pressure well. Plus it’s got the same vulnerabilities as Hypercrypt – no Battleline units and if you kill the Flayed Ones it can’t do actions, either.

Joey's list - click to expand

The mission is an extra kick to Joey, since it gifts me 3-4 free points.

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

The upside is that we’re on Take and Hold, which is pretty straightforward (and high scoring). I win the roll-off to go first and this is the first time I didn’t want it. The good news is that my Bile roll hits big this time: +1 Attack and +1 WS. I’m living the dream with 4A WS3+ Plague Marines, baby!

My plan this game is pressure. The DDAs are a problem but they don’t want to be in combat. That said, there’s not much to do turn 1 so I get out of my zone to pull 6 on Containment, score 2 on banners, then huck Recover Assets. I don’t leave anything for Joey, either, but he comes out of his zone and starts getting into position.

On turn 2 I draw Defend Stronghold and Storm Hostile and then I hit the jackpot on the Vindicator – I fire him into the now-exposed Silent King and get four wounds through, doing 5, 5, 4, and 3 damage to him, killing both Menhirs and dropping him low enough that he has to spend two turns regenerating before he can come back into the game. That’s stellar, and I use my Legionaries to wipe out the Flayed ones and a Skorpekh lord up top while dropping my Obliterators onto the south side of the table to cause problems backing up the Chosen who go running off to tag Doomsday Arks.

The Skorpekh cause me a bit of heartburn but I’m able to wipe them with a counter charge and my Obliterators get to play aggressively, pushing into and killing a Triarch Stalker and consolidating into the Lokhusts behind it. Joey’s a trooper in this game but nothing really goes his way – when he finally gets a Menhir back and pokes the Silent King out, I hit it again with the Vindicator, this time dropping 5/3/4 damage on it to just fully undo everything he did. The Silent King drops to Land Raider fire soon after.

I’m not sure what Joey could have done here – his list just isn’t equipped to deal with the pressure I can bring and maybe the only way would have been to hold Skorpekhs back to counter-charge to pull pressure off his arks. In that scenario he’s banking on catching up on scoring late, and I think that can work in Take and Hold where you can pull 30 on primary objectives in rounds 4-5.

Result: 100-50, Win

Joey was a great opponent, and capped off a three-player run of good people to play against. I finished the day 3-0, which is good enough for third place with the scores I got. KC finishes first and Warpbane Task Force Grey Knights finish second – a truly terrifying list that would have absolutely bodied me. I also win best painted for my motley crew of Night Lords, and that’s a solid consolation prize for not taking home the gold. Plus, I’m more than happy with 3-0 at the moment.

I rush back home and the missus and I go see Nosferatu, which is pretty rad. Skarsgard does a hell of a job as Count Orlok and is just incredibly creepy. Solid movie.

Hobby Progress

Let’s talk hobby progress. Last time around I was sure I was going to finish painting that Zone Mortalis terrain. That… hasn’t happened yet. I did get more of it done:

That’s all the wall sections done but the thing is I have a lot of columns still to do. An insane amount, really. Like this terrain comes with way more columns than walls, and that’s weird in my opinion. By my count I still have 28 standalone columns to paint, plus another five with floor sections on top of them. That’s quite a bit but they go pretty fast once I’m in the thick of it spraypainting. The problem is that the weather hasn’t been cooperating – we’re in that short patch of the year when Texas weather drops below 40 degrees. Give it a couple weeks and we’ll be back up to short sleeve weather but for now I’m not doing much work with rattlecans. When I do go back to it however, I’ve got some additional stuff to add:

I’ve wanted to expand my table to 5’x4′ for a while now and so I picked up two extra sets of tiles. Technically I can go to 6×4 now but I’m going to use the remaining four tiles for other stuff – I’m considering cutting them in half to use as terrain bases for competitive layouts again but if I don’t go that route I’ll cut them up and modify them to be a lot crazier and have things like pits and rock faces for more narrative play opportunities. Likewise I really wanted the ruined parts as well so I picked up a couple of those. I probably need to get more floor sections at some point but I’m not sweating that particular purchase. Max and I have talked about what he’s doing for the Wardome narrative this year and I’ll likely end up lending him all of this stuff to do some cool shit, so it’s worth it to finish it all off soon.

On top of the weather not cooperating, I had to get these two goobers done:

The Possessed up there is done but the Helbrute needs a bit more work before he’s earnestly complete. That said, they were both well past the level I needed for the RTT. I’ll retouch the Obliterator and finish him off in the coming weeks but for now he’s fine.

I had some extra time so I started on a new terrain project: Painting my Volkus killzone terrain. I really, really liked the theme SkySerpent did for his terrain – you can find his tutorial on Instagram here – and I wanted to replicate it for my terrain. Also I want to do a new theme for a table with more of an overgrown/jungle theme, and this is going to be the first part of that. I didn’t go through the trouble of doing oil washes but I’ve come up with a solid facsimile using washes. The key secret is that I replaced the grime wash with a 2:1 mix of Typhus Corrosion and Plaguebearer Flesh Contrast paint. I’m pretty happy with the result:

I didn’t do quite as much of the growth on these as SkySerpent but I’ll pick it up on the next one. On the whole I think it looks great and I’m eager to do more with a similar coloring.

Next Time: More Creations Testing

This was a big update! I wasn’t expecting my first event to happen this early in 2025 but I’m glad I went – the Ettin crew are solid guys and the event was a lot of fun. Creations of Bile were a blast to play and with this event replacing one of my old scores for the 2024 ITC season I’m now back in the top 500 (until LVO, at least), which is kind of neat. Next week will likely involve another test game with Creations of Bile, potentially trying out how it feels with Abaddon and no re-rolls. And of course, more terrain painting. See you next week.

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