TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2025, Part 5: Taking on the League

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress for 2025. Last Time Around I revised my Creations of Bile list and got in a test game with it against my buddy Luke’s Chaos Knights. I was pretty happy with how the list felt at that point and decided it was time to get cracking on painting and I finished a Night Lords Predator shortly after the game.

I also mentioned last time around that I joined the league Ettin was running. I was sorted into a pod with Ryan Young, Kevin Camarata, Chad Stubblefield, and David Smith, who are all pretty experienced tournament players – and they all play on the same team. I have five weeks, give or take, to knock out my four games in the pod and well, spoilers: I immediately scheduled three out of the four. This week I’m going to talk about my first two games against Ryan and Kevin, and then next week I’ll cover the game against Chad.

Round 1: vs. Ryan Young’s Genestealer Cults

Ryan hit me up first about getting in a game so I agreed to meet him over at the local Warhammer store for a game against his GSC. He and Kevin are practicing for the teams event in Austin next weekend and so any games they can get in before that are good experience to have. The local store is a fine place for a game, but the terrain there is a bit hit-or-miss so I brought some of my own to ensure we had a proper table layout. On arrival, I noticed that the table looked off – it was too long. It was 44″ wide, sure, but 66″ long?

What the hell is going on here? Wait a minute, is that…

MOON BASE KLAISUS STRIKES AGAIN!

The boards are from the Moon Base Klaisus terrain set/boards, which inexplicably had 33″x22″ boards instead of the 30×20 kill team size we use now. It’s not worth swapping all of this out, but it’s absolutely hilarious that this came up.

Anyways we get to setting up. The league uses randomized missions each round, but if we get Unexploded Ordnance we’re going to just re-roll.

The Mission: Supply Drop / Rapid Escalation / Sweeping Engagement

This terrain layout isn’t really rated for Sweeping Engagement, but I’m fine with rolling with it. We’ve both got more melee- and short-ranged armies and as long as we aren’t playing Hammer & Anvil on Supply Drop, I’m fine with it. On this one only the final objective truly matters, but you really want to be going second here as it’s trivially easy to just pick those points up otherwise.

Before I dive in, let’s look at Ryan’s list:

Ryan's List - Click to Expand

I played against Final Day – and new GSC – back in Part 1 when I got in a test game against T running the faction. The general idea behind building a Final Day list is very solid: You can run 1,000 points of GSC instead of 2,000, but you get the same number of Reinforcement points to bring units back with because it’s still a strike force game. In theory this makes your GSC Infantry much more efficient while letting you get more out of them and leaning more heavily on the best units in Tyranids – namely, Lictors and Gargoyles.

Ryan’s running both, plus the Winged Hive Tyrant for some extra punch. There are a few key threats here I need to worry about:

• The Gargoyles. Those are the big, sneaky superstars here. Two units will almost always go in reserves, and their main trick is dropping in out of deep strike, shooting, and then using their shoot-and-scoot ability to move onto an objective or get closer to your units. If they have to, they can use the Psi Surge stratagem to up the range of the Catalyst ability by 3″, almost guaranteeing they’ll put one of your units into that +1 to hit bubble.
• The Lictors. They’re not super tough but they have Lone Op and can’t be shot from outside 12″, plus they have Fights First, and that makes them nearly uncharge-able for something like Warp Talons.
• The Hive Tyrant. She’s pretty tough already, and with the Vanguard Tyrant upgrade she gets +1S and +1AP on her melee weapons. If I don’t handle her first, she’ll shred my melee units.

On top of that is all the usual bullshit – the ridgerunners have solid shooting and can get ignores cover and extra AP from the mortar, and the Rock Grinders and Hybrids are a pain in the ass thanks to having a bunch of D2 attacks.

I’m Going First.

As I said before, that’s not ideal – Going first on this mission basically means that you need to be up by more than 15 on primary coming into the bottom of turn 5 or I’m going to get outscored. That’s a tall order, and means I need to snag some objectives early, even if it means fighting over the one that’ll disappear on round 4 – in this case, that’s the objective on the right side of the table in photos, while the middle objective is going to stick around as the Omega.

I roll +1 Attack and +1 Strength for Bile. +1 Strength is pretty bad in this matchup, so I re-roll it into… +1 Strength. Oh well. +1 Attack is always great, though.

My plan on turn 1 is to use the Nurglings to move block Ryan’s Goliath full of Acolytes – most games I’m using them to move block something important or costly, ideally using the table edge to prevent it from moving around them. Goliaths are pretty wide, and it’s easy to use the terrain and the wall there to stop it from moving more than 8″ out from Ryan’s Deployment Zone. Going first however I can advance the Nurglings up and put them right in its face. They won’t charge, but they’ll gladly sit there and eat a turn of combat to prevent it from taking part in the battle for a round.

The key to playing against Final Day GSC is to kill the Tyranids and Vehicles early because those don’t come back. You often can’t avoid killing some of the GSC infantry but if you can prioritize the stuff that won’t come back over them, you’re in a good place.

Otherwise, I need to kill Deathleaper and a Lictor at mid-table, something I can do pretty readily with the units at my disposal. My Obliterators advance out to get ready for some action – I tend to play pretty aggressively with them in these games – and I’m able to kill the Lictor with Bile’s unit of Chosen, while the Deathleaper kills a couple of marines before the Chaos Lord tears him several new daemon hammer-shaped buttholes. Moving out, my Predator and Vindicator are able to take out most of the gargoyles Ryan has hidden in the center ruin of his deployment zone. I score Secure No Man’s Land on turn 1 and discard Marked for Death.

On Ryan’s turn he’s not shy about bringing the pain and throws the Hive Tyrant and a massive blob of acolytes toward the alpha objective. This is kind of ideal, as him overcommitting here means he’s not putting things elsewhere, and he’s too afraid of my Obliterators to bring his vehicles up the table into them. RIP Bile and his crew, but I like where I’m at. Ryan drew Bring it Down and Area Denial, and he was able to completely tear up my Predator on a single volley of mining lasers. Ryan was generally dicing me pretty hard most of this game – I failed most of my pacts and he was on fire with his shot rolls, so every point I scored here was an uphill battle.

Most of my advantage came early – I was able to score the middle objective on turns 2 and 4 thanks to having tanks to put on it, though Ryan was frequently able to one of my objectives away from me using Gargoyles or clever combat movement. The big difference was holding the left side objective – I put Plague Marines in his backfield on turn 3 and tied up his Ridgerunners with them and the Nurglings, forcing him to shoot his way out and keeping him off the other disappearing objective – this would nab me 8 primary VP on round 4. Ryan also ended up doing OK for himself on Secondaries late, pulling Containment and Assassination/Extend in the final rounds to score 11 VP and tie things up there.

The most annoying part were those Lictors he kept putting in my backfield. I had almost no play against those, as my initial plan of throwing Warp Talons at one ended in disaster when they failed 6 5+ saves from fights first to lose three models, then failed their pact to lose another 3 wounds. This game stayed neck-and-neck until the end. I managed to snag Ryan’s home objective at one point to make up for losing mine, but killing Ryan’s massive 20-model blob of Acolytes on turn 4 meant they could come right back onto the board. Here my luck finally turned around a bit – Ryan failed his 9″ deep strike charge with the unit (including the re-roll), and that meant he couldn’t stop me from scoring 15 VP on the game’s final turn. That was a 30-point swing he needed, as I ended up outscoring him on Primary 33-50. Had he made the charge and stolen the objective, he’d have won by 2. 9″ charges are a gamble – they succeed less than half the time with a full re-roll – but I was sweating that one hard.

Final Result: 73-60, Win

Ryan’s a great opponent and that was my first time playing him. He put up a hell of a fight and I made a few key mistakes that nearly cost me that game. The big one was just underestimating how good Goliaths are in melee – at one point I consolidated into one with Plague Marines thinking they’d survive it and hoo boy they absolutely did not. The other was that Warp Talons charge – that one went bad due to dice but in retrospect losing two models wasn’t an unlikely outcome. I’d have been better off putting the Talons elsewhere.

Game 2: vs. Kevin’s Ultramarines

I’ve played against Kevin a few times – he’s a very competitive player who frequents the local Warhammer store, and he’s improved dramatically over the past two years playing competitively. He’s primarily a World Eaters player at heart – he’s a bit impatient and eager to smash face. He’s been doing a lot of teams play recently and playing his Dark Angels – in fact he won the Ettin RTT I was at last month. For the upcoming teams event he’s playing Gladius Ultramarines, who are currently among the top of the meta. For this game he came over and brought a good bottle of whiskey for us to kick the game off with.

Kevin's List - Click to expand

This list is full of headaches for me. Guilliman is one of the bigger ones – he’s just a super nasty melee threat and he can fight on death pretty trivially, plus as long he’s on the board KC can just point and delete two units per turn at range. My big advantage here is that KC just isn’t used to playing his Ultras yet – he’s got melee brain and is both not used to playing with a finesse army and also is a bit too cautious of my Vindicator and Predator, opting to keep one of his Vindicators in Strategic Reserves along with Tituis and his unit of Assault Intercessors plus the Incursors.

The Mission: Purge the Foe / Crucible of Battle / Rapid Escalation

Purge is another mission where you really want to go second. The big thing to remember on this one is that there’s very little upside to trying to hold more – if you can hold your home and one NML objective while shooting your opponent off another, you can basically keep parity on primary and work to prevent/outscore your opponent on Secondary, or try and pull ahead later. This is easier going second, and the kill more scoring also offers a big advantage going second.

I’m going first. 

Well, that’s not great, lol

The Nurglings are a bit of a liability in this matchup as easy kill points on turn 1, and I’m not sure I made the correct move with them. My strategy was to run them forward and block in KC’s Vindicator, preventing it from coming out and supporting his army while I moved into position. With the other Vindicator in reserves until the bottom of turn 2, this meant I could effectively control the middle of the table, keeping KC from trying to challenge me there early, for fear of being shot to death by the Predator/Vindicator. The one big threat I was worried about here was the Aggressor blob, but KC put them far enough back that it would take them a while to actually get to the action. I don’t want to end up scrapping with Guilliman at the middle of the table but if I can disable KC’s ranged support early and take out his Scouts and midtable infantry before help arrives, I can speed bump his Aggressors and prevent them from being meaningful players in the game.

I get a very good Bile roll in this game: +1 Attack and +1 WS. That’s pretty much the dream for Plague Marines, who become much more deadly with 4 attacks and 3+ to hit on their heavy plague weapons. KC scouts backward with his Scouts on turn 1. I pull up with my rhino of Nemesis Claw and Plague Marines early along the bottom of the table but keep them in the Rhinos. My T1 draws are Extend Battle Lines (free), and Assassination (dead), so I capture the top left objective, then huck Assassination. I do my best to hide the Vindicator and take a couple of shots from the Predator to the Storm Speeder, but it lives through it.

On KC’s turn he pulls Cleanse and Bring it Down and promptly deletes one of my Rhinos and the Predator with one of his Melta ATVs, throwing 11 damage at it from the connecting shots. We’re not off to a great start here. That said, KC makes a big mistake – he kept his Scouts on the board instead of pulling them up at the end of my first turn. He pushes them forward to hold the bottom right objective as the rest of his army pushes to mid-table. He only manages to kill two Nurgling bases in shooting and ignores them in melee, but he’s got his kill points, plus 4 for Bring it Down and 4 for Cleanse.

On my turn I draw Recover Assets and Establish Locus and I’m not happy about either, but I can score them at least. I drop Warp Talons at mid-table to score Locus for 2 and use the Rhino and my Cultists to Recover Assets for 3. I push Bile and his unit of Chosen plus my Plague Marines toward the Vindicator, and KC reactive moves his Intercessors to block my units. I shoot most of them to death, then swing around into the Vindicator with the Chosen and Plague Marines and manage to destroy it. At mid-table I double charge the Scouts and Jump Pack Assault Intercessors with the Nemesis Claw, charge into the JPIs with the Plague Marines, and also with the Obliterators. Guilliman may be able to reduce CP costs but neither unit can use Stratagems to interrupt right now, allowing me to dictate combat order. This is pretty much the key to using the Claw – they’re not super expensive and they really make these big multi-charge turns work, as opponents aren’t able to interrupt or use their tricks.

The Nemesis Claw wipe the Scouts, the Plague Marines wipe the JPIs, and this allows the Obliterators – who completely whiffed on their shooting – to pile into the ATV and kill it with their fists. They consolidate into the other one but as you know, the problem with all this is that the whole army can fall back and do whatever it wants, plus Guilliman is still waiting back there.

On KC’s turn he pulls Area Denial and Defend Stronghold. I stop him from getting big denial thanks to the warp talons, and Defend is free here. KC plows forward into midtable and Guilliman absolutely slices through my Plague Marines, the Vindicator showsu p and kills the Obliterators, and the Aggressors make short work of the Nemesis Claw. I fall behind on primary at this point as KC scores 4 for kill on turn 1 to my 0 and 12 on turn 2 with kill one/more. He’s also ahead by 3 on Secondary, meaning I need to do work to catch up. So far I’ve been whiffing in bad spots, and as a result units like that Invader ATV managed to stay alive at 2 wounds and cause problems after two obliterators completely whiffed on their overwatch.

The upside is that, while Kevin brought in Titus and his squad plus some Incursors to get in my way up top, I’ve managed to screen him out of my DZ all game. Where Kevin gets lucky is that this never matters – despite losing his Scouts turn 1 and having screened-out units in reserves, he never draws any secondaries that would punish him for it – none of Establish Locus, Engage, Behind Enemy Lines, Recover Assets, or Sabotage. This makes for a brutal uphill battle late in the game.

I fight my way through his reinforcements and manage to snag his home objective late, working around his other Vindicator to stay behind the wall and out of sight with Bile and his unit. I can snag an easy 6 for Containment on round 3 which helps put me up, and I get a massive break when my Vindicator unloads on Guilliman at mid-table, kills him, and then KC fails the roll for Guilliman to stand back up. I had a back-up plan for this ready – mostly charging in with the two Obliterators – but they’d have likely died to Guilliman fighting on death, making the whole thing much tougher. As it is, the Vindicator gets another turn of shooting, trading shots with KC’s before it’s brought down by a 1-wound Vindicator sporting Oaths re-rolls.

KC makes a late-game push for the middle of the table with his Aggressor blob and they’re a big enough unit to stretch across two objectives and make some shenanigans possible. That said, I get some big hold more/kill more turns on 3 and 4, giving me 12-4 advantages. KC pulls No Prisoners and Storm hostile on round 4 but neither are scorable for him at this point – he can’t retake his still stickied home objective, I don’t hold the middle, and he has nothing he can kill round 4.

We move to talk out the final turn. KC at this point is coming into the round down 20 on primary and 10 on secondary. He kept No Prisoners and draws Secure No Man’s Land. Even maxing out all of this, he’ll still come up short by 4 points. We call it at an 85-81 score.

Final Result: 85-81, Win

KC’s a tough opponent and I definitely benefitted huge from him being less familiar with Ultras. That bad Guilliman luck at mid-table was a huge swing for me, but was offset in my opinion by KC’s secondary pulls – I was hoping that by killing his Scouts early I could keep him off up/down shenanigans and cost him some scoring, but it never paid off. KC never should have put them up into combat, instead just pulling them back and off the table and using his Aggressors to wipe out my Nemesis Claw unit.

Those wins put me at 2-0 in the League so far and I talk to Chad about scheduling my next game to try and knock out three quickly. That game is a story for next week, though.

Hobby Progress

The big update to my army this week was painting a third Rhino. I had already painted two last year for the Grand Narrative and figured I’d never need a third but then lo and behold, I decided to run Creations of Bile. So I put in a third Rhino. I’d started on this guy last year but needed to finish him, and with a bit of crunch, I had this bad boy done Saturday morning in time for my game against Ryan.

The reason I hadn’t finished this guy yet is mostly that I don’t lie the Heresy-era Forge World legion kits nearly as much as the classic chaos ones, and so when it came time to pick two Rhinos to paint, this one lost out. That’s also why it has a different door legion icon on top – rather than paint the sideways skull of the Crimson Wing, I went with the classic Wayne England Night Lords logo.

I’ve written about freehanding before but as always, the big key is doing a layered approach and blocking in the areas you need to paint. From the article:

The principle is the same here, laying down the blue highlights and lightning bolts, then coming back over it to lay down the wings, then the skull.

For the wings here I started by laying down a flat layer of Mephiston Red, shading that with Carroburg Crimson, then coming back over it with Mephiston Red to do the fingers and veins. I started taking photos halfway through so you can see my progress on the right wing.

The next step is just highlighting. The first pass is with Mephiston again and some Evil Sunz Scarlet to make those fingers pop from the webbing.

Then for an extra pop I use Wild Rider Red to really make the upper parts stand out.

Finally I come in and do the outlines. Black is a little too much for this, creating too much contrast and bold outlines, so instead I use Cygor Brown Contrast Paint to do all of the outlines. It’ll be a bit less bold when it dries.

The other big piece of hobby progress was helping my son build his knight. Last time around he asked for a knight for his army and his bingo card has “centrepiece model” on it, so I said “sure, why not” and bought him one. He initially wanted to assemble it as a preceptor with chainsword but I told him that Canis Rex could pick things up with his fist and throw them and from there he was sold on it.

I worked with him on Friday to start and on Saturday he worked with Max to get more of the model done. Our plan right now is to assemble the frame, then prime it and the armor plates separate, so we can do the frame in Leadbelcher and the plates in Retributor Armour, matching it to the gold of his King Warrior space marines.

We’re most of the way there now – just need to do the arms and missile pod and we’ll be ready to get priming. It’s a good amount of progress and he’s been enjoying it so far, which is good. The knight is a bit of a double-edged sword for him, as it’s the most toylike unit he’s worked on so far and I’ll need to keep him from playing with it too much.

Next Time: Chad’s Orks

That does it for this week’s update but check back next week with another league game update – this time against Chad’s Orks – and more hobby progress, hopefully. I really appreciated the comments last time around about the direction of the blog, and I’ll likely keep on trying to do one more informative thing per post as I can. I won’t always do diagrams, but I’ve found it helpful on my end to think about my early game plan and diagram out what I was thinking and did early on. so it’s good for postgame analysis.

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