Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress for 2025. Last Time Around I was testing my army against Max’s Astra Militarum and finishing a Rhino for my upcoming Emperor’s Children army. I was really happy with the Rhino, and it was good to keep up my reps with the army. Then over the weekend the wife and I had to travel to a wedding, which more or less wrecked my ability to get in a game and some more hobby time. It was a lovely wedding, though – any time you can go to a wedding where all of your friends will be there and you don’t have to be in the wedding party is a good deal. We don’t see our friends in Maryland often enough and it was a good excuse to go back before the 2025 US Goonhammer Open (which will be in Baltimore again this year the weekend after July 4th).
That meant I’d have to get in a weekday game. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to schedule my final league game in phase I before being sorted into a proper pod, but I was assigned to a new pod with a bunch of new players… who all didn’t want to play this week since they were getting ready for Clutch this weekend. Fortunately I was able to hit up the local player Discord for some help here, and Greg – not the one that helps me run Goonhammer or Klobasnek, another Greg we’ll call “Kingwood Greg” for now – was up for a game.
The Game: vs. Kingwood Greg’s Astra Militarum
I’ve played against Greg a few times – he’s a good guy, though he’s still getting his feet wet when it comes to competitive play. For him this game is about becoming more comfortable with his army and for me it’s more another rep with the same list. That said, he’s running heavy on vehicles here, so it’s a good test for me to figure out how I can actually handle multiple big vehicle units. Greg’s on Hammer of the Emperor here and running heavy on hulls. I don’t have his exact list, but this is I’m pretty sure the gist of it:
Greg's List - Click to Expand Hammer of the Emperor Detachment CHARACTERS Rogal Dorn Tank Commander Rogal Dorn Tank Commander Leman Russ Commander BATTLELINE Catachan Jungle Fighters Catachan Jungle Fighters Cadian Shock Troops Cadian Shock Troops OTHER DATASHEETS Hydra Leman Russ Demolisher Leman Russ Vanquisher Leman Russ Vanquisher Leman Russ Vanquisher Armoured Sentinel Cadian Heavy Weapons Squad Cadian Heavy Weapons Squad Cadian Heavy Weapons Squad
– Calm Under Fire
– Indomitable Steed
– 3x Mortars
– 3x Mortars
– 3x Mortars
The Russes don’t scare me much, but at T12 the Dorn is a bigger pain and generally speaking they’re all a problem. My key challenge here is to make sure I get the first shot with my Vindicator and Predator – I’ll need them to act in tandem here – and try and kill targets without leaving myself open to being shot back. Generally speaking, the way my army deals with tanks is to whittle them down to half strength or less with a mix of grenades and shooting, then finish them off with a unit that has multiple power fists and can Pact for Lethal Hits. Russes are a lot easier for this than Dorns, though Tank Commanders being unable to blank incoming damage helps.
The Mission: N – The Ritual / Swift Action / Crucible of Battle
My army is a bad matchup for Greg. I’m not offering many big targets for his Vanquishers save some Rhinos, and I can keep those out of sight well enough, and I’m going to put heavy pressure on him early as he has no screening units, and on this mission he’s going to struggle to create and hold objectives as he doesn’t have the manpower to survive one of my MSUs crashing in. For the Bile upgrade I roll +1 Ballistic Skill and +1 Toughness, and opt to keep +1 T and re-roll BS, getting +1 Weapon Skill instead. That’s great, and I keep toughness in order to get T6 Plague Marines and Chosen with T8 Obliterators, ensuring that mortars, punisher gatling cannons, and heavy bolters will be on 5+ to wound against them.
I’m going first.
That’s not terrible though it’s not exactly what I wanted. I draw Assassination and Overwhelming Force and roll forward with most of my army. I end up not shooting anything because my goal is to stay as hidden as possible this turn – even if that means mostly doing nothing. I create one objective at midtable with a unit of Plague Marines, put my Rhino on the other through the wall, and call it a day. One of the hardest lessons to learn is when to not be aggressive – this is an aggressive army, but if I don’t pick my spots carefully, I’ll lose all of my offense before I can get across the table. I can afford to tease out some Rhinos in spots where Greg will have limited shots, ensuring that if I lose them, I’ll be able to move meaningfully with the passengers and punish him for getting close. I want to draw out a couple of his tanks, then take shots on them with mine before charging in with a bunch of melee threats. So that means hiding turn 1 and offering very little – namely, just two Rhinos.
On Greg’s turn he creeps out with the Sentinel and his tanks, blows up one of my Rhinos, kills five of my Cultists with mortars, and creates an objective under the Armoured Sentinel. I get lucky in that my Rhino at the top of the table by his Sentinel pops smoke and survives the ensuing Vanquisher blast by rolling a 6 on his save. I end up only taking two damage there, though this didn’t really matter all that much.
On my turn 2 it’s go time. I kept Overwhelming Force and draw Sabotage. I score 10 for primary and go to work. My goal is to kill the Sentinel and Vanquisher on the created point, tie up the other tanks, and just generally start causing problems. This goes better up top than on the right side of the table. I drop the Russ and Sentinel to bracket wound counts then charge them with the Legionaries and Plague Marines, while the Nemesis Claw complete a double charge into the Dorn and Russ. At the bottom Bile and his crew charge into the Vanquisher alongside the Nurglings and I’m able to drop most of it, though the Dorns survive.
The good news here is that I’m now blanking Greg on primary and I don’t think he’s going to recover from that. He can’t really approach the middle without losing units, and he’ll lose anything he uses to create a new objective. His Dorns are in that regard his best objective holders, but one of them is almost dead and the other is occupied. I think one of Greg’s biggest challenges this game is that he has no backfield threats for me – he can kill things with mortars but lacks the uppy-downy antics of Gaunt’s Ghosts and hasn’t put anything into Reserves. This means I’m free to run around and abandon the backfield entirely once I’ve stickied my home objective, and can press the entire battle to his side of the table. I think Greg’s solution to this should have been putting the Russ Demolisher and at least one Vanquisher into Strategic Reserves, to ensure they’d be able to come in later and either steal my home or threaten units from behind, forcing me to commit to screening them out.
On Greg’s turn he drops my Vindicator to 2 wounds, falls back and kills my Nemesis Claw unit, and whittles down a number of my Chosen. He pulls out a unit of Catachans to score Establish Locus and creates another objective.
I draw Marked for Death and Behind Enemy Lines and retaliate by advancing and charging the Warp Talons who showed up last turn – I roll a 6, and crash in, killing a whole squad of mortars (who were marked) with only four Talons after one was killed in Overwatch. The Lord and his crew destroy the Dorn in melee after he hulks out, and I’m able to whittle the Demolisher down to bracket levels. On the South side of the table I have a bit more to deal with as I lose most of the Chosen and the Nurglings, but the Obliterators are there to help out and drop melta shots into the tanks.
At this point, we’re 25-0 on primary and I don’t think Greg can recover. That said, we keep playing because the experience is important.
From here it’s mostly clean-up. Greg doesn’t have the units left to really challenge me, and I am likely to table him with what I have left. I pull Storm Hostile and No Prisoners for added insult and score 9 off those, then I snag Cleanse and Engage on the final turn. Greg will score a few points for Secure and Containment on the final turn but that’s about it. We call it around 5:30pm.
Result: 93-31, Win
It was good to get in another rep with the army. Keeping up on what I can do is key, and I’m still largely ignoring a lot of stratagem potential that I need to keep in mind, as well as the fact that my lord just re-rolls hit rolls with his Enhancement. Definitely something I’ll come back to before this weekend. Speaking of which, I have a bit of hobby work to do this week.
Hobby Progress
For whatever reason, Clutch has an even more insane paint scoring rubric than the TCC, so I’m just not going to worry about it or try to build for it. No, I don’t think you should get points explicitly for having flowers on your bases. That said, I do still have some hobby stuff I need to do to bring the army up to snuff. For one, I am still using Black Legion Obliterators – it works but I don’t love it. Unfortunately I only have two more assembled right now, and one is half painted. The good news is that Goatboy sent me a couple on sprue – massive thanks to him for that – but they take so long to assemble and paint that I’m not going to finish more than one before Saturday. I can live with Black Legion ones at the event, so I’m better off putting my efforts elsewhere.
There are two other key units i need to finish for my army. The first is my legionaries – I’ve been running them with a missile launcher rather than a Reaper Chaincannon, and so I need to shore that up, plus missile launchers are on the roster for the Nemesis Claw Kill Team anyways. So I finished painting that guy on Monday:
The other area I can put in the work here is on my Chosen – I’m currently using a hodgepodge of Black Legion models for those guys, and I can absolutely replace them piecemeal with Night Lords guys. I have one champion who’s almost done who I finished off last night, and I can rebase a Dark Vengeance guy and get two more painted before Saturday to more or less give me a full squad of actual Chosen models. That’s a good deal, and the direction that’ll pay off the biggest.
He turned out pretty great and I’m eager to finish some more of the Chosen to go with him.
Next Time: Clutch
That does it for this week’s update but stay tuned next week for when I recount my experiences at the Clutch City Major this weekend. Last count I saw for the event was something like 150 players, taking it fully past the “major” mark on things. I’ve got two friends coming into town to stay with me that weekend – Thomas “Goatboy” Reidy and Shane Watts – and I’m very much looking forward to it. It should be a great time. I expect I’ll get in a practice game against one of them on Friday just to get in some final reps, and then the event itself is six games. As such I may split next week’s update into two parts and publish on Thursday and Saturday. Oh, and I’ll finally be able to talk more about my Emperor’s Children hobby progress.
See you then.
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