TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2023, Part 15: Tacoma, Day 3

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing chronicle of misadventures through competitive Warhammer 40,000. Last time around I chronicled my second day at the GW US Open Tacoma GT, wherein my hopes were dashed against a series of golden, Custodes-shaped rocks and I was promptly shuffled off to the 2-2 bracket. Notably, I was not alone in this bucket: Liam “Corrode” Royle and Jack Hunter were also in this bracket with me, while Campbell McLaughlin had been relegated to the 1-3 bracket.

The 2-2 bracket is tough. Not for me – My army is a bit too good for the competition I’ll face and the players a bit too new to 40k and 10th edition – but for the opponents I’ll face, who are more or less getting paired up at the moment. The 3-1 bracket is full of all the sweaty tryhards who failed to make the top cut, while the 2-2 bracket tends to have more chill people running suboptimal lists and lower expectations. My final two opponents will definitely fall into that category, and both will suffer for it.

I get the best sleep of the event that night, Campbell and I grab breakfast, and then it’s off to the games. Having only two games on Sunday is pretty great. We’re all exhausted and looking forward to an earlier dinner tonight, plus drinks. This year I am not flying back on Sunday, which means I’ll have time to play all of my games and hang out. It does however mean I’m going to get no sleep, because I have to catch a 6am flight back to Houston the following day. Hooray.

Round 7: vs. Jason Arsenault’s Orks

The Mission: D (Deploy Servo Skulls, Chilling Rain, Search and Destroy)

Jason’s running Orks. It’s more or less a meta list for the faction but in 10th edition they’re pretty much just a very OK faction and not a good or bad one. That’s enough of a disadvantage to make this not so competitive from the outset.

Jason's list - click to expand

Working in Jason’s favor is the mission: Deploy Servo Skulls gives a massive go first advantage, and that’s even if you aren’t playing it correctly – turns out you can kick objectives at the end of every turn, not just your own, making it super easy to get two kicks in ahead of time.

The deployment here puts us only 18″ apart, which is great for James’ Orks – I really, really do not want to be trapped in melee with them – and with a good first turn he may be able to put the game away before he runs out of steam and I start clawing back the board and the points.

The Plan

Despite the advantage afforded going first, I want to go second in this battle. Jason doesn’t have many options except to plow forward and get into combat early (though he will likely not WAAAGH! turn 1 unless I’ve fucked up badly on deployment), and so I can count on him pressing toward the middle of the table and into my killzone. For my part, I need to make sure all of my units are more than 24″ away pre-deployment – see the photo of deployment above for how I set my guys back from the line. This prevents any turn 1 charges from happening, and I really do not want to deal with any of those. Thousand Sons are much worse at combat and digging out than they were in 9th edition and so I need to avoid being caught in combats I don’t want to be in for as long as possible. After Jason pushes to the middle, I’ll roll up, pop open 2-3 of his vehicles, kill everything inside, and then anything I don’t will get eviscerated by Overwatch shooting on the following turn. Ideally that’s the Meganobz but if I don’t get those and just nail everything else, I’ll be fine.

The Game

I went second. That’s perfect, and things played out exactly like I expected them to. Jason pushed his orks to midtable, I destroyed the Battlewagon and killed everything inside, killed the trukk and then in the following turn used Overwatch twice to kill everything that was in the Trukk and everything getting out of the trukk by the northern objective. This basically left Jason with some Grots on his objectives, a unit of Beastsnaggas, and two units of Meganobz.

Post-Overwatch DevastationThe Meganobz put in a nasty bit of work on the Scarabs, who managed to survive with 4 models and Crystal out, while the other Meganobz killed everyone but Ahriman in his squad. The Beastsnaggas charged Magnus, did 3 damage, and died. Then Magnus picked up one unit of Meganobz while the Terminators cleared Jason’s home objective and I slowly finished picking up all of Jason’s units by turn 4. Jason had a pretty sizable primary lead but I was able to reverse the damage and direction of the objectives on turn 3 and keep things well in my favor.

Jason’s biggest mistake was probably not triple charging my units in the upper left with his trukk, but it didn’t really matter all that much at that point – taking out all of Jason’s boyz left him with little to work with for objective control and the Nobz alone weren’t good enough.

The Result

Things I Learned

That was my first game against Orks in 10th edition and it really felt like most of what I learned about playing against them in 9th held true, only they’re a little worse than they used to be. The invulnerable save from the WAAAGH was huge for his Meganobz, who otherwise would have just been completely torn apart by Twist of Fate shooting. There’s probably a version of this where Jason plays a little more conservatively turn 1 but I think that just lets me pick apart and take out his transports before he has to do the same thing he ended up doing turn 1. This one worked out well for me.

On to the final round. I’m now 3-0 in my bracket and looking to finish strong.

Round 8: vs. Joseph Darbison’s Adeptus Custodes

The Mission: E (Take and Hold, Sweeping Engagement, Chosen Battlefield)

It’s the final round and I’ve drawn Custodes again. That said, Joseph is playing a decidedly off-meta list for them, with a Telemon and some Vertus Praetors. No tanks and no triple brick of guys on foot.

Joseph's list - click to expand

The bikes are certainly mobile and hit hard, but they aren’t any real kind of threat to Magnus with one shot each, 3 damage, and S9 guns. That means I’m pretty free to deploy aggressively with him. That said, the Telemon is a challenge to take down and the Praetors and Allarus give the list a lot of mobility. That said, there are no Imperial Agent goobers here to do actions, meaning Joseph won’t have a good way to do those. And as it turns out, he’s not planning on worrying about it anyways – he goes Fixed missions, taking Assassination and Behind Enemy Lines. Those are both doable, but I think he’s going to struggle with them.

The Plan

Joe has dropped his Deployment Zone objective very close to the middle, and I suspect his plan is to stretch a unit across both. That’s amazing for me because it means full re-rolls to wound forever for my Rubrics. My plan is to hopefully go second, watch him do that, and then move up Magnus and 900 points of my army and remove the 10-model block of Custodians and Trajan from the board in a single shooting phase, ending the game. As an extra precaution, I place one objective way off to the right of the table as a decoy – I can crystal to it if I need, but hopefully Joe will put one or two units over there and split his forces – which he cannot afford to do – and let him have that objective while I kill the rest of his army.

The Game

Joe takes the deployment bait and puts his Telemon on the far side of the table, where I can safely ignore it. He wins the roll-off, stretches his Custodian brick to midtable, and then on my turn I move forward with Magnus, the Terminators, and two units of Rubrics, pop Twist of Fate, use Ensorcelled Infusion on the Scarabs, and spend 6 Cabal Points to use Devastating Sorcery on them, plus I hold 6 to do it again to double Overwatch on Joe’s turn. What follows is a massacre: The Scarabs pick up 6 shield Custodians from bolter shooting, then another 1 from other shooting. The Rubrics pick up another 3, and then Magnus kills Trajan. This is a heated moment and requires a couple of judge calls to assure Joseph that Trajan does not prevent the unit from losing their ability to roll armor saves, but we get there.

And the game is over. I Overwatch Joseph’s Sagitarius off the table on his turn and kill two Praetors, he charges in with them but doesn’t kill an entire unit, and the Allarus drop in but don’t make their charge. I pull the terminators and Magnus away, kill off the bikes, and then it’s just the Telemon and Allrus left. Joseph concedes.

The Result

What I Learned

Eat shit, Custodes. Nothing against Joseph, but I hate that army and it feels wonderfully cathartic to finish with a crushing win over them. I’m also 6-2 and have won my bracket, which is pretty great. I actually overcommitted a bit going after Trajann’s unit and fucked up the order – I should have started with the Warpflamers but didn’t, inadvertently letting Joseph take his Custodes out of range in my shooting with the Scarabs. Got to tamp down that excitement next time.

We hang out for a bit and chat until the awards ceremony starts. Earlier in the day one of our Patrons stopped by to show us his incredibly rad 28mm Psi-Titan he’s working on. It is incredibly dope. Check it out:

Ben hangs out with us for a bit as we chat and wait for Wings to finish his final game against Tyler Bortel. Then comes the awards ceremony. Awards at these events are kind of a weird deal – they call your name and you get a nice framed certificate and sometimes a small trophy, then you get to root around in the prize bucket for 10 seconds. Usually the prizes in this bucket are garbage. In my three forays into the bucket, I’ve pulled a signed Guy Haley Plague War novel (decent), a copy of Imperial Armour Compendium (what), and a Sylvaneth Battletome (boo), which I promptly gave to Joe Krier in KC.

This time around, it looks like there are some cool prizes in the bucket – as they announce the winners of the hobby competition I see people grabbing Kill team boxes, battlezone fronteris, and combat patrols.

…but as time goes on, the prize bucket empties and the 40k winners are last to be announced. By the time the 2-2 bracket are called, my options are as follows:

• A set of neoprene objective markers for a faction I do not play
• Space Wolves datacards
• Dark Angels datacards
• A fun-sized back of Cool Ranch Doritos
• A fun-sized back of Cheetos Puffs

This means that the first and second place finishers for 40k would end up with bags of chips, I shit you not, as prizes. I know GW is not super-big on prize support but man, that shit sucks. I was told later that GW tracked down the winners and gave them combat patrols of their choice as the chips were meant to be a joke. I don’t even mind the chips being in there – that’s pretty fucking funny, and I laughed when I saw it. They should not however, be the most appealing thing in there. I only grabbed the Space Wolves datacards because I planned to give them away.

The Final Results

So I finished 6-2 with another Lieutenant’s bracket win under my belt. Going 6-2 feels good, but not as good as starting 3-1 and eating shit afterward. I’m fairly certain I need a 5-1 start to win Best Overall and it keeps eluding me. One of these days. Campbell ended up winning his bracket, going 4-0 in the 1-3 set to flex on all those dorks and solidify his reputation as “Campbell McWAAClin,” while Jack Hunter won Best Painted. I’m not sad about losing to him in the slightest: His army looked fucking incredible and I think he actually got robbed last year. But it was his to lose this year with those beautiful, beautiful dreadnoughts. Also in the photo above is local Narrative Terror and Goonhammer Patron Quinn Radich, who terrorized the narrative event with his Eldar.

After the event we head back to Fire pizza because it is relatively cheap, easy to walk to, has no wait, and has ample outdoor seating. The waitress recognizes us but I do not care. We grab drinks, order pizza – I end up getting some broccoli mac and cheese which I will tell myself is healthier than a burger because of the broccoli, and we chill and talk to various people until about 11pm. Then it’s back to the hotel for a brisk 4 hours of sleep before I have to wake up and go meet some people to split a car back to SeaTac. Turns out my flight was delayed 5 hours, so I get to sit around in the United lounge until noon. Also, not sleeping. Hooray.

In all, it was a great event and I had a blast. Not sure if it was more fun than KC but it was great to hang out with Liam, Wings, and the West Coast folks who I seldom get to see. I have four to five GT events left this year: The Goonhammer Open (though I’m going to run the Narrative), Warzone Houston, the US Open in Tampa, and the Narrative Finale in Atlanta. There will probably be some RTTs in the mix as well.

Anyways, check back in a week or two as I cover more of my prep for the GHO. And in the meantime, if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.