TheChirurgeon’s Road Through 2023, Part 8: Prep for the KC Open

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing attempts to chronicle my journey through 2023 in the same way I’ve covered the past two years. Last time around, I covered my time spent at Warhammer Fest 2023, at which I had a great time and also strongly outperformed my expectation with a 4-0 start before finishing 4-2. You can read about that part of my journey here.

This time around I’m in the middle of preparing for what will likely be my last tournament of 9th edition, Games Workshop’s 2023 Kansas City Open event. I went to KC last year and had a good time, losing a brutal series of games to Tyranids but walking away with Best Painted at the event (read about that here), and I really liked the venue GW went with so I was excited to go back when they announced this year’s event. The other major thing that has me excited about the event is that it is a Teams Event, which means I’ll be competing on a 5-man Goonhammer Team.

If you’re not familiar with the teams format, you should look into it – it’s a really cool way to play 40k, one that really helps take the edge off competitive balance. You can read about teams events here.

Originally our team was going to be myself, Scott Horras “Heresy”, Shane Watts, Gunum, and James “Boon” Kelling. Then Gunum decided he was playing with his team the War Hogs and Boon had to back out to attend a wedding. So we filled their spots with Thomas “Goatboy” Reidy and Norman. That meant we suddenly had a lot more chaos on the team and a lot less of a balanced attack. Scott was almost certainly bringing his Astra Militarum, Shane his Votann, and Norman his Chaos Knights. After some deliberation Goatboy decided to bring Chaos Daemons.

Picking My Faction

Team tournaments create interesting choices in that a team can only include each codex once. This meant that for me Thousand Sons were pretty much off the table, as they’d need daemon support to really be able to compete. This left Chaos Space Marines (bad), Death Guard (OK), and World Eaters (good) to play with. The only challenge is that my world Eaters are not tournament ready – I still had around 30 models to paint for the army before they were ready to go, and they’re not particularly fast.

Playing 10th Edition at KC

While I was working on the army I got a message from Mike Brandt asking if I wanted to play 10th edition on stream at KC. I absolutely wanted to do that and told him I was in. The next step was building a list, which is not as easy as it sounds – GW are very cautious about sharing things like point costs for 10th edition. Despite what some [morons] on the internet would have you believe, GW does not “intentionally leak things” for marketing purposes – they’re looking to keep a tight control on the timing and release of information and make sure the bulk of it comes out at the same time preorders are going live. So instead they asked me what I was bringing to KC, and for a list of models I had available – the process here is that they will build a 2,000-point list for me, and tell me which models to bring and I’ll play with the list when I arrive.

I told Mike I was planning to bring World Eaters, unless painting fell behind, in which case I’d bring my Death Guard. The Death Guard aren’t as good as the World Eaters – particularly in teams format – but I just had a solid performance with them at Warhammer Fest and I’m pretty comfortable playing them, and they’re already painted to a decent standard without the need for Daemons (though I did contemplate giving a go of it with Mamon Transfigured, but Goatboy running demons scuttled that). After another couple of days of painting Eightbound I had to come to terms with the idea I wasn’t going to make the deadline, so I told him I’d be playing Death Guard – and I wanted to bring Mortarion for the 10th edition game.

Mike sent me a list, and while I can’t talk about points values, I can say it’s larger than I expected from a model-counts perspective. There are some interesting and exciting interactions in it and while I have no idea if it will represent a competitive Death Guard list in 10th edition, it’s at least close to what I’d want to test at the outset.

I’ll be squaring off on the Thursday night stream against my teammate, Goatboy, who will be playing Chaos Daemons. I’m excited to give the Death Guard a spin in 10th edition, though I fully suspect this is going to be too much to keep track of and will throw me off my 9th edition game. But I kind of don’t care about 9th edition anymore anyways so it’s whatever. The game will be streamed on Thursday night at 7pm CDT on the Warhammer Twitch channel, so be sure to watch it!

The List for KC (the 9th Edition One)

This time around I’ve made a number of small changes to the list based around my experience at Warhammer Fest. The big one is I’ve axed the Noxious Blightbringer and a Malignant Plaguecaster for Typhus, who gives me the benefit of a Chaos Lord re-roll 1s aura and a double-casting psyker. Unfortnately depending on how GW rules it, he likely turns off my ability to use the Inexorable stratagem, so it’s a hefty tradeoff that will mean playing more defensively to avoid deep strike charges, particularly against daemons. The upside is that I’m now back to 4 characters and not giving up maximum Assassination points, plus one of those characters is significantly harder to kill, with more wounds and a 2+/4++ save. I also cut some of my weapon upgrades in order to just add more Poxwalkers. I kept forgetting to use them on my Terminator Champions so I decided to just go with a more reliable option.

The KC Death Guard List - click to expand

There are some mistakes in this list, but it’s too late to change them. Ideally I’d swap the sluggers for Rothail Volley guns to get more plague weapons for Fleeing Vectors, and I’d swap over to the Harbingers to get their Stratagem with Typhus. The Poxwalker situation also isn’t ideal and my gut says I could probably drop to 2×5 Blightlords or do 2×5 Deathshrouds and spend the remaining Blightlord points on more Plague Marines, but at this point I’m not going to play another 9th edition event and we’re past the list submission deadline so I’ve gotta live with it.

Building a Display Board

Given our team comp and players, a comp win isn’t impossible, but it’s pretty unlikely. On the other hand, Best Overall is definitely something we might be able to swing if we can make the top cut after the first five rounds. As part of that, I’m making a Display Board for my Death Guard. Following the method being employed by Scott, I started with a 24×18″ picture frame, from which I removed the glass and then glued the backboard into the frame. The plan was to build a display board into the frame to create something that’s pretty lightweight and looks good. I had a chunk of insulation foam as well to add to it to build a raised hill section for part of the army. The first step here is to play things out roughly before starting any cutting.

In addition to the foam I have four pieces of corkboard sheets I’m going to use to add a second recessed layer with some toxic swamp to the mix. That should help provide some additional color. At this point I mostly need to know that everything will fit, and it does. There’s some warping on the foam board where it got dinged up in shipping but I’m going to cut that off when I carve the hill. Speaking of which, it’s time to fire up the foam cutter.

The foam cuts

setting the foam into the board

taping off the frame and gluing everything down

I cut the foam using a wire cutter – done outdoors to avoid huffing toxic fumes – then it’s time to glue everything down. I used Gorilla Glue for this, which is foam safe and doesn’t take an insane amount of time to dry. I ended up having a bit too much come out of one of the seams but didn’t have time to do a ton of fixing work on it. Ultimately it’s not super visible with the army on the board so I’m not worried about it.

Painted with Astrogranite Gray

Adding details

Next up it’s time to add the first coat of paint to seal the board. Super glue and spray paint will eat the foam so I need to make sure it’s protected before I start really going to work on it. I use a can of gray latex paint I had custom mixed to be Astrogranite Gray a long time ago. Once that’s down I start adding bits and pieces of additional detail – ruined barrels and pieces of floor, skulls, barbed bracken, and so on.

adding sand

The base coat and drybrush layers

Next up I paint the whole board with PVA glue, then cover it in basing grit/sand. Pour off the excess, then let it dry. Once it’s dry I hit the whole thing with Woodland Scenics’ hobby cement, a spray bottle mix of PVA glue and water that’s great for making sure the grit doesn’t rub off later. That takes a while to dry but once it’s done I can do the actual plaint layer. I spray the whole thing with Mechanicus Standard Grey then drybrush with Celestra Gray.

Base colors – lots of greens and browns

Adding bubbles nad ripples

More details

Coating with Nurgle’s Rot

Finally it’s time for the details. The biggest of these is the river, and that takes less time than you’d think. I start by painting it with Castellan Green and I’ll periodically add Mournfang Brown and Death World Forest to the mix – all while it’s still wet – to help create a nice mix of greenish browns. Always do these in the same horizontal direction to create a sense of movement and flowing liquid.

After that it’s time to add some lighter waves with Death Guard Green and Ogryn Camo, plus a ton of small bubbles with Dorn Yellow. This gives it a varied palette and lots of interesting details. Finally I coat the whole thing with Nurgle’s Rot, which is basically just a green gloss coat. This gives the whole thing a more saturated, green tint, while also making it look shiny and wet.

Next up I add some tufts of grass and then there’s only one bit left which is the trees. They aren’t too complicated – they’ve been pulled from a Twisted Copse terrain kit – plus the third is a Feculent Gnarlmaw. These all paint up pretty quickly.

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

The end result is pretty sturdy and while it’s not amazing, I’m fairly happy with it at the moment. I may come back to this and do more in the future but for now it’s more than satisfactory and should match some of the boards my teammates put together for KC. It’s just barely big enough to hold the army but it should fit into a checked bag without much hassle, which is the more important part.

One More Practice Game and Some Final Prep

With the display board done, I have a relatively light order in terms of things to do for the event. I have a single Terminator model to paint for the event and a single plague marine with a Meltagun to fill out the things my list has to track, plus another 4 models for the stream game, where I need plague marines with belchers and sprayers for the list I was given. That’s not too bad – my scheme is pretty easy to paint and quick to get out there, but I also have some touch-up work to do on some of my models to make them look better. One such example is my other Rhino, where I’ve added a freehand Death Guard logo to the top doors. I’m also adding some more details to models like my PBCs, where I can paint the rivets and improve the highlights.

Relatively easy to paint and very visible

Adding details

Also I painted this thing

Finally I had some extra time over the weekend to get in a practice game against my regular sparring partner and KC attendee (albeit for a different team), Erik. He’s running Daemons and the game helped me get a good feel for how the army plays with Typhus and without the Blightbringer. The game itself was relatively close – Feeling Vectors is a solid pick into his daemons – but I overextended early in a way that hurt me. The game was basically over when I managed to fuck up killing the Bloodthirster in a single turn, leaving it alive on 1 wound after it whiffed a pair of 7″ saves into my Terminators.

I got too aggressive with my PBCs early and ended up paying for that by having them have to fall back every turn, and I got a bit too far away from my characters trying to kill the bloodthirster mid-game. It was a relatively close game (mission: The Scouring), but when I failed to kill the thirster he just cleaned me out and I ran out of gas. I learned some good lessons though and I think I have a solid matchup into Daemons, particularly if they make the mistake of running Bloodletters.

Next Time: the KC Open

That does it for this write-up but join me in a week or so when I’ll be writing about my experiences at the KC Open. Until then if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.