The dust has settled and Magus the Red has taken down the Scarab 40k GT. Come see the five game breakdown by the victorious champion!

The Scarab 40k GT has come and gone and it was a fantastic event! Magnus and his Daemon Prince buddies battled through 5 intense games. How did they do? Let’s take a look.

Round 1 vs Raven Guard:

In this mission, players earned points in a progressive fashion each turn by destroying a unit, destroying an HQ, and destroying more units than their opponent. This meant you could earn a maximum of 3 points a turn. The secondary was lengthwise table quarters. With a kill point objective, I knew I could not summon much, so my princes and Magnus focused on shooting.

I had the first turn, and flew the Daemon princes up slightly, but left Magnus on the ground to protect the horrors. The Raven Guard came in swinging and tied Magnus up with Vanguard Vets in turn 1 to keep him from shooting, and their stormshields kept them well protected. This was a very back and forth game, with lots of sneaky tactics on both sides. Still, at the end of the day, the Raven Guard had more easily available kill points than the Magnus list, and I was able to pull out a minor win.

20/33 battle points.

MVP: Magnus. He killed several units in combat, including the enemy warlord!

Round 2 vs War Convocation:

This battle pitted the Forces of Mars vs the Denizens of the Planet of Sorcerers in a mission that combined 5 progressive objectives with 2 end game objectives. I went second, and was able to limit my opponent’s first turn shooting by deploying far away and across from some large ruins. The Mechanicum went first and did a wound to Magnus, and advanced onto several progressive chips. In my turn 1, I flew up one flank and took out 1 unit with psychic shooting, severely damaged another, and summoned 4 units onto an objective that then used their flamers to take out another unit. I then ran 2 Daemon princes off of the board.

My opponent picked up more progressives than me on turn 2, and activated the canticles necessary to boost his shooting. He then tried to kill Magnus, and put 3 more wounds on him!!! It was quite nerve wracking, but the big man survived.

The third turn saw the Daemon princes come back on the table, and between a mix of summoning and Magnus shooting, I was able to claim several more objectives and destroy more enemy units. The ability to shoot without line of sight and fly off of the board when necessary was huge in this game. At this point, canticles were weakened, and my army had grown even more deadly due to summoning. The War Convocation fought valiantly, but a few turns later he had been reduced to 0 models. My opponent took the loss with great dignity and was enough of a Magnus fan to enjoy seeing him in action. It was a fantastic game and my opponent was an excellent sport.

31/33 Battle Points (no first blood)

MVP: Magnus. His shooting powers and chariot-making abilities dominated this game.

Round 3 vs Eldar:

This matchup was in the famous “Red Rover” Mission, which spreads 4 relic objectives across the center line, and you score points by picking them up and moving them TOWARD your opponent. The secondary here was to just kill as much of your opponent’s army as possible. This was a very tactical game, because my opponent had the Crimson Death Formation. This meant that keeping my princes in reserve would be risky due to a negative modifier to my reserves, and he had the firepower to easily kill all of the daemon princes.

I won the roll to go first, and deployed on a flank. My opponent deployed far away to avoid my alpha strike, but kept his warp hunter close enough to take a shot at me if he seized the initiative. Luckily for me, he did not! On my turn 1 I flew right up next to the board edge, summoned 30 pink horrors onto 2 of the objectives, and stayed on the board, just a hair’s breadth outside of the maximum threat range of his wraithknight. My opponent then moved up the opposite flank and picked up one of the objectives, and was able to kill a blue horror and its spawned brimstone for first blood.

In my turn 2, I flew up and got a shot at the warp hunter with Magnus and was able to take it out. My pink horrors picked up the 2 objectives on my flank, and my flying forces flew off of the table. My opponent’s turn 2 saw him advance the objective he had picked up and pick up another. He chose to give himself a negative modifier to his reserves, but his Crimson Death Formation still arrived from reserve! He shot a few horrors but did little damage. My turn 3 I flew back onto the table and put a wound on the wraithknight, and forced the warpspyders to jump away from a psychic shooting attack. When they did, I summoned a unit of pink horror right on top of the objective they were holding and rolled a hit! Unfortunately for me, my opponent then got his Crimson Death Formation into position, and fired his whole army into my 3 flying daemon princes and took them all out!!! It was quite a blow to my offense, but I now had units on all 3 objectives. He also got in the way of one of my other horror units on an objective with his warpspyders and kept them from advancing.

In my turn 4, I advanced the objectives what little bit I could, and Magnus managed to take out the wraithknight with 2 D hits, and then fly off of the board. Even with all the daemon princes dead, all the horrors on the board still gave Magnus plenty of dice to power him up! The warpspyders blocking my way were a problem, so I assaulted them with all of my pink horrors. 66 attacks later, the warpspyders were no more. At this point, my opponent abandoned trying to take back the horror-covered objectives, and focused on killing what he could of my army. Later on he tried to kill Magnus, but was unable to get through Magnus’ 3++ save with re-rolling 1s. The game ended on turn 6, with my opponent having advanced one objective to just outside my deployment zone, and I having advanced 2 objectives into his table half and 1 into his zone. I scored big on the primary, but low on the secondary, and only managed to kill 25% of my opponent’s starting army, whereas I had given up many kill points. I ended up with a minor win, but it was a very close game and one of the most tactical of the weekend!

20/33 points

MVP: Daemon Princes. Their ability to summon so easily is what let me win the primary objective.

Round 4 vs Warcon:

Once again, the War Convocation did battle with Magnus! This game used hammer and anvil deployment and was a combination of end game objectives and “marked for death.” I had to play this game very cautiously, as Warcon DOES have the guns to shoot daemon princes out of the air, but it mostly short ranged shooting, so I really tried to take advantage of the daemon princes’ mobility. My opponent gave me the first turn and tried to seize the initiative, but failed. I was out of range to shoot at his army, so I summoned a few units and flew off of the board. He advanced his close combat units and used his knight to shoot down 3 of the 4 units that I summoned. I summoned 2 units of flamers, a burning chariot, and a unit of horrors, and only the horrors remained alive.

In my turn 2, I flew the princes and Magnus along a flank across from a large LoS-blocking terrain piece until I was out of range of most of his guns, but in range to summon and shoot at the knight. I summoned 2 more units of horrors and used them to screen my blue horrors and heralds from the advancing close combat units.

Magnus this turned his mighty Gaze upon the Imperial Knight and destroyed it in one shot! In my opponent’s next turn he decided not to assault the pink horror screen and instead run around it, as he did not want to increase my psychic dice. His return fire was minimal due to positioning, but he did force a daemon prince to jink.

My turn 3 is where the wheels came off. My blue horrors moved away and the Herald summoned another screening unit of pink horrors. Magnus and the Daemon Princes flew right up next to the bulk of his army and unloaded. I managed to destroy 2 units of Kataphrons with only 2 psychic shrieks, and kill about 15 skitarii with a combination of Magnus’ shooting and chariot summoning. I also summoned a unit of pink horrors into my opponent’s backfield, where the Kataphrons had been. He took his turn 3, but no longer had the guns to threaten Magnus and the Princes, and his close combat units were caught in front of an ever-growing wall of pink horrors. We talked it out and decided to stop the game there.

33/33 points

MVP: Magnus. Magnus’ ability to take out a Knight with his Gaze and summon a chariot on every turn was extremely good in this game.

Round 5 vs Eldar and Eldar Corsairs:

The final mission! My opponent was none other than Thomas Byrd, the overall Winner of Warzone: Atlanta 2016. I knew right away that this was going to be a great game and I was excited to start rolling dice! This mission was a combination of kill points and end game table quarters, with your own quarter worth 1 point, your opponent’s worth 4, and the neutral quarters worth 2 a piece.

Also, independent characters gave up 2 kill points instead of 1, and the wraithknight was worth 3 kill points. My opponent had a really versatile list. It utilized a mix of scatter bikes and Corsair jetbikes with splinter cannons, as well as shuriken cannon bikes, Hornets, a warp hunter, a D-battery, a Wraithknight with the melta cannons, as well as an Autarch, a Farseer, and a corsair prince all on jetbikes. In a Kill Points primary game I knew I had to play the game without summoning, so I focused on psychic shooting attacks.

I had the first turn, but I knew that if Thomas seized the initiative then it would all be over. There was also no progressive element to this game so I null deployed, with just my blue horrors hugging the comms relay and aegis line on the board.

Thomas then decided to do the same thing! He deployed his farseer, autarch, and corsair prince all in one unit of 5 jetbikes and kept them in his far corner of the board. We were each too afraid of the alpha strike our armies could deliver. In my first turn, I did nothing. In his first turn, he advanced his unit a little bit and then successfully cast forewarning and fortune upon it. In my turn 2, Magnus and the Princes arrived!

They threw their full psychic might at the eldar unit, but with re-roll saves AND deny the witch, only one jetbike was killed! Thomas’s turn 2 counterattack was intense. He got most of his reserves and lined up shots on one prince to which he could draw line of sight. He also deep struck a warp hunter, but it scattered onto terrain and was immobilized! His psychic phase was blocked by my increased psychic presence, but his shooting killed 2 blue horrors with the warp hunter, and massed jetbike shots and hornet shots brought down a daemon prince!

In turn 3 Magnus moved into position and took out the immobilized warp hunter that could not jink, and combined fire from 2 princes killed one jetbike unit and dropped one to just a single model. I tried to run off of the board with the 2 princes, and one made it off, but one was stuck on the board! Thomas circled the wagons around the lone Prince, and brought the wraithknight to bear against the small brimstone unit. Miraculously, both brimstones and the prince survived!!!! In turn 4 my severely wounded daemon prince flew off, the other daemon prince flew back on, and Magnus moved up the board toward a string of enemy units and near a table edge. However, between vector strikes and all the psychic shooting, I was only able to take out 1 unit of jetbikes and bring 2 others down to 1 model. Magnus flew off, and in assault the wraithknight took out the brimstone. In Thomas’ four, he closed in on the one daemon prince on the table and poured everything he had into it, even the wraithknight, but somehow the daemon prince survived with 1 wound!

In my turn 5 Magnus and the other prince arrived on the opposite flank, and the daemon prince Thomas failed to kill then vector struck a lone bike, taking him out. Magnus and the Prince threw their mind bullets and laid low 3 more units, a D-battery, a single hiding jetbike, and another unit of 3 jetbikes. Thomas responded swiftly and my luck had run out. He destroyed each of the daemon princes using the unit he first shot them with, but while guiding his wraithknight he lost his Farseer to Perils of the Warp!

The rest of his army poured into Magnus in an attempt to ground him and stomp him out with the wraithknight, but Magnus stayed airborne. At this point I had a minor win over Thomas in the primary, and would lose the secondary heavily if the game ended, as Thomas spread out his remaining units to control every table quarter.

However, the game kept going! In turn 6, Magnus flew toward Thomas’ backfield and dedicated his dice to taking out another jetbike unit. Thomas repositioned to maintain control of every table quarter and hoped for the game to end, but it kept going! In turn 7, Magnus landed in Thomas’s home table quarter, killed his Autarch, and claimed Linebreaker. At that point all Thomas could do was score his secondary points. It was a closely fought and epic battle! We found it funny that our game ended at exactly Tzeench O’clock: 3:33PM.

21/33 battle points

MVP: Magnus. He stayed alive when he needed to, and destroyed exactly what he needed to destroy, when he needed to destroy it.

All of my games at Scarab were fantastic. I had 5 great games vs 5 great opponents and had an absolute blast playing my army. Magnus proved to be the most versatile unit I have ever seen in my nearly 10-year 40k career. He had a way to deal with everything I encountered over the weekend.

At the end of the tournament, I was the only person to go undefeated. I ended the day with the second most battle points, but when combined with the other scores for the event I took the prize for Best Overall. Thomas Byrd had the most battle points, and won Best General! It was a great ending to a spectacular event.

I sincerely thank the staff of the Scarab 40k GT for all of their hard work to make such an incredible event. It was awesome, and I can’t wait for next year!

UPDATE: Here is Horton’s List. Also please note that he mentions summoning pink horrors from blue in the above battle report, Obviously his brain is on paradox mode, and that is not what he did. A lot of veteran players interchange the two terms from previous play in older editions.