Eve of Austin GT 2018

We’re officially less than 24 hours out from dice down on the last GT of the Texas circuit for 2018 - Wargames Con. After my “official” post for WGC, I’ve had a chance to tweak some things and I have some thoughts about how I think the tournament is going to play out.

When To Know its Time For an Audible

If you followed my last post about what my list looked like coming into this event, you’ll know I’ve been tweaking some things in an attempt to “balance out” the list. Thankfully, the boys over at WGC decided to push the List Submission Date back to 8/12, which meant I had a chance to run the army through a series of prep games this past weekend. I had some good things and bad things come out of it.

Remember to Factor in Missions

For most of the prep work, I’ve been focusing on the meta to adapt my army to what has been difficult for me to handle. There will always be times where you’re just out-matched by your opponent and my goal is always to try to minimize the lop-sidedness of those matches. In other words, giving myself a chance, even in the worst matchups.

A bit of a curve ball this year is that WGC is not going to be using the ITC Champions missions. For the good part of 5-6 months, my list has been getting tailored for competition in ITC Champions formats. This presents a bit of a shake up to where your army needs to be strong. As I’ll get into, the results from testing found that I had the ability to take objectives better with the dual-Rhino Dust Bus but was left out a bit with sitting on objectives back in my zone.

With the missions at WGC much more focused on objective control, I’ve opted to swing back towards objective control while not losing out a bit of what I’ve changed so far.

Playtesting Results

First of all, there were a few key things I was testing this week:

60 Plaguebearers Predators Reduced casting Adding a Changecaster Potentially adding a Mutalith back

The last one probably seems a bit crazy, but my reasoning was to add something I have to play aggressive with, could take a bit of punishment, and distract fire power away from the Predators.

60 Plaguebearers

These guys are just awesome. They do so much work, even against some of the toughest assault enemies in the game. I found that 60 felt like a sweet spot for the army but upon reflecting, it makes sense for me to go back to the 80-man configuration. A lot of this comes down to how important objectives are going to be this weekend.

Predators

I love these things. They have earned their spot on the team this weekend. Yea, you’re going to lose one early to smart players because they know you’re going for Killshot. So what? Even when you lose one they are still incredibly efficient and give us the ability to target enemies at long range rather than having to rely on positioning / smite. They do exactly what I wanted them to do and I had just 2 of make a huge impact in a game against 3x Knights.

Reduced Casting

This is an area I’ve taken some study notes in and need to make sure I focus on improving this weekend. With the reduction in my psyker count, I need make them last as long as possible. This means not leaving them out in the open or in a spot where they can get ambushed. A squad of Rubrics acting as a body guard can help, as well as the predators. I’ve opted to upgrade the other sorcerer back to an Exalted Sorcerer. This will give my Rubrics (and Rhino) a bit more punch.

Add a Changecaster

This guy is a keeper. For 78pts we get access to the Tzeentch Tree (2 powers). I tested some options such as making him my Warlord to buff him up a bit. I just didn’t find the value there in the game and I also found myself wanting to use C-Beam (Stratagem) and realized I had dorked myself out of it. Still, what I’ve determined is that I can actually summon him rather than have him as a drop in the list. This does a few things:

Helps when he’s potentially targetable by Knights with that nasty character missile Reduces my drops by 1 Keeps my Nurgle loci in-tact and doesn’t require me to take him in an Aux detachment I can take powers I think I need in more of a reactionary role. I could also add another Pox Bringer, or replace one that dies? I could also summon some Pink Horrors if needed

I think this just gives me way more flexibility and puts me on-par with some of the other lists that have drops around 11-12. The only down side is that to get him on the field I’d need to not move with Ahriman or the Exalted sorcerer, which means I can’t deploy in the Rhino to get my drops even lower. This might be okay depending on who I’m facing.

Add a Mutalith?

This guy was my distraction Carnifex. He’s not cheap, but is cheaper than a Maulerfeind. He attracts attention, dishes out moral wounds, and has the chance to explode. In fact, in one game, I was able to command-reroll an explosion with him that dished out over 20 mortal wounds due to being in the middle of a massive Drukhari force. This is not something I would rely on but the purpose was to distract fire away from the predators so that they have a chance to do some work.

In most cases, this did it’s job. However, in my review of the objectives, I find that it’s going to be much better to trade him out for more Plaguebearers.

Battalion Detachment (Chaos - Daemons - Nurgle) [44 PL, 778pts]

Poxbringer [4 PL, 70pts]

Spoilpox Scrivener [4 PL, 75pts]

Plaguebearers [12 PL, 211pts]: Daemonic Icon, 27x Plaguebearer, Plagueridden

Plaguebearers [12 PL, 211pts]: Daemonic Icon, 27x Plaguebearer, Plagueridden

Plaguebearers [12 PL, 211pts]: Daemonic Icon, 27x Plaguebearer, Plagueridden

Battalion Detachment (Chaos - Thousand Sons) [67 PL, 1144pts]

Ahriman [7 PL, 131pts]

Exalted Sorcerer [7 PL, 121pts]: Warlord: Undying Form, Force stave, Helm of the Third Eye, Inferno Bolt Pistol

Rubric Marines [7 PL, 107pts] Aspiring Sorcerer: Force stave, Inferno Bolt Pistol 4x Rubric Marine w/ Inferno Boltgun: 4x Inferno boltgun

Rubric Marines [7 PL, 107pts] Aspiring Sorcerer: Force stave, Inferno Bolt Pistol 4x Rubric Marine w/ Inferno Boltgun: 4x Inferno boltgun

Tzaangors [4 PL, 80pts]: Brayhorn, 9x Tzaangor w/ Tzaangor Blades Twistbray: Tzaangor blades

Chaos Predator [9 PL, 150pts]: Predator autocannon Two heavy bolters: 2x Heavy bolter

Chaos Predator [9 PL, 150pts]: Predator autocannon Two heavy bolters: 2x Heavy bolter

Chaos Predator [9 PL, 150pts]: Predator autocannon Two heavy bolters: 2x Heavy bolter

Chaos Rhino [4 PL, 74pts]: 2x Combi-bolter

Chaos Rhino [4 PL, 74pts]: 2x Combi-bolter

Reinforcements: 78pts

Random Pre-Game Notes

Warpflame Gargoyles are nuts. I’ve been able to do a lot of work with them when I get my Rhinos into combat positions. Even better they work on your opponent’s fight phase as well, making it perfectly reasonable to charge into combat when you need to.

This will be the first competitive game I put summoning to work.

It looks like Knights will still be a big thing in the meta here, will be interesting to see how many make it into the top 10.

This will be the last major event until LVO early next year. After this I’ll be taking a step away from 40k through the fall and into Sigmar for a bit. I’ll be keeping tabs on tournaments but won’t have any events to provide a write up from live.

Thomas (aka “Goatboy” of BOLS) is back with an awesome looking list consisting of a Lord of Skulls, Ahriman & Daemon Princes, and some Renegade Knights. Right now, he and I are the only official TSons players entered in the tournament.

I will be posting live updates from the event on the Thousand Sons reddit.

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