Way back in my Year-in-Review post, I talked about my goals for 2020 and that included playing in more tournaments. Well, the opportunity to put my money where my mouth was came sooner than expected when it turned out fellow Goonhammer author Shane Watts was acting as TO for an RTT at Titan Games and Hobbies down near Baltimore. It’s not the easiest commute for me but it’s not terrible, either – two hours by train for a tournament is pretty manageable. So I worked things out with the missus and set my sights on attending. Two weeks before the event, I sat down to figure out what to build.

OK, time to build an army. Let’s see what I’ve got…

…

Welp, turns out that although I have about 12 thousand points of painted Chaos miniatures, none of what I have makes an actual playable competitive army. Fuck.

This is going to be a problem. Although the tournament itself doesn’t have a paint standard to adhere to, I do not play with unpainted minis. Full stop. I don’t begrudge anyone else from playing unpainted; if you need time or just don’t like painting, that’s cool with me. But I only play with painted stuff if I can help it, barring some disgraceful things I’ve done for recent Hear Me Outs. So time to run through my inventory of what’s painted and on proper bases:

Stuff I Have Painted That’s Generally Pretty Good Right Now:

Two Night Lords Heldrakes

20 Bloodletters

Bloodmaster

10 Pink Horrors

10 Blue Horrors

2 Black Legion Obliterators

A bunch of Chaos Sorcerers, with and without Jump Packs

Bikers (Night Lords, World Eaters)

10 Berserkers (Black Legion)

Lord Discordant (Black Legion)

Dark Apostle (Black Legion)

50 Cultists

Jump Pack Chaos Lords (Raptors, Black Legion)

5 Possessed (World Eaters)

Stuff I Have Painted That’s OK But Not Ideal:

Abaddon

Huron + Spiky 17

Other Heldrakes (Black Legion, World Eaters, Iron Warriors)

The Kytan

Several Chaos Knights with suboptimal loadouts. Like Thermal/Gat and the like.

Two Chaos War Dogs

Stuff I Have Painted That’s Bad:

Lots of Raptors (Night Lords, Black Legion, World Eaters)

Helbrutes (Night Lords, Iron Warriors, Black Legion, World Eaters, Alpha Legion)

Chaos Space Marines

Forgefiends

Vindicators

Fire Raptor

Sicaran

A bunch of Chaos Space Marines on the wrong sized bases

Bloodthirster

Bloodcrushers

Flesh hounds

There’s some other stuff but you get the idea. If Possessed bombs are the meta right now, I am emphatically nowhere close. I don’t even own Nurglings and my PBCs haven’t been assembled. So I was going to have to cobble together a playable list from basically a big pile of nothing. Of the stuff I have painted, the Night Lords are currently the closest to being good (and I’ve tested them before in a Hear Me Out) — the Heldrakes are decent units that are reasonably costed and can be used turn 1 to zip across the board and tie up units that might otherwise be shooting at me, plus they give me an insane range for firing off the Vox Scream stratagem I’ll use to turn off aura abilities for my opponent’s best units. The bikes are also pretty good, able to throw out 4 bolter shots each and double-shoot using Endless Cacophony if I give them the Mark of Slaanesh, plus I can give them chainswords to up their melee output to 3 attacks apiece on the charge, which isn’t too bad. I can also take a Jump Pack Chaos Lord with the Rapacious Talons and put him in a Host Raptorial Specialist Detachment, ensuring he’ll make his charges dropping in. What I’m missing here though are some Warp Talons – even if go heavy on Raptors, I need a way to drop the lord in and not have him get murdered in Overwatch. With the new stratagems from Faith and Fury, I think this is my best bet for building on.

So from my Night Lords, I can pull the Bikes, the Chaos Lord and the Heldrakes. That suggests an Outrider Detachment, but I’m gonna need two more Fast Attack choices. I can either take a bunch of Raptors which uh, aren’t so good, or I can paint up some Warp Talons. I’ll come back to that. What else can I put in here?

After the Night Lords, my next bet is probably the Black Legion. I’ve got two Obliterators, and I like those enough as a way to drop in and kill most things, provided they have proper support. I don’t have a Black Legion jump pack Sorcerer, but I do have Abaddon, and that’s a pretty good buff, plus he can get me some extra CP and tear things up in melee. I can fill out the rest of a Battalion with 3 squads of Cultists, plus a Dark Apostle and a Sorcerer. The Sorcerer can buff the bikes with Prescience (WC 7, +1 to hit) and Delightful Agonies (WC 6, 5+++ save), while the Apostle can give the Cultists a 5+ invulnerable save to help them hold objectives or potentially buff Abaddon if I don’t deep strike him. He can also benefit from the Council of Traitors Stratagem, letting me give him the Trusted War-leader trait so he can recoup CP for me on a 5+. I definitely want a third Obliterator if I’m going this route, since I’ll want to have them maxing out on firepower and double-shooting with Endless Cacophony.

At this point, I have no idea what to do with the rest of my list. Ideally I think I’d put in some Khorne daemons to support the Warp Talons and Chaos Lord, but if I do that, I don’t have enough painted daemons to fill out a Battalion, so I’m stuck taking a Patrol detachment. If Abaddon’s my warlord, that buys me +2 CP and now I have 11 to work with before I have to spend 2 on my Specialist detachment stuff and 1 on Council of Traitors. 8 CP isn’t really enough to work with if I want to be double-shooting a bunch and firing off Vox Screams every turn. So I definitely need at least another Battalion. Adding in the Red Corsairs gives me three more objective holders and 8 CP (plus two more psykers, including Huron) for less than 400 points, but it also feels like the list doesn’t have enough gas. At this point I have about 140 points left, and I’ve already put myself in a position to paint 6 minis to my standards in about a week, so I don’t want to paint anything else. Helbrutes are cheap and moderately scary, so I put in a Night Lords Helbrute with 2 CCWs and some extra Cultists to give me a better Engineers squad if I need one. This list relies a bit too heavily on 3 specific units, but it has a goddamn ton of CP to throw around, and that’ll have to be how I make it work. I’m also pretty comfortable with what all these units do, except for some of the new Night Lord Stratagems.

That means I need to paint five Night Lords Warp Talons (though I have an extra Chaos Lord who can sub in if I can only get four done), plus one Black Legion Obliterator. With only a week that’s a tall order, but I think I can manage to ignore my family enough to make it happen. Let’s see how I did.

I want my third Obliterator to look different from the other two, so I convert him using the bits from a plastic Helbrute. I works pretty well, I think! Unfortunately that time means I’m not able to finish my last Warp Talon. Not the end of the world since I have a sub, but it does mean I have work to do when I get home.

I got the Obliterator about 90% done before the event, which was good enough to put on the tabletop. Ultimately here’s what I ended up working with, and I was very satisfied with it. The Helbrute is ancient but he’s still one of my favorite models and there’s something about melee Helbrutes that’s just so dependable and satisfying now that they have enough attacks to reliably shred things.

My RTT List

Black Legion Battalion (+5 CP, 813 points)

Stratagem: Council of Traitors (-1 CP)



HQ: Abaddon, Warlord (+2 CP)

HQ: Sorcerer w/Force Staff, Mark of Slaanesh, Trait: Warp Lord (re-roll 1s in psychic tests)

HQ: Dark Apostle, Mark of Slaanesh, Trait: Trusted War-Leader (get a CP back on a 5+ when you use a stratagem)

Troops: Cultists w/Autogun, Mark of Slaanesh x17

Troops: Cultists w/Autogun, Mark of Slaanesh x10

Troops: Cultists w/Autogun, Mark of Slaanesh x10

HS: Obliterators x3 w/Mark of Slaanesh

Red Corsairs Battalion (+8 CP, 386 points)

HA: Huron Blackheart

HQ: Chaos Sorcerer w/Jump Pack, Force Sword, Mark of Slaanesh

Troops: Chaos Space Marines x5 w/Mark of Slaanesh, bolters

Troops: Chaos Space Marines x5 w/Mark of Slaanesh, bolters

Troops: Chaos Space Marines x5 w/Mark of Slaanesh, bolters

Night Lords Outrider (+1 CP, 799 points)

Specialist Detachment: Host Raptorial (-1 CP)

HQ: Chaos Lord w/Jump Pack, Mark of Slaanesh, Relic: The Rapacious Talons, Field Commander: Tip of the Spear (-1 CP)

FA: Warp Talons x5 w/Mark of Khorne

FA: Chaos Bikers x9 w/Chainswords, Mark of Slaanesh

FA: Chaos Spawn

EL: Chaos Helbrute w/2x Dreadnought Close Combat Weapons, 2x Combi-Bolter

FLYER: Heldrake w/Baleflamer, Mark of Slaanesh

FLYER: Heldrake w/Baleflamer, Mark of Slaanesh

Total: 1,998 points, 16 CP

Ok look, it’s not great, but it has a lot of CP to start each game (16) and it can pull of a few tricks. The Heldrakes can charge things immediately and Vox Scream to shut off auras, while on turn 2 the Warp Talons and Chaos Lord can drop in, make a bunch of 7″ charges (with the Talons rolling 3D6 if I use the Stratagem for them), and annihilate something, while the Obliterators do the same thing at range. The bikes can put in some work if I need and they have a lot of movement, and uh, I have a lot of shitty little squads for holding objectives. Plus that Helbrute is gonna kill something. …right?

Anyways, because this pile of shit very much feels like a “Hear Me Out,” I figured, why not Do A Thing? So I’ve enlisted Cyle “Naramyth” Thompson, of “Winning the Wheat City Open” fame to critique my uh, wonderful list.

Hear me out, Cyle!

Naramyth:

Don’t you know I have my own RTT report to do AND more complaining about the new ITC missions? This is why you never get those pictures of Spiderman. I’m not a Chaosoligist but I know the Night Lords have some cool tricks that are worth looking at. I see the pile of models you can draw from is fine and you probably won’t let me do something like putting your Black Legion Oblits in as Night Lords even if Oblits are the coolest part of Chaos IMO. I don’t know what your Knight load outs are, but Avenger/Thermal is certainly not bad at all with Infernal aligned “Crusaders” and they have even dropped points! Ninja edit: He only has one Knight that is worth anything. (Rob’s Note: Yeah… one is a Desecrator and the other is RFBC/Reaper Chainsword. I know they’re bad, OK?).

So what I want to do is use the Knight and maybe the not-Armigers to be a core of his shooting. Knights are somewhat fragile, sure. But they can dance at 36″ pretty well if they have screens and some forward presence that forces the opponent to deal with it instead of just shooting the Knight to pieces or touching it in combat. A Knight with some Night Lords forward pressure could have some legs. Wings? Winglegs. Would I like to make the Knight detachment a real detachment? Yup! Would like I like to have a huge squad of Warp Talons to help catch large parts of the opponent’s line to wrap? You betcha! It’s still a pile of stuff that I would like to consolidate into streamlined detachments, but it’s what we got.

Naramyth’s list: So anyway, here’s Wonderwall

Night Lords Battalion Host Raptorial

Chaos Jump Lord, Thunder Hammer, Warlord

Chaos Jump Lord, Thunder Hammer, Field Commander, Tip of the Claw

10x Cultists

10x Cultists

10x Cultists

5x Warp Talons

Heldrake

Heldrake

Black Legion Battalion

Discolord

Sorcerer

10x Cultists

10x Cultists

5x CSMs

Helbrute

3x Oblits

Chaos Knights Super Heavy Aux

Knight Despoiler

Thermal/Avenger/Ironstorm

You have 50 Cultists providing screening and some objective holding for your Knight before they get shot off the table. You will then also have 2 Heldrakes and a Warptimed Discolord to provide some forward presence while you wait for your deep strikers to come in. When they come in you have 3 Oblits, preferably with Prescience to make things go away with Veterans of the Long War and shooting twice. Meanwhile you have two 7″ charge smash captains and their Warp Talons that turn off Overwatch charging into your opponent’s line as a second wave to the Heldrakes and disco lord.

TheChirurgeon: Neat! I didn’t do any of that, but I’m gonna consider it for next time. And I’m absolutely going to do more Warp Talons. More on them in a few. Let’s see how I did!

Round 1 – Robbie Triplett’s Carcharodons

Hey, waitaminute… I know that guy… oh no.

It’s Robbie Triplett, the guy who dumpstered me at NOVA by killing my Kytan on turn 1, leading to it exploding and wiping out half my army. Of course he’s my first tournament opponent since NOVA. All jokes aside, Robbie’s a cool guy and it’s hilarious providence that we get to play each other. This is what he wanted anyways, and Shane assures me that, despite Robbie begging for this matchup, he didn’t mean for it to happen this way. Robbie has left his Space Wolves at home in favor of Raven Guard Successors, playing a Centurion-heavy list that I’m not sure I can beat — the bike bolters aren’t gonna help me a ton against those 2+ saves.