It has been ages since I’ve even taken a stab at playing in a Warhammer tournament of any kind, the last time I tried to compete in a 40k tournament was during 4th edition when I was *very young* to be competing in that kind of game.

I brought 2,000pts of Death Guard, largely because the Dark Imperium models were cheap and looked great. As a chaos player through-and-through, Death Guard was a perfect opportunity to paint loads of effects like rust and corrosion, so it will be a delight to continue playing Death Guard moving forward. I was too hectic playing during the tournament to remember to take photos, so here is a post-photo of my army.

It isn’t entirely painted, however the tournament granted a bonus to armies where the majority of their *models* are painted, so 60 poxwalkers painted got me there. I’m too busy prepping for different games at Gencon to paint more 40k in the short term so I was relieved that this was good enough. As much as I would have liked to use Rhinos and some proper Plague Marines, I also wanted to utilize Typhus and a trio of Bloat Drones. My thought was “Bloat drones *must* be good because they can Fly, and they basically have super-flamers.

Boy I was right.

My overall record was 2-0-1, undefeated.

This army was absolutely relentless. I knew that there were lists that it would perform poorly against (mainly flyer-spam based lists), however I lucked out and never faced a proper hard-counter. People thought they had a hard counter, but virtually every unit grossly over-performed. The only reason I didn’t go 3-0 was due to time constraints, not a single game went past turn 3.

Round 1 vs Tyranids - Bases, ended in a draw 4-4

My opponent managed to fully fill out a full Brigade, packing a large number of harpies, biovores, and rocking surprisingly small troop units to make the Brigade work. We deployed long-edge, and while my objective was safely tucked away in a round piece of ruins terrain, my opponent’s objective was dead-center near the front of his deployment zone.

The problem with this round was that neither of us could play fast enough, and we barely completed turn 2 before the time limit. I scored my own objective, he managed to barely pry me away from his objective before my poxwalkers could actually make it there, I snagged line-breaker to his First Blood and there was our draw. My opponent actually had the chance to win, but missplayed by dropping his lichtor in his own deployment zone. I had an even worse missplay.

My foreward-most poxwalker unit was close enough to charge into a sleu of weakened termagaunt, hormagaunt, and genestealer units near the objective and like an idiot I advanced them because I was rushing, losing my opportunity to win 7-2. This certainly would have happened regardless had we gone to turn 3, since I had 4 nearly full blobs of 20 poxwalkers, Typhus, and my sorcerer in-toe ready to drop Warptime. Had I warptimed that poxwalker unit even, they could have advanced a 2nd time and scored the objective on turn 2. This was an obvious mistake on my part, due to having not actually played enough games yet and not having played for most of 6th and 7th edition.

MVP this game was for certain Typhus, who successfully charged-into a hive-tyrant and wiped him without blinking.

Round 2 vs Orks - 4 objectives, Massacre 14-0

The Ork Player brought a list loaded with killa kans and Deff Dreads, with Meks to support them. They also had a unit of Meganobs (I think that’s what they were), with guns and claws. I nearly tabled this poor guy, this game was basically finished by the time turn 3 came around. I managed to score a turn 1 charge with my Demon Prince, and managed to completely drop a Deffdread, and proceeded to tie the meganobs, the only unit that would be very effective against infantry, in close combat for basically the whole game (first with the prince, then with a bloat drone, then zombies finished the job).

The Bloat Drones definately did their thing this game. They were fast, they caused some significant damage to the killa kans, they were able to survive getting charged, and fall back *behind* the main line and roast the meks. The only objective I didn’t score was slay the warlord, but mainly because I wasn’t trying all that hard to do so. Instead my focus was to squeeze every last inch out of my Poxwalker movement by charging as often as possible, allowing Typhus to crack open the Dread or killa kan that they crashed into, but those extra inches from charging allowed me to firmly hold all 4 objectives.

The MVP for this game was the Demon Prince, mainly because the turn 1 charge on one flank from Warptime, and the fact that he had Miasmic Pestillence and Prescience also cast on him, allowed him to engage effectively a full half of my opponent’s army. My Hellbrutes also did some work this game given that the high damage profile of their weapons and long range allowed me to badly wound the vehicles before charging consistently. I can’t imagine a scenario where my list could have lost to his, it was a game of rock paper scissors.

Round 3 vs Eldar - Kill points, Massacre 2-1 980pts-344pts

We were playing a truly bizarre verison of kill points this round, we scored the total ammount of points worth of models killed at the end of the game instead of scoring victory points for slain units. I was a bit dissapointed with that, since traditional kill points would have given me a much nastier victory. There was also a slightly bizarre ruling regarding my Poxwalkers, which was that my opponent scored points for Poxwalkers killed even if I managed to fill the unit, since the poxwalker mechanic allowed me to add models to the unit rather than restore slain models. This was probably for the best because I very nearly got to add more models to my poxwalker units than were slain during the course of the whole battle. We ran out of time after turn 3, but had we continued I surely would have tabled my opponent.

My opponent’s army was a bit gimmicky, he was running 4 whole units of snipers, some swooping hawks, and some striking scorpions, so he deployed very little during deployment. What he *did* deploy was some guardians, dire avengers, fire dragons, dark reapers, warp spiders, a farseer, and an Avatar. We deployed in such a way where my poxwalkers were crammed into a bit of a choke-point between some ruins and an ice-shelf, and on the other side he had set up a gun-line. When the snipers got deployed, he had set them up on 3 of the corners of the board, some of them in cover, incuding a unit in the corner of my own deployment zone. He had no idea that the Bloat Drones weapons were effectively super-flamers.

The MVP this time around was for sure the Bloat Drones, which cut through eldar like a hot knife through butter. His Dark Reapers just coulnd’t get a clean shot on a Bloat Drone because of the terrain, and they were fast enough to advance their way to each corner to hunt down snipers. Their camo cloaks did nothing, I simply obliterated them and moved on. I even managed a turn 1 charge with a Bloat Drone by dropping my Sorcerer behind the ruins (risky with Warp Spiders on the Board), but the drone managed to slash HALF of the spiders, and still charge the snipers to great effect.

My only mistake this game was having my Demon Prince go head-to-Head with the avatar, because the Avatar wasn’t even his warlord. The warlord was the Farseer, and since I was able to warptime behind his firing line during the 3rd turn, I was able to safely pick him off if I wanted to, which would have gotten the kill count to 3-1 and 1k+ to 100pts. Instead my prince *nearly* killed the avatar and got crushed (typhus was my warlord so it was low-ish risk). Hilariously my opponent’s “counters” to poxwalkers just didn’t work. The Swooping Halks unloaded on my forward-most blob (lucky 10″ move with advance), but the Blob had Miasmic Pestellence up. Strength 3 attacks just don’t do enough to Toughness 4 poxwalkers, it felt absolutely dirty. Striking scorpions crashed into the same unit on the same turn and I killed more striking scoprions than pox walkers died that whole turn, making it a 22 man unit after. The only reason my opponent had a single victory point left was due to line-breaker, mainly because I left 1 sniper alive re-locating a bloat drone thinking I’d have the time for it to do more work when I didn’t. I’ll do better next time ;)

Closing thoughts

Bloat Drones are as good as I thought they might be, and even tougher than I assumed they’d be.

Poxwalkers were far far tougher than I could have ever expected. Assuming Typhus is alive and close-by, the fact that poxwalkers are immune to morale, and have disgustingly resilient makes them in my opinion one of the most dangerous hoard units in the game. Apart from straight-up bolter-spam, there just isn’t a good way to kill them. I saw dedicated close combat units charge into them and get massacred. Striking Scorpions, Genestealers, Hormagaunts, there just wasn’t a single unit I encoutered that could put a dent into them.

I would always field my 5 blobs of poxwalkers (20, 20, 20, 20, and 19) in a tight formation. Two blobs in the very front of my army, two blobs on the sides, one blob in the back forming a tight knot with room in the middle for the Noxious Blightbringer, the Demon Prince, a Bloat Drone sometimes, and Typhus if my opponent had easy access to mass S4 shooting (if not I put him in reserve, that way he can’t be sniped before the zombies get a chance to move). On my first movement phase every zombie unit would advance, and with the help of the Blightbringer, that would usually mean very frequently 8-10″ movement with each blob. The formation would bloom and expand like a gross flower, making for a fool-proof bubblewrap for Typhus and allowing me to take up the entire width of the table by the end of turn 2. I would leave a thin trail of Poxwalkers back to the center of my formation so that Typhus and the Blightbringer would both still be buffing them, and it just always worked. The main problem was that this tactic was time-consuming IRL, making it impossible to actuale go to turn 6. What I’ll have to do going forward is count on not actually being able to finish, and rather than making moves that will play out well in the long-run (like leaving that one sniper alive so my bloat drone can go harass swooping hawks), I’ll have to made decisions assuming that game will likely end on turn 3. This might even mean fewer poxwalkers (4 blobs instead of 5), it might mean running a chaos lord for the reroll-1′s bubble.

Either way, this is an opportunity to innovate. I was considering making some oblong “movement trays” that hold 4 models in a diamond-shape, and that would make moving poxwalkers 4 times faster in-theory. The trouble is that my strategy relies on them shifting formation constantly, so I may just have to get better at moving them quickly, and deploying more quickly. Perhaps a proper staging tray.