After several weeks of moderate prepping, I was very excited to head to Spokane for the Harvester of Souls and rock my Chaos Knights for a last time for a bit (I’m picking up Necrons as a painting project shortly).
After a lot of tinkering around, I ended up on this list:
Jaden Iwaasa – Harvester 2022
Super-Heavy Detachment 1CP (Chaos Knights) [97 pl, 1830 pts]
Iconoclast House: Herpetrax
– Lord of War –
Knight Abominant [24 pl, 460 pts]: Volkite Combuster, Diabolus Heavy Stubber, Electroscourge, Titanic Feet, Balemace, Stratagem, Tyrannical Court, Aura of Terror, Stratagem, Corrupted Heirlooms, Veil of Medrengard, Favour of the Dark Gods, Blessing of the Dark Master, Psychic Powers, Winds of the Warp, Vortex Terrors
Knight Desecrator [22 pl, 440 pts]: Warlord, Stratagem, Warlord Trait, Knight Diabolus, Stratagem, Relic, The Diamonas, Diabolus Heavy Stubber, Reaper Chainsword, Titanic Feet, Favour of the Dark Gods, Mark of the Dread Knight
War Dog Executioner Squadron [9 pl, 170 pts]: Iconoclast Dreadblade, Precision Cruelty, 2x War Dog Autocannon, Diabolus Heavy Stubber, Favour of the Dark Gods, Mirror of Fates
War Dog Stalker Squadron [25 pl, 455 pts] x3: Stratagem, Corrupted Heirlooms, Helm of Dogs, 2x Avenger Chaincannon, 1x Daemonbreath Thermal Spear, 3x Diabolus Heavy Stubber, 3x Slaughterclaw, Favour of the Dark Gods, Beguiling Majesty
War Dog Stalker Squadron [17 pl, 305 pts] x2: Daemonbreath Spear, Diabolus Heavy Stubber, Reaper Chaintalon, Favour of the Dark Gods, Collar of Infernal Brass
Super-Heavy Auxiliary Detachment 0 CP (Chaos Knights) [9 pl, 170 pts]
Iconoclast Dreadblade: Bold Tyrants
– Lord of War –
War Dog Executioner Squadron [9 pl, 170 pts]: 2x War Dog Autocannon, Diabolus Heavy Stubber, Favour of the Dark Gods, Warp-Borne Stalker
I felt like this struck the ideal balance of “able to deal with a pile of Terminators at range” and “good at fighting up close”, and it’s my favorite iteration of a knights list I’ve piloted so far.
Game 1 vs. Matt – Chaos Space Marines (Creations of Bile)
Matt is actually who I was staying with for the event, so it was a bit of a “whelp here we go” moment when we got paired up in round 1.
His list has the tricked out Daemon Prince with the Nurgle Relic Sword, a Lord Discordant, a few units of Legionaries (mostly Slaanesh), two 5 dude bricks of Terminators – one rocking multi-meltas and the other not – and some Bikes split into four and five count units each. He also had one unit of Chosen and a unit of Rubric Marines to take the psychic load off his Master of Possession if needed. He also had a unit of Warp Talons and a couple of Cultist blobs.
Legion: Creations of Bile
-HQ-
Daemon Prince with Wings [11pl, 180pts] Gaze of the Gods, G’holl’ax, the Decayed, Hellforged sword, Mark of Nurgle, Prescience, Stratagem: Relic, Stratagem: Warlord Trait, Warlord, Wings
Lord Discordant on Helstalker [10pl, 190pts] Hatred Incarnate, Aspiring Lord, Baleflamer, Mark of Slaanesh, Techno-virus injector
Master of Possession [7pl, 120pts] Eye of Tzeentch, Gifts of Chaos, Mark of Tzeentch, Mutated Invigoration, Pact of Flesh
-Troops-
Cultists Mob [2pl, 50pts] x10, Autopistol, Brutal Assault Weapon, Cultist Champion, Frag & Krak Grenades
Cultists Mob [2pl, 50pts] x10, Autopistol, Brutal Assault Weapon, Cultist Champion, Frag & Krak Grenades
Legionaries [6pl, 115pts] x5 boltgun, Chaos Undivided, Balefire tome, Aspiring Champion, plasma pistol, Bolt Pistol Frag & Krak Grenades, Prescience
Legionaries [7pl, 110pts] x5, Aspring Champion, Chaos Icon, Mark of Slaanesh, Bolt Pistol, Astartes Chainsword, Frag & Krak Grenades
Legionaries [7pl, 110pts] x5, Aspring Champion, Chaos Icon, Mark of Slaanesh, Bolt Pistol, Astartes Chainsword, Frag & Krak Grenades
-Elites-
Chaos Terminator Squad [10pl, 195pts] x5, Mark of Khorne, Accursed Weapon, Combi-plasma, Heavy Flamer, Combi-flamer, Combi-bolter, Terminator Champion
Chaos Terminator Squad [10pl, 205pts] x5, Mark of Khorne, Accursed Weapon, Combi-melta, Power Fist, Combi-bolter, Terminator Champion
Chosen [8pl, 145pts] x5, Chaos Icon, Mark of Slaanesh, Bolt Pistol, Boltgun, Accursed Weapon, Trophies of the Long War, Black Rune of Damnation
Rubric Marines [7pl, 120pts] x5, Aspiring Sorcerer, Inferno Bolt Pistol, Inferno Boltgun, Warptime
-Fast Attack-
Chaos Bikers [10pl, 150pts] x5, Biker Champion, Astartes Chainsword, Combi-bolter, Frag & Krak Grenades
Chaos Bikers [10pl, 120pts] x4, Biker Champion, Astartes Chainsword, Combi-bolter, Frag & Krak Grenades
Warp Talons [7pl, 140pts] x5, Warp Talon Champion, Warp Claws
The Scenario for this round was Secure Missing Artifacts, where we each got to move some of the non-center objectives around and pick a special objective for the other player to score.
I won the roll for attacker/defender and I opted to place the first piece of terrain and be the defender. This worked out rather well for me, as I ended up with a relatively empty middle of the board, and also got to move two of the objectives into more advantageous places for myself. Matt chose the leftmost objective in the next picture for my priority objective, and I chose the right-most for him.
I picked Grind The Down and Ruthless Tyranny which are my always picks, and then for this particular game I opted for A Fitting Challenge. His three most expensive things are the units of Terminators and the Lord Discordant, all of which need to be in the fight if they’re going to be effective. I figured I could probably pick off a unit at range turn 1, and then from turn 2 onwards getting one of them each turn would be doable.
Matt picked Bring It Down because Knights, Psychic Interrogation, and Retrieve Nephilim Data.
I chose to deep strike my Executioner to hopefully dig out some of his models from the backlines on turn 3 or 4, and Matt won the roll to go first (he opted to deep strike his Warp Talons).
Round 1:
Chaos Space Marines
Matt tore up the table to get in my face as quickly as possible. Pretty much everything advanced up the board, and the Master of Posessions tried for a Psychic Interrogation, which succeeded.
Chaos Knights
On my turn, I put every gun I could reasonably put into his top unit of Terminators, and the rest into the blob of Chosen in the center.
I was able to pick up the unit of Terminators, but left three Chosen alive. This scored me six points on A Fitting Challenge. The Abominant charged into the Chosen and Legionaries in the center zone, killing a few of each and using his Consolidate move to get out of melee with the Legionaries that were left behind. His remaining Chosen ran away thanks to the Abominant’s Aura of Terror.
At the end of the round, I had scored 6 on A Fitting Challenge, another 3 on Ruthless Tyranny, and started a Storm of Darkness. Matt scored nothing on Bring it Down, one tick on Psychic Interrogation, and one tick on Retrieve Nephilim Data. We both got the bonus points for scoring our priority objectives.
Round 2:
Chaos Space Marines
During the Command Phase, Matt scored 12 points on Primary.
His Daemon Prince and Lord Discordant both got up in my face, needing 5 ish inch charges, and his top unit of bikes really came up on the Stalker in the corner.
His Master of Possession successfully used Psychic Interrogation and another unit performed Retrieve Nephilim Data.
He cracked back with a bunch of bolter shots into various things, but the Gheist Storm from the Harbingers of Dread kept him from finishing off models because the Abominant made him shoot at itself thanks to Dread Tests.
On his charge phase, both his Lord Discordant and his Daemon Prince failed their Dread Tests, and as a result their charges. This meant that just the unit of Terminators and Legionaries got into the Abominant in combat, and the bikes up top made it into melee with the Stalker.
At D1, the Bikers did relatively little to the Stalker, and I used the -1 Damage Stratagem to keep the Abominant very healthy. He finished off the Legionaries to remove the only objective secured from the middle objective, and that was the turn.
Chaos Knights:
I scored 12 during my command phase, as I now controlled the center objective with the removal of his Legionaries.
My Desecrator plodded up the table, and the Abominant fell back a bit, as it did not want to hang out within 9″ of the Lord Discordant during the next command phase.
I managed to get the Winds of the Warp off, but whiffed on Vortex Terrors.
My shooting phase saw me pick off all but two top Bikes, the Daemon Prince, the entire unit of Terminators (scoring me 5 more points on A Fitting Challenge), and most of the remaining Rubric Marines.
The red Stalker with Collar of Infernal Brass charged and killed off the entire unit of Bikes on the bottom now that there was no Daemon Prince in the way.
The Slaanesh Stalker had moved into the center zone to be a sacrifice to the Lord Discordant, and with that I scored an additional 4 on Ruthless Tyranny and 3 on Grind Them Down.
Matt scored Psychic Interrogation and Retrieve Nephilim Data this round. We both got our priority objectives once again.
Round 3:
Chaos Space Marines
The Lord Discordant moved up with evil intentions on the Slaanesh War Dog. Matt chose to deep strike his Warp Talons in my back corner and score another Retrieve Nephilim Data with them.
After a basically non-existent shooting phase, the Lord Discordant charged into the Stalker and failed to kill it. The legend of a puppy swung back hitting on 5s, hit five of six attacks, wounded all the attacks, and then snuck three Slaughterclaw damages through the Lord Discordant’s saves to kill it, scoring me the last 4 points I needed for A Fitting Challenge.
Chaos Knights
On my turn, I cleaned up most of the rest of the models on the table, leaving enough models alive to score Grind Them Down consistently for the last two turns of the game, but nothing that could seriously threaten my Knights (read: Cultists, a single Rubric Marine, and half a unit of Warp Talons.
After this round, Matt and I talked through the last couple turns of the game and concluded that he was not scoring on Primary again and I would max everything over the next few turns.
Game 2 vs. Liam – Necrons (Eternal Expansionists)
I’ve never really had to experience Necrons before this game, they’re incredible scarce in my area, and going into this on a six objective map was not my favorite plan.
But into it we went, and Liam graciously went over his list and his tricks prior to the game so I had a (sort of) good idea of what I was getting into.
++ Supreme Command Detachment +2CP (Necrons) ++
Dynasty Choice: Circumstance of Awakening: Relentlessly Expansionist
Dynastic Tradition: Eternal Conquerors
Dynasty: <Custom>
+ Primarch | Daemon Primarch | Supreme Commander +
The Silent King .
2x Triarchal Menhir: 2x Annihilator Beam
++ Outrider Detachment -3CP (Necrons) ++
+ HQ +
Technomancer: Canoptek Cloak, Dynastic Heirlooms, Relic: Veil of Darkness
+ Elites +
Lychguard: 10x Lychguard . Hyperphase Sword and Dispersion Shield
Transcendent C’tan: Fractured Personality: Cosmic Tyrant, Power of the C’tan: Sky of Falling Stars, Power of the C’tan: Time’s Arrow
+ Fast Attack +
Canoptek Scarab Swarms . 3x Canoptek Scarab Swarm: 3x Feeder Mandibles
Canoptek Scarab Swarms . 3x Canoptek Scarab Swarm: 3x Feeder Mandibles
Canoptek Wraiths . 5x Canoptek Wraith (Claws): 5x Vicious Claws
+ Heavy Support +
Lokhust Heavy Destroyers . 3x Lokhust Heavy Destroyer (Gauss Destructor): 3x Gauss Destructor
Lokhust Heavy Destroyers . Lokhust Heavy Destroyer (Gauss Destructor)
++ Patrol Detachment -2CP (Necrons) ++
+ HQ +
Lord: Dynastic Heirlooms, Relic: Orb of Eternity, Resurrection Orb, Warscythe
+ Troops +
Immortals: Gauss Blaster, 5x Immortal
+ Elites +
Skorpekh Destroyers . 2x Skorpekh Destroyer (Reap-Blade): 2x Hyperphase Reap-Blade . 4x Skorpekh Destroyer (Thresher): 4x Hyperphase Threshers
Transcendent C’tan: Fractured Personality: Cosmic Tyrant, Power of the C’tan: Antimatter Meteor, Power of the C’tan: Transdimensional Thunderbolt
++ Total: [113 PL, 1,995pts, 4CP] ++
This round we were playing Tide of Conviction, which has two special rules. First, you do not get any CP if you are not controlling “your” objective. Second, you get bonus points for controlling objectives in the center or on your opponents side. It’s also a six objective map and one of my least favorite to play as a result.
I won the roll off for attacker/defender and opted to defend again so I could force his big pieces of terrain back and keep the center relatively open. This is much easier on five objective maps, but I felt reasonably good about how placement ended up.
I chose my traditional three secondaries of Grind Them Down, Ruthless Tyranny, and Storm of Darkness. I definitely wasn’t going to be scoring max on A Fitting Challenge.
Liam picked Bring it Down, Ancient Machineries, and Treasures of the Eons, and all of the Necron secondaries made me very glad I was playing Knights, as I have a lot of ways to mess with these.
Once again, I lost the roll for first and Liam took the first turn.
Round 1:
Necrons
The important movements here came from the Scarab Swarms which rocked right onto my point and performed the action for Ancient Machinery.
The Wraiths moved up cautiously, as did the Destroyers and his floating balls of death.
His two Transcendent C’tan scooched up, and the one with the support abilities started swapping out for offensive ones. I took some mortal wounds on my War Dogs, but nothing serious.
His shooting phase largely bounced off my models – The Silent King was safely (and wisely) hiding out of Line of Sight of the myriad Silent Killing models I have in my list, and at the end of the turn Liam was controlling two of his objectives that had tokens on them for (Insert Secondary Objective Name), had scored 3 points off his action, and had taken down zero knights.
Chaos Knights
You know what I absolutely love? 12 wounds of easy to kill models in my face. Scarabs are not the best thing to put in the face of a Chaos Knight player as they’re effectively just “unlock this favour for free”.
I decided to play relatively cautiously this turn, moving so that his big guns would pretty much only be able to target big knights unless Liam wanted to move them more into the open. I had a War Dog Executioner coming out of deep strike at the beginning of the next turn to poke at soft targets in the back lines anyway.
My goals for the turn are to kill the single Lokhust Destroyer model, clear the Scarabs off my point, and shoot down as many Wraiths as possible.
During my Psychic Phase, I get a supercharged Winds of the Warp on the Abominant and Vortex Terrors on the Wraiths.
Shooting picks off half the unit of Wraiths and the single Lokhust Destroyer as hoped for, and then the Abominant charges the unit of Scarabs and takes them all down to unlock the second half of Blessing of the Dark Master.
I decided to start a Storm of Darkness on the far right zone with the red War Dog Stalker, and at the end of the round I scored three on Ruthless Tyranny, another three on Grind Them Down, and had to wait on the next turn to bring some points in for Storm.
Round 2:
Necrons
At the top of the turn, I start moving down the Despair track on my Harbingers of Dread pathways. This reduces his command range abilities by 3″ and all auras by 3″ as well. It doesn’t do anything this turn, but it will starting on his turn 3.
Liam scores 8 points on Primary for holding three zones, buffs up his Skorpekh Destroyers with everything he can, and shuffles into his movement phase.
The Skorpekh Destroyers come at my Abominant, and the Wraiths waffle for a bit before deciding that discretion is the better part of valor and hang back. The threat of -1 damage from the stratagem and -1 WS from Vortex Terrors was just enough for Liam to play safe. His hidden unit of Scarabs (top left zone) perform the action for his secondary.
His C’tan continue to do mortals to things, though the one on the right is significantly blunted by the Feel No Pain aura from the Abominant.
In his shooting phase, he does a few damage to the Desecrator, but most things bounce off. Similarly, his Skorpekh Destroyers make their charge and with the -1 damage stratagem and never hitting on a 1-3, they just fail to do more than a couple of damage and lose half their unit in retaliation.
Chaos Knights
Things kick off with movement, where my Abominant falls back from the remaining Destroyers. My deep striking Executioner pops down on the back field on the far right corner.
During the psychic phase, the Abominant once again gets Winds of the Warp to stick. I also finish the first Storm of Darkness.
My shooting phase sees all three of the remaining Lokhust Destoyers taken down, as well as all but one Wraith and all but one Skorpekh Destroyer.
My Abominant charges and kills the remaining Skorpekh Destroyer, keeping all of the War Dogs in his Feel no Pain aura again, and the pink War Dog Stalker starts a Storm of Darkness.
Round 3:
Necrons
At the beginning of the round, I put another tick into the Despair track, which makes all enemy models in Dread Ranges pass Dread Tests in order to attempt or complete actions.
Liam scores 8 on Primary.
The only really relevant phase here is the shooting phase. The Silent King puts all of his personal shots into the Desecrator, which just barely manages to bracket the big guy, and all of the Menhair shots into the Executioner that took out the Lokhust Destroyers. The Executioner fails both his saves, so he instantly dies.
Charges are considered and discarded, and the turn passes over to me.
Chaos Knights
I score 8 on Primary as well, and this is the turn when it is time to push hard.
The Big Knights move up the board aggressively, and my shooting phase doesn’t accomplish a whole lot other than finishing off the Wraiths.
The Desecrator makes a charge into the Scarabs hiding in the top left zone, kills them all, and Consolidates onto the zone itself.
I start a Storm of Darkness with the red left War Dog Stalker at the end of the turn.
Round 4:
At the beginning of the round, I pop into the last piece of Despair, which removes Objective Secured from enemy models in Dread Range. As a result of this, Liam is only controlling one objective during the command phase, and scores zero points on primary.
Necrons
The Silent King gives himself all the buffs and hops out of his bunker to come after the Desecrator.
The shooting phase takes the Desecrator down to around 10 health, and then the Silent King and all the Lich Guard charge and take down the big knight.
The left side C’tan charges and kills the Stalker which was performing the Storm of Darkness.
Chaos Knights:
I score 8 on Primary, and start plan “avoid the king”. My War Dogs reposition somewhat, and the Abominant shoots at things, but mostly I stay where I am.
Round 5:
Necrons
The Silent King moves up a bit, but has to stay on the objective. His shooting does a few damage to the Abominant, and the C’tan nukes the new War Dog that wandered into its zone for a few damage. Said C’tan fails to kill the War Dog on its fight phase (thanks -1 damage Strat), and Liam passes the turn over to me.
Chaos Knights
I don’t actually have to do anything this turn except fall back so my War Dog doesn’t die to the C’tan. I score 12 on Primary at the end of the game.
When the final score was tabulated, I’d squeaked out a very narrow 80 to 70 win, thanks mostly to flat out denying Primary for one turn and then reducing it to four on the following turn.
Necrons are scary with the amount of scoring they can do, but Knights definitely have the tools to make that has as little impact as possible, and thanks to our sheer number of obsec “bodies” can keep scoring even ish for the first half of the game until all the opposing Objective Secured vanishes.
With that, we were on to round three!
Game 4 vs. Zak – Chaos Space Marines (Creations of Bile)
More Chaos Space Marines! This time with Abaddon! Oh My!
++ Battalion Detachment -3CP (Chaos – Chaos Space Marines)
Legion: Creations of Bile
+ HQ +
Daemon Prince with Wings [11 PL, -2CP, 180pts]: 3. Hatred Incarnate, Aspiring Lord, G’holl’ax, the Decayed, Hellforged sword, Mark of Nurgle, Prescience, Stratagem: Relic, Wings
Dark Apostle [5 PL, 95pts]: Chaos Undivided, Illusory Supplication . 2x Dark Disciple: 2x Close combat weapon
Master of Possession [7 PL, -1CP, 120pts]: Eye of Tzeentch, Gifts of Chaos, Mark of Tzeentch, Mutated Invigoration, Pact of Flesh
+ Troops +
Cultists Mob [2 PL, 50pts] . 9x Chaos Cultist w/ cultist firearm: 9x Cultist firearm, 9x Frag & Krak grenades . Cultist Champion . . Autopistol and brutal assault weapon
Cultists Mob [2 PL, 50pts] . 9x Chaos Cultist w/ cultist firearm: 9x Cultist firearm, 9x Frag & Krak grenades . Cultist Champion . . Autopistol and brutal assault weapon
Legionaries [7 PL, 125pts]: Mark of Slaanesh . Aspiring Champion: Bolt pistol, Boltgun . Marine w/ balefire tome: Balefire tome, Prescience . 3x Marine w/ boltgun: 3x Bolt pistol, 3x Boltgun, 3x Frag & Krak grenades
+ Elites +
Chaos Terminator Squad [19 PL, -1CP, 370pts]: Mark of Slaanesh . Chaos Terminator: Accursed weapon, Combi-bolter . Chaos Terminator: Accursed weapon, Combi-bolter . Chaos Terminator: Accursed weapon, Combi-bolter . Chaos Terminator: Accursed weapon, Combi-bolter . Chaos Terminator: Accursed weapon, Combi-bolter . Chaos Terminator: Accursed weapon, Combi-bolter . Chaos Terminator: Combi-bolter, Power fist . Chaos Terminator: Chainfist, Reaper autocannon . Chaos Terminator: Chainfist, Reaper autocannon . Terminator Champion: Accursed weapon, Black Rune of Damnation, Combi-bolter, Trophies of the Long War
Master of Executions [4 PL, -1CP, 65pts]: Chaos Undivided, Gifts of Chaos, Mantle of Traitors
Possessed [7 PL, 140pts]: Possessed Champion . 4x Possessed: 4x Hideous mutations
Possessed [7 PL, 140pts]: Possessed Champion . 4x Possessed: 4x Hideous mutations Possessed [7 PL, 140pts]:
Possessed Champion . 4x Possessed: 4x Hideous mutations
+ Fast Attack +
Warp Talons [14 PL, 224pts]: Warp Talon Champion . 7x Warp Talon: 7x Warp claws
++ Supreme Command Detachment +3CP (Chaos – Chaos Space Marines) [15 PL, 2CP, 300pts] ++
Legion: Black Legion
+ Primarch | Daemon Primarch | Supreme Commander +
Abaddon the Despoiler [15 PL, -1CP, 300pts]: 3. Merciless Overseer, 5. Eternal Vendetta, 6. Paragon of Hatred, Stratagem: Warlord Trait
For the final round of the day, we were once again playing on a six objective map, this time Data Scry-Salvage. This scenario gives you bonus points for performing an action on the “home” objective equal to the number of objectives you control at the end of the turn in the center of the board. For context, Knights hate the six objective maps, and against this many strong attacks that were effectively unavoidable in melee I was very concerned.
I won the roll off and made sure to put something trivial in the center so that Zak couldn’t place over the central objectives. I would really need to be able to shoot at basically everything to have a chance this game.
I picked the normal Grind Them Down, Ruthless Tyranny and Storm of Darkness.
Zak chose Bring it Down because Knights, Raise Banners, and Warp Ritual.
Once we were both deployed, Zak won the roll off to go first and we were off to the races!
Round 1:
Chaos Space Marines
The important moves this turn are the Master of Possessions getting to within 6″ of the center to start using Warp Ritual and the various units that pushed forwards to raise some banners on the bottom two zones.
Crucially, the Dark Apostles‘ litany to give the Terminators “trans hitman” (can’t be hit on a 1, 2 or 3) failed to go off during the Control phase.
Chaos Knights
I chose to be extremely, extremely cagey with my models and only pushed into the top half of the board.
My Abominant got Winds of the Warp on himself and Vortex Terrors on the Terminators.
I popped the stratagem for exploding sixes at range for my War Dogs and…killed one Terminator. Zak’s invuln saves and Feel No Pains from the Slaanesh spell were massively on point.
At the end of the turn, I failed to scored Grind Them Down, started a Storm of Darkness and scored three for Ruthless Tyranny. Zak scored 3 extra points off the Primary action for this specific scenario, and it was his turn.
Round 2:
Chaos Space Marines
Zak scored 8 on Primary and 3 on Banners during his Control Phase. He also successfully got the litany off to make this Terminators harder to hit.
He opted to move up pretty aggressively with his models, advancing the Terminators so he could try for a cheeky advance and charge. Unfortunately, he had to burn all of his CP early in the turn to make sure his Warp Ritual succeeded so his Terminators were in the wind a bit.
He moved his Warp Talons aggressively up as well, planing to charge into and probably kill the teal Stalker.
His shooting phase is nonexistent, and then he fails the crucial Dread Test with his Warp Talons who then promptly fail their charge, which ends the turn.
Chaos Knights
With a quick reprieve, I score 8 on Primary and continue to play cautiously – although not cautiously enough as it would turn out, my Desecrator needed to stay further back and let the Stalkers do the killing for him.
I deep strike in my Executioner such that it can shoot at this Dark Apostle.
I manage to flub the Winds of the Warp roll with the Abominant.
My shooting phase this turn once again sees the Exploding Sixes Stratagem in play, but this time his Terminators melt. My Deep Struck Executioner completely fails to do anything but kill the two little buddies that the Dark Apostle drags around. In hindsight, he should have just shot at Possessed.
I send the Desecrator into the Warp Talons and the Abominant into some Possessed. Sadly, the Abominant fails to kill the third Possessed it would have needed to kill in order to unlock Blessing of the Dark Master and the Desecrator slaughters the Warp Talons and gets scratched up a little bit in response.
Round 3:
Chaos Space Marines
Zak scores 8 on Primary and another 3 on Banners.
He moves to the top half of the table extremely aggressively, does nothing in his shooting phase at all, and then proceeds to his charge phase.
I make some bizarre calls here. The Desecrator had something like 18 wounds left after tangling with the Warp Talons, and the Daemon Prince and three Possessed were going to get into combat with him. Rather than using the -1 damage stratagem, I opted to save the CP for a 4+ chance to bring him back on 3 wounds at the end of the phase. Consequently, the Prince knocked him out of the game all on his own and I failed the 4+ to bring him back.
Abaddon murdered the Stalker he charged, though the Stalker did explode and do three damage to him and also nuked a few other things off the table.
The rest of this game is relying on memory as it was late in the day and the phone stayed firmly in my pocket so I could focus.
Chaos Knights
I scored 4 on primary here, and launched my counterattack. My shooting phase hinged off being able to kill two Possessed hanging out near Abaddon so that I could then shoot him with some thermals and then finish him off in the fight phase.
Unfortunately, one Possessed just made every single 5+ Invuln save asked of him and survived completely unscathed.
At this point I had already committed to suiciding in a War Dog into Abaddon, so that happened, and I also failed to kill the Daemon Prince in melee (though the War Dog survived the crack back).
The Rest of the Game
Turn four saw me lose all but three War Dogs and the Abominant, though I did manage to kill everything but the Daemon Prince and the Master of Possession on the top half of the table.
The Abominant went beast mode and denied the bottom two zones and Banners all on his lonesome. He also chewed through the Dark Apostle and Master of Executions and every other model on that side of the board by turn 5.
Turn 5 saw two of my last three War Dogs die, but Zak only ended up controlling one zone at the end of the game.
I lost, at the end, by 11 points. The combination of his Cultists doing the mission action every round and my inability to hang in melee were absolutely brutal.
And I’m an idiot…
After getting home, I did my usual post event breakdown of my games with my cohosts and friends who are better at the game than I am. What I’d completely forgotten in the heat of the game is that this scenario has “sticky” objectives, which means that if you control an objective with an Objective Secured model, you keep controlling it until your opponent takes that zone.
This would have matted a lot on turn four and five.
At the end of turn 4, I had a War Dog on both of the top left zones, and retreated one back to the corner. This means that on turn 5, with Zac only having one zone at the end of the game, I would have scored 12 instead of 4. Additionally, on turn 4, I would technically have controlled 4 objectives still rather than 3, which means I would have scored 12 there instead of 8.
I’m sure there were other things that could have been done to mitigate this on both Zak and my own parts, but that was a 12 point swing based on how the models were placed in the game, which was enough to decided the game in a different manner.
To be clear, this isn’t a complaint about either Zak (who was an incredible opponent and went on to win the entire event in a well deserved series of victories) or the particular scenario, but rather a caution that one should always be aware of the entire rules of the game being played or risk losing games in tournaments that might have been winnable.
Overall, this matchup felt very playable. The combination of six objectives (knights hate this) and fight on death (knights hate this too) were both brutal, but I felt I had sufficient tools and counterplay to win this game, and on a different scenario I feel like I would have almost certainly been advantaged.
Wrap Up
We’ve still got two fantastic games to cover from day two against Thousand Sons and Adeptas Sororitas, so be sure to check those out when they go live in about a week.
Overall, I felt very good about my day 1 play and was excited to have a winning record going into day 2. The goal for this event was to have a positive winning record (3-2 or better) and then primarily I was gunning for best painted, and I felt like I had a decent shot at both of those things.
We’ll do a proper wrap up at the end of the second part, until then, thanks for reading!
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