Litanies of the Faithful

On the 6-7th of April I attended Rataclysm, a Warhammer 40k GT hosted at a bowls club in Ballarat Victoria, and I scored 69 Victory points in each of my games.

I’ve been playing Warhammer for a couple of years now, beginning in 9th Edition, and like any new player I was enthralled by the hobby, the cool and interesting models, the fun and engaging gameplay interactions, and the interesting new people I got to meet at the games store, I was loving all of it. I dabbled in Warhammer as a child in 2006ish but never had the adult money to indulge myself, and now I do, which is great because I can not only afford to enjoy the hobby and create the armies I always dreamed of, but I can now have weekends away with my mates going to events.

Initially it was all fun and games, literally. The first armies I played in 9th edition were Death Guard and Genestealer Cult. I loved the aesthetic of both armies and GSC were the antithesis of how 40k was ‘meant’ to be played, I terrorized my local scene and enjoyed every second of it. But all good things must come to an end, and one day I walked into my local games store and bought an Adepta Sororitas Combat Patrol, and it was all downhill from there.

Long gone were the enjoyable days of Chaos and Xenos armies, I was an Imperium man now. In 2023 I played many GTs and RTTs with my Sisters and slowly improved, going 4-1 at a GT and undefeated at an RTT, but my competitive drive began to wane, and I struggled to find the motivation to want to attend tournaments in the traditional sense (being a sweaty loser).

So, I found another way, and saw the narrow path forward. I thought to myself, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if I scored 69 victory points in all of my games?’, but before I get started talking about round 1 of the event, I should discuss my own list (The list I actually submitted to BCP can be found at the bottom of this article, and I did win a prize for ‘best list name’).

‘Nice’, By Ryan Jones (1995 points)

• Canoness – Mantle of Ophelia
• Daemonifuge
• Dialogus – Saintly Example (I will forget this enhancement for the entire event)
• Palatine – Blade of Saint Ellynor

• Battle sisters squad
• Immolator – Flamers
• Immolator – Multi-melta
• Rhino
• 2x Castigator – Battle Cannon
• Crusaders
• Dominions – 4 Multi-melta
• 10 Repentia
• Retributor squad – 4 Multi-melta
• 2×5 Seraphim – Hand flamers
• 2×5 Zephyrim
• 2 Armiger Helverins
• Culexus Assassin
• Vindicare Assassin

A few of the choices in my list stemmed from not wanting to take Celestine and Morvenn Vahl again, like I had to most other events I’d attended (I’ve easily played both Celestine and Morvenn in 60-80 games of 10th edition so far and wanted to try something different). When you take different units in different combinations, you end up with different games, not only do your units interact with each other differently and take on slightly different roles, but so do your opponent’s when they interact with your units giving you different games each time.

As I’d decided to not be a super sweat and try to do a funny meme, Armigers made their way into the list. Big OC 8 bodies with 12″ movement gave me the utility I needed to score primary if I wanted to and ensure my 69’ing was achieved. Also damage 3 anti-fly was neat-o into a C’tan heavy meta and annoyed my chaos daemon friends too which was a bonus (this will become relevant later).

Speaking of, I’d been wanting to take the Culexus assassin to an event for a while and while I only had the opportunity to play against one chaos/psyker player, when it pops off it’s amazing, I may have to take it to the next GT I’ll be attending in June now the CSM codex is around the corner.

The rest of the list just includes Sisters good stuff like zephyrim, Seraphim, and Repentia in transports to help me score secondaries I needed to score and to kill things that needed to be killed.

A highlight of my list that I will be including again in the future is the combo of multi-melta Immolator/Palatine w/ blessed blade/Dominions with multi-meltas. Having a 6″ scout move, combined with 12″ movement, disembarking 3″ and shooting a twin-linked multi-melta + hunter-killer missile + 4 melta-guns with lethal hits and re-rolling wounds is great fun on turn 1. It also lets you deploy the immolator really aggressively and scout it behind a ruin if your opponent goes first letting you stage the dominions in the next turn.

The Retributors were a bit of a let down, but they always are, we’ll have to wait and see if the codex has anything in store for them. I would definitely take less vehicles next time, it became quite difficult to move 5 tanks and 2 Armigers on GW terrain layouts and I didn’t want to have to think very hard during my games, just hard enough to 69.

Now I know what you’re thinking dear reader, but where are the arco-flagellants??? to that I quote Anthony Bourdain, “I’m not afraid to look like an idiot”.

Round 1 – Kristian’s Chaos Daemons (L, 69-70) – Mission F

Kristian’s list: Be’lakor, Bloodthirster, GUO, Keeper of Secrets, 2×3 Nurglings, 2×3 flamers, 3×1 Brigands

Kristian is a great friend of mine, and we travelled to the event together the night before. I had been hyping Kristian up all week much to his dismay, ‘Can’t wait to get paired into you round 1!’ (we had been paired into each other at a similar event in September last year in the first round, also sisters vs. daemons), and as fate had it, I looked down at my phone to see the round 1 pairings and saw Kristian’s name next to mine, I looked back up to see his face and enjoyed the pure despair staring back at me.

On top of all this, we played the exact same mission, on the same GW terrain layout, with the same lists, less than 24 hours earlier before we left to drive to the event…. and funnily enough it would end in the same way it did the previous day.

I always enjoy playing against Kristian and we’ve easily played over 30 games against each other across 9th and 10th edition. I have no idea what our head-to-head record is, but we have fun every time we play.

The game started off with Kristian going first which worked well for me on supply drop, allowing me to get some nice end of game primary scoring.

The game started off slow with staging behind some terrain with Immolators and rhinos, not being able to shoot with my Castigators or Armigers due to Be’lakors ‘anti-fun for an entire edition’ aura. I did sneak in an opportunity to line up some good shoots on him in the second battle round and did a total of 4 damage to Be’lakor (I anticipated one shotting him, I’m an optimist).

The Culexus was a bit of a let down here, I deepstriked him in the back hoping to get some damage on Be’lakor and it did not pan out. But he’s still cool to bring and I got to remind Kristian every few minutes of that one time my Culexus did 16 damage to his Be’lakor in one turn during one of our previous games.

The Keeper of Secrets turned out to be the real MVP for Kristian this game, tying up an Immolator and then surviving to the shooting of the Dominions, Retributors, Castigators and Armigers for a turn. I was very close to scoring Bring it Down and Assassinate but I was cycling through any secondary I didn’t score to grab extra CP, this was very important for forcing his big Daemons to fight the units I want them too and having other CP for grenades etc.

Ultimately, I had some poor secondary draws that I did not plan for which made the game closer than it should have been, I was sure I was going to lose at the bottom of round 5 after his turn, but then the stars aligned when he told me I could score 69 Victory points.

I had all but given up on this goal by this point and just wanted to have an enjoyable weekend with friends playing with my toys, I was down 23 points going into my turn in round 5 but when I realized I could score 69 points, and after some deliberation with Kristian to ‘please let me do the thing’, I scored 15 on primary, 8 for capture enemy outpost and definitely didn’t have any free units to score deploy teleport homers to secure my first 69 of the weekend. This would be the beginning of a very enjoyable tournament.

GAME HIGHLIGHT: Vindicare assassin doing 9 damage to an armiger with 1 shot, pewpew.

Round 2 – Marcus’s T’au (W, 69-38) – Mission C

Marcus’s list: Darkstrider, 2x Commander in Coldstar Battlesuit – Exemplar of the Kauyon/Precision of the patient hunter, pathfinder team, 3×3 stealth battlesuits, 2×5 vespids, 2×6 crisis battlesuits, 2x Ghostkeel battlesuits, 2×2 tetras.

Preface: This was using the index detachment for T’au, prior to the codex release

After scoring 69 once, I knew I would have to do it for the rest of the tournament, this would likely mean I wouldn’t win a single game as I would be purposely lowering my score, but then I ran into Marcus.

Marcus was a relatively new T’au player who according to himself was a painter first and a player second. He told me in the 90ish games of 10th he had played at this point, he had won 3. After thoroughly explaining the ritual to make sure he knew how primary scoring worked we began deployment.

This event was using GW leviathan recommended terrain layouts, I believe they were using layouts 1, 3, and 4 evenly spread out across the 40ish tables. We each had a big L of ruins to deploy behind as well as ruins a bit further up we could hide smaller units behind and still be within our deployment zones.

Marcus’s first drop was putting his pathfinders on the tallest ruin within his deployment zone, and then proceeded to put the rest of his entire army behind the big L in his deployment zone.

I spread my units out and deployed to make sure I was able to achieve the most secondaries I could in my first few turns, and then we began. I should note that I was playing tactical secondaries for the entirety of this event.

I was going first, I moved a few of my key units out and staged the transports behind ruins in the mid-board, but still outside of shooting range of Marcus’s forces. I was in range of all objectives, so A tempting target was easy enough to achieve as there was only one no-mans-land objective on the board. I created a second objective for myself and passed the turn to Marcus.

Marcus drew two secondaries, and begun his movement phase, he promptly ended his movement phase after not moving a single unit as he was pretty happy with his castle and didn’t want me to shoot him yet. I asked if he wanted to move a unit to create an objective, but he was happy not to.

In my turn I cleansed, and defended my stronghold, unable to shoot or engage with any of Marcus’s units yet I quickly passed the turn over to him.

He moved a bit further out of his castle but the Battlesuits were still in hiding, after some persuasion he created an objective with his Stealthsuits and scored Extend Battle Lines.

When I drew my secondaries in the third battle round, I was confident I would be able to score 69 in this game, 2/6 and I was ecstatic, I didn’t care what happened in the rest of the game after that.

When Kauyon finally kicked in Marcus moved his Battlesuits out and started shooting, he took out the Armigers and a Castigator but pushed a little too far forwards and lost both units in the following turns.

Due to him not creating more than one objective, and only scoring no-mans-land objectives on this mission he scored a total of 5 for primary.

Marcus is not the type of player I would usually see after round 1 (I haven’t lost a round 1 game since the first event I attended, touch wood), but one that I loved to get to play against. His army was painted better than most and was easily in the top 5 best painted armies at the event, and he was an absolute gem about every game interaction we had.

Nothing could touch this man’s spirit, and we had a great chat about our journeys through the hobby, upcoming events and the friends that we were travelling with. We’ll both be attending Terracon later in the year, so I’ll be catching up with him again then!

GAMEHIGHLIGHT: My Vindicare assassin one-shotting his Coldstar commander and as Marcus would put it, ‘that’s not very cash money’.

Round 3 – Lionel’s Imperial Knights (L, 69-83) – Mission M

Lionel’s list: Canis Rex, Knight Castellan, 3x Armiger Helverin, 3x Armiger Warglaive, Callidas, Inquisitorial Henchmen

Translated, Lionel’s list means: The Castle Lord Wolf King – a Canis Rex reference? I’m not sure of the lore.

Lionel is an excellent Knight’s player, who plays both Imperial and cool Knights. I’ve played against him once before with sisters into his Imperial knights, but last time he was playing a Knight Porphyrion which was a lot cooler.

His list was still very cool, nothing is more intimidating than when your opponent drops down a big Knight Castellan on the line of their deployment and goes ‘What are you going to do about it?’. Canis Rex is also a formidable unit, as Lionel will later demonstrate when he gets 8 wounds through on my Castigator in melee doing 72 damage to it with one punch, sustained hits and crits on 5+ baby.

Unfortunately, he chose to run fixed secondaries, and I believe if I wasn’t busy 69’ing I would have had a good chance to win this game.

Lionel had the first turn which meant he had few targets to shoot at, but he managed to kill one of my units by aggressively moving his knights forward, this allowed me to clapback in my first turn, killing three armigers outright, I didn’t think it looked great for him after this but little but I know I would struggle to kill another one of his models for the remainder of the game.

I gave up very little shooting angles on my vehicles until the 4th battleround and successfully tied up his Canis Rex and Castellan in melee for most of the game. Unfortunately, after advancing his Castellan in the first turn, it was about 1″ away from contesting the middle objective, and here it would stay for the entire rest of the game as I managed to charge it with some sisters chaff every turn and stop it from moving (meaning Lionel didn’t get hold more for the entire game, didn’t stop him from getting kill more though!), as he wanted to keep shooting and not falling back. My canoness with her once per game 2+ invuln and Mantle of Ophelia (only takes 1 damage at a time) enhancement helped.

By the end of my 3rd battle round I had secured the bag, 69 was in sight and I just had to make sure that I wasn’t going to score any additional points on purge by accidentally killing something and I was set. This was actually really tight as I was almost completely tabled by the end of the game and didn’t have much to contest objectives with, but we got there in the end.

Lionel was deeply regretting taking bring it down after only scoring 9 on secondaries by the fourth battleround, but after I’d achieved my goal I seppuku’d my tanks into Canis Rex and let him have his way with them, allowing him to score a full 20 on bring it down. Lionel was and always is a fantastic opponent and I look forward to playing him at the next event in Ballarat, hopefully his commission painter will have finished his chaos knight army by then so I can play some cool knights.

GAMEHIGHLIGHT: Me trying to outplay my opponent by move-blocking his Canis Rex with a lone Zephyrim so I could hold my home objective for an extra turn only for Lionel to turn to me and remind me that his knights are super-heavy walkers and can simply walk over my units… yea… did I mention I think I’m pretty good at this game?

Day one can be described as an unexpected hilarious success. After giving up on scoring 69 points every game in the week prior as I viewed it as a somewhat impossible task, I had managed to do it in every game thus far.

I can honestly say that my face hurt from how much I was smiling, it was probably the most enjoyable day of Warhammer I had ever experienced. I was a little conflicted about my shenanigans, but I’ll touch more on that later.

After our last game we packed up our toys and headed back to the hotel where we were staying for the weekend, we relaxed for a bit and discussed our games and then headed out for dinner with another mate who was also playing in the tournament.

We had dinner at a local Irish pub, and it may have been the exhaustion from the long day, but I had the best burger I’d eaten in a long time and TWO pints of Guinness. After this we decided we were too old to see the nightlife and returned to the hotel, where after a long day of playing Warhammer we turned on Wargames live, and continued to watch other people play Warhammer…

Travel buddies scores:

After day 1, Kristian was 1-2 after unfortunately being paired into Edward in the second round (a local sweaty boy), and then Art of Wars Adam Camilleri in the third round (lol) which is partially my fault for intentionally losing to score 69 in round 1. But Kristian’s a nice guy, so he didn’t let me take the fault for it, but not nice enough to still make me feel bad about it.

Sythe was 2-1 with his Genestealer cult, which he was incredibly chuffed with, and Nick was 1-2 with his AdMech after getting a bye in the first round and having to play against the TO’s Votann, which he lost (but was awarded a victory for the Bye). It is bittersweet to get a Bye at an event, but Nick is always stoked to be playing Warhammer and was having a great time regardless of win or loss.

Round 4 – David’s Imperial Guard (L, 69-87) – Mission E

David’s list: Gaunt’s Ghosts, Lord Solar Leontus, ‘Iron Hand’ Straken, Tank Commander, 3×10 Catachan Jungle Fighters, Bullgryns, Kasrkin, Tempestus Scions, Attilan Rough Riders, 2 Basilisks, Manticore, 1×2 & 1×1 Scout Sentinels, 3×3 Chimera

Misson E! Take and hold, finally something easy to math out 69 on early in the game.

Dave wasn’t having a great morning, he had car issues on the way in and it was definitely affecting his mental during the beginning of our game. Luckily for him the RACV showed up during the lunch break and nothing was wrong with his car, apparently the solution is that he just had to rev the shit out of it in second gear for a while? and he also won a Chainbraker lance box in the raffle at the end of the day which I was super happy about because it turns out, Dave was another great opponent!

I’ve only played against AM a handful of times ever in Warhammer, so I wasn’t too sure how this game was going to go, but Dave really spooked me, it was sweeping engagement deployment and he put his tank commander, sentinels and chimera on the narrow end really close to my army, and in direct firing lines of my tanks. I was afraid of this man.

After we finished deployment, I rolled to go first and, Dave redeployed these units to safety, which he definitely told me he could do prior to deployment, and I completely forgot about… luckily, I got the first turn!

Due to Dave’s car issues, he struggled early on in the game but where I would usually capitalize on this and push for an advantage I didn’t have to. I had a secret, I was going to 69.

All considered, I had a great game with Dave and actually stopped actively playing to just chat shit with him, which doesn’t normally happen when I play Warhammer because both me and my opponent are trying our best to win, something I was actively avoiding at this tournament.

At one point in the game Dave was weighing up his options for shooting his tank commander and I suggested he should shoot his Chimera first to ‘help inform his decision making’ and Dave turned to me and said, ‘I’m going to shoot whatever the hell I want’, there were a few moments where I was gratified by my decision to step back from being super competitive during this event and this was a wake-up call, I often find myself talking too much during my opponents turns and not just letting my opponent play their own game (a lot of this is to make sure my opponent has all the information about my units/strategems/gotchas but I should probably just shut up), ultimately, Dave definitely did shoot whatever the hell he wanted.

GAMEHIGHLIGHT: After failing to hit and wound all game, at the bottom of turn 5 my Vindicare assassin aimed his Exitus rifle directly at Straken’s head and blew his brains out, take that!

Round 5 – Chris’s REAL Black Templars (L, 69-91) – Mission J

Chris’s list: Termie Captain – Perdition’s Edge, Castellan, Helbrecht, 1×10 Assault Intercessor squad, 2×5 Intercessors, BT Gladiator Lancer, 2x BT Repulsor, 2×3 Eliminators w/ anti-tank, 1×10 Sword Brethren, 1×5 Assault termies, 1×5 Termies

As it turns out the cat was out of the bag at this point – Chris was good friends with Marcus and they were travelling together for this event – and Chris was onto my gameplan, he and his friends had been strategizing and Chris was confident that all he needed to do was push out early and aggressively to score enough VPs to get more than 69 points to win the game, he was correct!

I was going first.

I have very little experience playing against Space Marines as no one in my local meta really plays them, so I was terrified of Chris’s long-range shooting and deployed very conservatively behind terrain. I was able to move a few disposable units out to claim extend battlelines and cleanse and although I deployed rather far back, I was able to scout my Immolator forward and move my Castigators up the left flank to get shots on his Repulsor full of Assault Intercessors.

I shot it with everything I had, and when the dust settled it was left with 7 wounds remaining, I then passed the turn over to Chris.

His first turn wasn’t very eventful either, he pushed his army forwards and starting shooting at my gals, after getting unlucky with his rolls and leaving my tanks with few wounds remaining, he charged his wounded Repulsor into a unit of Seraphim that had cleansed an objective in the previous turn. I chose to overwatch with my Castigator, and dropped the Repulsor to a single wound, where a single Seraphim finished it off with their close combat weapon.

EPIC!

10 Assault Intercessors bundled out, denying me from holding the point on the following turn, but I didn’t care, I was 69’ing and a Seraphim just punched a Repulsor to death.

Chris’s death march of Sword Brethren and Terminators was a lot to handle, and the game came down to one key moment where he charged into a unit of Repentia near my home point, wiped the squad and consolidated into a Battle Sister unit holding my home objective.

All Chris had to do was roll a 4+ using the No Escape Strategem in my movement phase and it was likely he would steam roll the game after that and I didn’t have enough melee to get through his unit with my Repentia dead. Lucky for me I tried to fallback with my Battle Sisters first, and Chris failed his 4+ roll. If it wasn’t for this, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to 69 this game, but luck was on my side.

Chris was a great opponent, and I enjoyed our game thoroughly. He had an interesting, thematic list and his army was beautifully painted. It’s always nice to see someone playing a Space Marine detachment actually using the rules of the chapter and not Ironstorm.

GAMEHIGHLIGHT: My Vindicare Assassin doming Helbrecht with his Exitus rifle, killing the man in one shot.

Round 6 – Nick’s Adeptus Mechanicus (L, 69-81) – Mission A

Nick’s list: Cybernetica Datasmith, 2×1 Skitarii Marshal – Clandestine Infiltrator & Veiled Hunter, 3×1 Technoaechaeologist, 1×10 Skitarii Rangers, 4×10 Skitarii Vanguard, 2x Skorpius Dunerider, 1×4 Kastelan Robots, 3×5 Pteraxii Skystalkers, 1×10 Pteraxii Sterylizors, 2×3 Serberys Raiders, 1×5 & 1×10 Sicarian Infiltrators, Callidus Assassin

My round 6 opponent was Nick playing his newly painted up Adeptus Mechanicus. Nick is a local to my scene and has been playing Imperial knights religiously since I met him, in fact before he switched to AdMech earlier this year it’s the only army I think he’s ever played, apart from a foray into Astra Militarum last year for a 1k point game where he brought a Baneblade and 100 conscripts… Nicks either playing Knights or hordes apparently.

Nick started with all his birdies in deepstrike, some vanguard in boats and the rest of his models on the board. Having a full understanding of the immense firepower of Nick’s army, I deployed on the line as far forward as I could, and I went first.

I scouted my Immolator filled with Palatine & melta-guns directly towards his boats and moved some Seraphim and the Daemonifuge towards infiltrators hiding on a flank objective. I disembarked my palatine unit, outside the range of his Kastelan robot flamers, parked my transports on the middle objective and moved my castigators and Armigers as far forward as they would go, while keeping enough units back to screen out my entire side of the board.

Time to shoot, I aimed my forward placed Immolator’s twin-linked multi-melta & hunter-killer missle at a dunerider, and the heavy-bolter at the other – so I could pick which one I wanted re-rolls against from for the Palatine unit in the event that the multi-melta killed one – and I killed one… the Palatine unit then killed the other, neat. That went better than expected. A few Skitarri died falling out of the transport but that was it for my turn. I then passed it over to Nick.

Nick spent some time moving his units around to score deploy teleport homers and making sure he had enough firepower in store for no prisoners, which luckily, he would after flaming the heck out of my Palatine unit and then punching the heck out of my Immolator with his Kastelan robots.

AdMech has the unfortunate problem at the moment of having very little damage outside of breachers, due to this I was able to push up everything in my army incredibly aggressively and tie up/table most of Nicks army by the end of the second battleround, while also screening 3/4 of the table and forcing him to bring his Pteraxii in behind a big L ruin on his home objective.

From here I started calculating the points I would need to get in order to 69 again, but I made a mistake, I accidentally scored 15 points on primary in the 4th battleround as I didn’t realize I was holding three points, oops.

This put me in a bit of a pickle, I had 65 points now, and had to be very careful to not score anymore primary so I yeeted all my gals off every point and started digging through my secondaries.

There were only two viable secondaries left for me to draw in order to 69 successfully, no prisoners and investigate signals, this is because I needed exactly 4 points, any more or less and I would walk away with 5 69’s, and 1 failure.

For some naive reason, I forgot you could only use new orders once per game and I tried to use it a second time in the 4th battleround, but thankfully Nick caught it.

At this point, I was in trouble, Of the 15 secondary cards, I had drawn 9, meaning 6 were left in the deck and only 2 of them would allow me to achieve my goal. I had two shots at drawing the right cards, and as luck would have it, I flipped over my first secondary card of battleround 5 and saw No prisoners, a wave of relief washed over me, and I knew I had achieved my goal.

Unfortunately, I was unable to hold Nick below 69 points even though I tabled most of his army, he was able to move onto the points with his last remaining units (as I was no longer contesting them) and rack up some significant secondary points.

Playing my final game against a friend was a great way to end a great weekend. Since then, Nick has learnt the value of Kataphron Breachers and I fear the next time I play him.

GAMEHIGHLIGHT: Nick’s Skitarii Ranger with Transuranic Arquebus sniping my Palatine… great. Also, I accidentally broke one of my Armigers off its base prior to our game and kept trying to balance it so I could still use the model while we played. As an ex-knight’s player this was torture for Nick, but hilarious for me.

The results of my stupidity can be seen below:

After the first couple of games, I ended up being quite conflicted about what I was doing. Although my list left some to be desired, I believe I could have won all of these games if I had been giving it my all, and I was, but I wasn’t trying to win, I was trying to score 69 victory points.

That said, had I started winning more games it’s likely I would have started playing against some ‘real gamers’ and lists that mine wouldn’t have been able to compete against.

In saying that, I found myself in a unique position. I was playing against people that I otherwise never normally would have, in game situations I would never normally find myself in, and it was great.

Not a single person I interacted with during the weekend was annoyed, or upset about what I was doing, in fact they were enthralled. I had multiple people coming up to me over the course of the second day asking me if was 69’ing, waiting for my games to finish to say: ‘Did you get it again???’

I even had a young man James, who was playing my buddy Kristian in the final round, approach me saying ‘Guess what?, I 69’d too’.

Yes, this was incredibly stupid, immature, and not in the spirit of the game? (that’s up for debate). I won’t be doing it again, but it was a Warhammer experience that I enjoy, and will remember more so than any of the other tournaments I have attended.

Do I encourage anyone else to do this? Definitely not… But I do encourage those who are struggling with being overly competitive or have lost the love of the game to maybe find different ways to enjoy the game that don’t entirely revolve around winning every game.

The obvious way to do this is to play crusade, or casual, fun, made-up-rules games with friends, but tournaments do have their appeal and it’s where I think the best Warhammer moments are.

So next time you go to a tournament, try to have an alternative goal to achieve, something like seeing how many characters you can snipe with your Vindicare assassin. Wait a minute…

VINDICARE ASSASSIN KILL TALLY:

1x Commander in Coldstar Battlesuit

1x High Marshal Helbrecht

1x ‘Iron Hand’ Straken

1x Cybernetica Datasmith

+ a number of infantry models

Thank you for reading about my experience, and another great win for the Imperium of mankind.

Submitted list for the event on BCP:

Hello fellow Rataclysm enjoyer,

It’s a pleasure to meet you in [insert current round] of this event. My name is Ryan Jones, and I will be your opponent for this game.

The army I am playing today is the Adepta Sororitas (also known as the sisters of battle), accompanied by two Imperial Knight Armigers and two Imperial Agents from the Officio Assassinorum.

The inspiration for this list came from I can’t be bothered painting my Eisenhorn model before Rataclysm and it’s really funny when you get paired into Daemons with a lot of anti-psyker and anti-chaos stuff. My only regret is Aidan Milne is not here so I can’t pair into his Daemons and laugh at him when I 1 hit Be’lakor with a Culexus assassin.

I present to you ‘Nice’, by Ryan Jones (1995 points)

My first choice for this list is a Canoness, equipped with a Blessed blade and inferno pistol. They have also been adorned with the enhancement the Mantle of Ophelia. A solid start to a well-rounded sisters list.

Next up, a Dialogus embellished with the saintly example enhancement. Watch out! I’ll get extra Miracle dice when they die!

The Daemonifuge found their way into this list. The only good thing about fielding the Daemonifuge is that I get to kill at least one Xenos model in each of my games.

My final Adepta Sororitas character in this list will be the Palatine – for who could leave home without a Palatine – equipped with a plasma pistol, and blessed blade. As always, she will be decked out with he Blade of Saint Ellynor (Blessed by Khorne edition).

The peons my retinue will be leading are as follows:

A singular squad of Battle Sisters, the superior with power weapon and condemnor boltgun in hand, one sister with a Simulacrum Imperialis, a sister with a melta-gun and one with a multi-melta. The remaining sisters will be equipped with boltguns.

A squad of dominions, the superior with power weapon and condemnor boltgun, one sister with a Simulacrum Imperialis, four sisters with melta-guns and the remainder with boltguns.

‘Repent then, and turn to the Holy Emperor of mankind’ – Nine repentia will be wreaking havoc across the battlefield with their penitent eviscerators, a repentia superior will be at the head of the squad (not a character btw) lashing neural whips and bolt pistol.

Death is nothing compared to vindication retribution! F I V E retributors unleashing their holy melta join the fray, four of which will be equipped with multi-meltas. The superior being equipped with a condemnor boltgun and power weapon.

A chad (two) of crusaders will be running amok during our most enjoyable game, my new friend and honourable opponent. Excellent roll, by the way!

I will be bringing two squads of Seraphim (Sepia) and two squads of Zephryim (Sepia). The four superiors across these squads will be equipped with power weapons and plasma pistols. Two of the Seraphim in each squad will carry hand flamers, the other two, bolt pistols. All the remaining Zephyrim will be equipped with power weapons and bolt pistols.

Now for the armoured support:

IN THE BLUE CORNER, TWO CASTIGATORS LAYING DOWN PIPE WITH CASTIGATOR BATTLE CANNONS, BOTH WITH THREE HEAVY BOLTERS AND HUNTER-KILLER MISSILES (hit on 2+ btw).

IN THE RED CORNER, TWO IMMOLATORS, ONE WITH TWIN MULTI-MELTA, ONE WITH IMMOLATION FLAMERS, BOTH WITH HUNTER KILLER MISSILES AND HEAVY BOLTERS (These are also dedicated transports).

Sororitas Rhino (75 Points)
• 1x Armoured tracks
• 1x Hunter-killer missile
• 1x Storm bolter

Armiger Helverin (140 Points)
• 2x Armiger autocannon
• 1x Armoured feet
• 1x Questoris heavy stubber

Armiger Helverin (140 Points)
• 2x Armiger autocannon
• 1x Armoured feet
• 1x Questoris heavy stubber

T H E A S S A S S I N S:

Watch out 1k sons players, doombolt can’t help you here (it can but please don’t use it on my assassins).

I will be fielding the strongest assassin in any edition that has ever existed, the 10th edition Culexus assassin.

FUN FACT, Culexus assassins are born with the Blank Gene – which means they have no presence in the Warp like all other sentient beings, and thus no soul (like Tau players, and Eldar players, and people who think that Knights should actually be an army in Warhammer 40k, and Custodes players).

I’m also bringing a Vindicare assassin, mostly to spook you and it makes me giggle a lot and then I roll a 1 to hit. But, he has the smoke key word so that’s pretty neat, and you can infiltrate him so with plunging fire his rifle has -4 AP. Have I sold you on him yet? (please buy my Vindicare assassin, I need money for more electropriests).

THE HOSTS:

A big thank you to Michael and Lachlan to hosting this event, and a big thank you to ME for driving the terrain bases from Bendigo to Ballarat.

Anytime, I’ve been great.