On the 7-8th of June I attended Terracon, a 6-round 130 person Warhammer 40k GT hosted at the Naracoorte Showgrounds in Naracoorte, South Australia. I set out to be a chill guy and have an enjoyable weekend of Warhammer.

This is the 26th Year Terracon will be running and is an event that I look forward to every year. The vibes at Terracon are fantastic, everyone is super chill. It is genuinely less competitive than the other 40k GTs in my local area and surrounds. I will, however, be leaving early this year and only playing five rounds because I didn’t want to pay an extra $150 for accommodation on the Sunday, and even more so, I don’t want to drive 4 hours home in the dark after playing Warhammer for 9 hours. Normally I would, but where I am in life right now, I can’t be bothered. The drive was also pretty booking and mostly looked like this.

I’m back on that Ad Mech bullshit again, and still not playing a list that I’m like, 100% happy with. But it’s serviceable and includes units I enjoy. I made a deal with myself that I wouldn’t buy anymore Warhammer this year because I have so much stuff unpainted, and still in box, but I’m pretty much prepared to break this at any given point to buy more Electro-priests. We’ll have to see how the rest of the year pans out (Note. Since I started writing this, I’ve bought an Age of Sigmar Git Mob box, two Skatros and a box of Sicarians, cool).

My list:

• Belisarius Cawl
• Cybernetica Datasmith: Transoracular Dyad Wafers
• Sydonian Skatros
• Tech-Priest Dominus: Inloaded Lethality
• Tech-Priest Manipulus
• Technoarcheologist
• 2×10 Skitarii Rangers
• 2x Skorpius Dunerider
• 10x Corpuscarii Electro-Priests
• 10x Fulgurite Electro-Priests
• 4x Kastelan Robots
• 5x Sicarian Infiltrators
• 5x Sicarian Ruststalkers
• 2x Skorpius Disintegrators
• Callidus Assassin

It’s a fairly allrounder list that gives me good play against most other lists. I’m running Haloscreed which gives me awesome movement shenanigans and allows me to get where I need to be, when I need to be there. That is the main strength of this list. I’m able to win a lot of games purely from movement, and aggression. Seriously, having your Kastelan Robot move 14″ and charge is something that will get you rock hard.

The Dominus with the melee enhancement is also cute, 7 attacks at -2, D3 can be very strong into certain profiles. I do wish I had some more Battleline units in the list, for being able to push out the army buff, but two units of Rangers & Cawl is enough, most of the time. It’s actually quite difficult to remove 10 Rangers with the 5+ Invuln unless you really commit something to them.

Two Disintegrators babysat by Cawl’s re-roll 1’s to hit allows me to stay in Conqueror for pretty much the entire time. Having assault on every ranged weapon and +1 WS for the Corpuscarii, Kastelans, Fulgurites, and Sicarians is incredibly beneficial. I don’t think I’ve swapped into Protector once in 10+ games, although I would probably start in protector against EC for example.

Round 1 – Liam’s (AKA the people’s champ) Emperor’s Children

Terraform, Stalwarts, Crucible of Battle

Liam’s list (Coterie of the Conceited): Daemon Prince with Wings, 3x Lord Exultant, Lord Kakophonist, Lord Kakophonist: Pledge of Unholy Fortune, Lucius the Eternal, 3×5 Infractors, 2×5 Tormentors, 2x Chaos Rhino, 2x Chaos Spawn, 6x Flawless Blades, 3×6 Noise Marines.

I’m still not sure why Liam was dubbed the people’s champ, but here we are. Liam is a friend I’ve made through various RTTs and GTs around my local area, and when he asked who he should grudge before Terracon I goaded him. Little did he know, I was a massive chud.

Terracon does allow grudges which is a cute tradition and gives you a nice chill way to start day 1, by forcing your friend who you probably travelled with to play you. Nothing like a little friendly angst.

It was Terraform, and I was going first.

Pictured above is after turn 1 going into turn 2. In turn 1 I was able to secure a Terraform by staying outside of any of Liam’s effective charge/shooting ranges due to deployment and also picked up a unit of 2 Chaos Spawn which were the only threat to my no-man’s land objective. Establish was done with some Infiltrators in the middle and Extend was an easy 5 points.

Liam was exhausted as he drove up at 2:30am in the morning on day 1 of the event. Absolutely absurd! I don’t think I would have been game enough to drive 5 hours on no sleep. Because of this he wasn’t really in the mindset to jump into a Warhammer game and made a bit of a goof in turn 1, going for a long bomb charge into my deployment zone. This failed and it was almost just game over from here.

EC doesn’t really keep any models in deepstrike/reserves, and although they move quite fast, he didn’t put anything within effective threat range of my no-man’s land objective. I also kept him pinned back by throwing my entire army at him so he wouldn’t be able to score any primary until the final turn of the game.

Send in the priests! The robots would follow shortly afterwards. I made a big mistake this turn of putting the Dunerider filled with Corpuscarii on the middle objective for no reason to get Area Denial, I could have just used the Infiltrators, and pushed the boat into the ruin, yeeting the Corpuscarii onto Liam’s home point in the next turn. Oh well, we live, and we learn.

The biggest mistake I made this game was letting the Daemon Prince heroic into the unit of Fulgurites, why did I do this? I’m not sure. This meant the robots couldn’t punch it to death, and the robots died to the Daemon Prince + Noise Marine shooting in the next turn, sad.

Cheers for the game Liam, sorry it was a bit shite x.

Round 2 – Andrew’s Custodes

Purge the Foe, Smoke and Mirrors, Tipping Point

Andrew’s list (Lions of the Emperor): Blade Champion, Shield-Captain in Allarus Terminator Armour: Praesidius, Shield-Captain in Allarus Terminator Armour: Superior Creation, Trajann Valoris, 4x Custodian Guard, Anathema Psykana Rhino, 3×2 Allarus Custodians, 2×4 Custodian Wardens, 2×4 Prosecutors, 2x Vertus Praetors, 4x Witchseekers, Inquisitor Draxus.

Purge the Foe, against Custodes? This is going to be a rough one! Wait, I’m going second?

There isn’t much to say about this game. I went second and Andrew didn’t take enough risks. Unfortunately, with Purge the Foe you just need to YOLO unless you can somehow force your opponent to come to you, which is exceedingly difficult. Andrew fed me just enough units each turn and only killed so many units each turn to keep kill more even. While we each held two objectives. He would have really benefitted from a second blade-wizard in this match up. Custodes desperately need the movement.

Alternatively, he could have used rapid ingress on one of the Allarus units to, then split the unit up and charged in different directions to apply pressure. But in Purge this just feeds me 3 different units for kill more. It was a difficult match up to go first in.

Having the Kastelans positioned in the middle let me run them back and forth with 8″ move + advance and charge (and shoot in conqueror), while staying out of Andrew’s threat range. They are incredibly strong mid-field bullies. We had a good chat during and after the game, thanks for the great game, Andrew!

Round 3 – Mark’s Astra Militarum

Linchpin, Raiser Banners, Engage On all Fronts

Mark’s list (Hammer of the Emperor): Lord Solar Leontus, 2x Rogal Dorn Commander, 2x Tech-Priest Enginseer, Taurox, 2×5 Attilan Rough Riders, 10x Kasrkin, 3x Leman Russ Vanquisher, 3x Ogryn, 3x Scout Sentinels, Callidus Assassin, Imperial Rhino, Sanctifiers.

Pictured above is Mark annihilating everything in sight. This game was rough. It was Search and Destroy and the buildings to hide behind at home were piss. I had to stay behind the perspex or get shot off the board, and the distances were too far to effectively move between staging points, especially for my vehicles.

I positioned my army to give myself a chance at winning – if I get first turn – and I went second. It would have been a very difficult match up anyway, but on this Terrain and layout, basically impossible.

Mark was a good sport, and it was fun regardless, thanks Mark!

Day 1 was over, and I was honestly feeling pretty good about my list. It lacked a little in the expendable scoring unit’s detachment, which it made up for by absolutely bodying the shit out of my opponents and killing all of their models.

An idea that is consistently echoed in online forums and discussion boards is the idea of what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’, without actually quantifying what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mean. Having played a lot of chess over the last few years, both competitively at a club level and online. I can say with confidence that most people have no idea what’s going on. Play what you like, you’ll have a better time, and it will feel fantastic when you win.

There really aren’t that many non-viable units in Warhammer 40k. Just don’t play against Tank spam Astra Militarum on Search and Destroy with bad terrain and you’ll be fine, apparently)

I had some yummy calamari for dinner, then we played final fantasy commander, and the boys made fun of me.

Round 4 – Corey’s Chaos Space Marines

Linchpin, Raiser Banners, Dawn of War

Corey’s list (Dread Talons): Chaos Lord with Jump Pack: Warp-Fuelled Thrusters, 2×10 Cultist Mob, 5x Legionaries, 2×3 Chaos Bikers, 2x Chaos Predator Destructor, Defiler, 2×5 Havocs (Las & Autocannon), 2×2 Obliterators, 5x Possessed, 1×10, 1×5 Raptors, 5x Warp Talons.

Photo game is improving, but I only took one photo of this game, and by then it was far too late.

Game 4, day 2, layout, Dawn of War? I don’t know what the Terracon TO’s are smoking but I want some.

Corey is quite possibly the coolest cat I have ever met playing Warhammer, because he is playing Night lords. Did you know that I have a Night Lords army? What is that you ask? Am I man enough to bring the Dread Talons detachment to a tournament? No 😦 I’m a little bitch boy.

Corey on the other hand, is a king and is playing Dread Talons. This was cool for me because I got to play against it and also cool because I knew all of his rules. It’s one of those detachments that people ask a lot of questions about because the detachment rule forces you to take battle shock if you’re below full-strength and within 12″ of a CSM unit. It’s a cool rule, but it’s also the worst detachment in the entire CSM book by far.

Anyway, Corey put 2×2 Obliterators, Warp Talons, and all the Raptors + Jump pack Lord in Deep Strike. I got first turn, ran at him as fast as I could and won. There really wasn’t much to it.

Thank you for the game Corey, you’ve inspired me to finally re-base all my CSM models and run Dread Talons and an upcoming team’s event. This does mean I’m going to cherry pick all the 7+ leadership match ups. I hope my teammates don’t mind.

Round 5 – Liam’s Chaos Space Marines

Supply Drop, Rapid Escalation, Sweeping Engagement

Liam’s list (Creations of Bile): Chaos Lord: Prime Test Subject, Cypher, Fabius Bile, Cultist Mob, 2×5 Legionaries, Chaos Rhino, Chaos Bikers, 2x Chaos Predator Destructor, 10x Chosen, 2×10 Possessed, 3x Nurglings, 2x War Dog Karnivore.

Game 5 baby, and another match up that I know really well. As I am a CSM player and a local player has been spamming CoB lately I know pretty much everything this list can do, so I am afraid.

The primary is supply drop, I had good shooting and movement so if I can just go second, I think I can win this one easily.

I’m going first. The objective on the left is leaving battle round 4, and the one on the right is staying until the end of the game, fabulous.

Liam roll’s +1 WS and +1 attacks. This is ideal for me, I think he could have just chosen +2″ movement and been way better off but we’re here now so. It’s go time.

I pushed my robots & Infiltrators out into the centre to try and secure 5 on primary and get an early lead. I did the same with a transport on the bottom of the map. Liam didn’t really have anything to contest the middle with, so I scored there, but he managed to pop my transport and give himself a 10″ charge onto my Fulgurites, oops. Luckily, he failed this or I’m almost certain it would have been game over. He also took down a single Kastelan with shooting and a couple of Infiltrators.

I basically yolo’d from here. I dog piled my entire army into him and hoped it would be enough to tie him up from scoring and table him by the end of the game. It almost worked. Liam had a few too many units committed to the objective that was disappearing turn 4. By the time he chewed through all my trash it was turn 4 and there were no more points for him over there anymore.

I was consistently surprised with how good Kastelan’s felt with +2″ move pretty much the entire time, they started in the middle, moved to the right to kill Cypher and ended the game holding the right-hand side objective.

The highlight of the game for me was on my go turn I killed both Predator’s with a Disintegrator each, I pretty much got exactly what I needed. As we were chatting about dice rolls after the game Liam reminded me of turn 2 when he failed 7/7 4+ fight on death rolls with his Possessed into my Fulgurites, yeah that would have been impactful aye.

It was a fun and stressful game, thanks again Liam!

Bonus pic of Cawl getting dog piled by Bile & Chosen to score Liam assassination.

I left before round 6 because I didn’t want to drive four hours in the dark and hit a Kangaroo 4 hours away from home. I would go to Terracon again.

Cya nerds.