Two reports in two days! Who am I? Goonhammer!!! If they actually went to events to have fun instead of just that one guy who complains when he loses round 2 even though he’s not taking an optimal list and then goes home early even though it’s his job to write the article.

No, I actually played all my games, I’ll still complain when I lose though.

Strength in Numbers is a 5-man 5-game teams event ran by the Ratcon tournament hosts, who run two other GTs and a handful of RTTs each year in Ballarat. This teams event however was run at the gaming arena in Melbourne – Home | The Gaming Arena – and had an amazing Cafe a short walk away which served pint glass sized coffees.

Attending the event were a combination of brand-new players, seasoned tournament veterans, and a small group of people who aren’t good enough at anything truly competitive, so they club seals in a wargame designed for children.

I brought with me a dedicated, specifically curated team of cut-throat wargamers which would make any 12-year-old trying to have fun with their orks tremble as they pre-measure charge ranges and shooting lanes while blinding them with a Makita laser pointer.

Our team name: R^2A^2T’s

Ryan (Me, Captain) – CSM: Renegade Raiders

• Ryan ‘Tyranids suck’ (Not me) – Tyranids: Invasion Fleet
• Andi ‘Canis is my dad’ – Imperial Knights: Noble Lance
• Andrew ‘I could be playing Trench Crusade right now’ – Thousand Sons: Grand Coven
• Tyson ‘The carry’ – Votann: Oathband

I’m not going to go in depth on my teammates lists, if you would like to read them, they can be found here:

Strength in Numbers 2025

My list: CSM – Renegade Raiders

• Chaos Lord
• DP w/ wings – Slaanesh
• 3x Disco lord: 1 with Dread Reavers
• Vashtorr
• Rhino
• Forgefiend
• 1×5 Havocs (4x Las)
• 1×5 Nemesis Claw
• 3×2 Obliterators
• 5x Raptors (2x Melta)

I was somewhat happy with the completed list; I had rebased a lot of models onto base toppers which I think look pretty cool. But there is a lot more painting that can be done with respect to cool lightning effects so I can truly say I am playing Nightlords. Also, the discolords leave something to be desired but at least they are battle ready.

My favourite part about the list? With the Nemesis claw being led by a Chaos Lord the unit had 6 different melee weapon profiles that due to differing strength, ap, and abilities all needed to be rolled separately, lol.

Having 3 discolords, my list was very good into vehicles. I had 3 practice games against Knights prior to the event and was able to table them almost entirely by the bottom of 3 in each game. I was hoping for some solid Vehicle pairings over the course of the weekend, and with the exception of EC – which still had two Rhinos and 2 Maulerfiends – I achieved my goal.

This was my second teams’ event, my first being a 1-day RTT in March which was 4-man teams. I learnt a lot during this event about pairings, and I think we had alright pairings throughout the event. I struggled with pairing Thousand Sons and Tyranids as I wasn’t sure of their bad matchups, but they were playing allcomers lists so it could have been worse.

The meta in Warhammer feels like it’s in a weird spot at the moment, where if you’re on the right list and are a good player, you can skill check your way through 90% of games without much issue. I’m not sure if this is the way it’s always been and I’m just realizing it now, but this only becomes further exacerbated in teams when you get to pick your match ups – to an extent. I definitely felt this throughout the event.

NB. Didn’t take many photos at this event, kinda forgot.

Round 1 – Team pairings – Gadget type operators (our team – their team)

• Imperial knights – Necrons 13-7
• Leagues of Votann – Imperial Knights 12-8
• Thousand Sons – Space Marines (Astartes) 16-4
• Chaos Space Marines – Orks *No spoilers
• Tyranids – Adeptus Custodes 9-11

Round 1 – Tristan’s Orks

Take and Hold, Hammer and Anvil

Tristan’s list (Dread Mob): Big Mek, Big Mek with shokka attack gun, 2×6 Killer Kans, 2×1 Deff Dread, Morkanaut, Stompa.

Game 1, I remembered to take a photo.

Tristan is someone that I have played before and is a great dude with awesome looking models. However, my list had exactly the right tools to kill all these big stompy vehicles. Of all the pairings I could have gone into this was my most preferred, along with knights.

I’m realizing in the future if I want to write up teams’ events it would be a good idea to jot down the pairings process as it happens so I could talk through decisions for defenders and attackers, and how I reacted to my opponents choices.

We really didn’t try to go that deep for this event, we weren’t there to win.

I tried to ensure that all my teammates had a fair go and took turns being the attacker and defender during the pairings process, prioritising certain match ups, and avoiding bad ones.

I tabled my opponent by the bottom of turn 3 except for the Morkanaut, which went down the following turn.

Team result: Win 69-31

Round 2 – Team pairings – 5 Absolute male specimens playing tabletop (our team – their team)

• Imperial knights – Grey Knights 6-14
• Leagues of Votann – Chaos Knights 17-3
• Thousand Sons – Dark Angels 20-0
• Chaos Space Marines – Emperor’s Children *No spoilers
• Tyranids – Imperial Knights 2-18

Round 2 – Mark’s Emperor’s Children

Scorched Earth, Crucible of battle

Mark’s list (Emperor’s Children): DP w/ wings: Pledge to Eternal Servitude, DP w/ wings, 2x Lord Exultant, Lord Kakophonist, Lucius the Eternal, 2×5 Infractors, 2×5 Tormentors, 2x Chaos Rhino, 2x Maulerfiend, 3×5 Noise Marines.

Game 2, I forgot to take any photos, but this was mostly because my game finished in about half an hour.

Once again, I feel as if the pairings for this round were ok. As many of the teams we would end up playing against were in the same boat as us and didn’t have a lot of teams’ experience, pairings were a bit all over the place and I think we often had more advantageous pairings than we would have into more experienced teams.

Mark was unable to hide a few of his key units during deployment while still having them be effective in the first few turns. I was able to kill a Maulerfiend and a Rhino in my turn 1 and it only snowballed from here.

The Maulerfiend exploded and dealt 3 damage to Lucius. I had yeeted a Discolord onto the midpoint turn 1 to take care of some Tormentors that had infiltrated in. In Mark’s turn he put a Daemon Prince and Lucius into the Discolord, they both whiffed and I managed to kill my opponents Warlord in the first Battleround.

This game was rough, the Obliterators and Discolords made up the perfect defensive and offensive profiles against Emperor’s Children. I also made a 9″ Charge onto my opponent’s home point on turn 2. By the end of my turn 2 my opponent had a handful of Noise Marines, one Daemon prince a Lord Exultant and one Infractor left.

I hadn’t had a game that one-sided in a long time and couldn’t stop apologising, but my opponent was fantastic and reassured me it was fine, it just happens in teams.

Thank you for being a great opponent, Mark.

We ended up losing the round, which was good as we could avoid the GAMER™️teams.

Team result: Loss 45-55

Round 3 – Team pairings – Goated with the sauce (our team – their team)

• Imperial knights – Orks 10-10
• Leagues of Votann – Chaos Space Marines 19-1
• Thousand Sons – Emperor’s Children 0-20
• Chaos Space Marines – Death Guard *No spoilers
• Tyranids – Imperial Knights 10-10

Round 3 – Mason’s Death Guard

Terraform, Crucible of Battle

Mason’s list (VV): Mortarion, Typhus, LoC, LoV, Tallyman, 6x Deathshroud, 2×10 Poxwalkers, 3x HBL drone, 3×2 MBH

I can’t really remember how the pairings went for this round, but I’m fairly certain I was a defender and jumped on the DG grenade to save my team. I think Votann would have had a good match up into DG but they were busy absolutely bodying CSM.

I yeeted in this game, and although I had a pretty banger turn 2, I whiffed a bit, and car parked my models too much that the crack back secured the W for Mason.

A few very unfortunate dice rolls happened in this game that would have almost led us to a draw. But alas, I can’t help if I’m bad. I don’t have much experience into armies like DG with CSM, so this was a bit of a limit test.

Despite his alright position, during my T2 Mason auto-exploded an MBH which could have killed his LoV on 2 wounds, allowing a Discolord to charge a Drone and consolidate into another unit of MBH on his home objective. But he only did 1 mortal to the LoV, and it made its FNP roll.

It’s funny how dice rolls influence Warhammer, almost as if it’s some game of chance or something.

Another narrow loss which was fun. I don’t think we had any absolute crushing losses this event which was a testament to our pairings.

Team result: Loss 47-57

Round 4 – Team pairings – The Rat King’s Crew (our team – their team)

• Imperial knights – Adeptus Mechanicus 7-13
• Leagues of Votann – Emperor’s Children 15-5
• Thousand Sons – Drukhari 3-17
• Chaos Space Marines – Genestealer Cult *No spoilers
• Tyranids – Space Marines 2-18

Round 4 – Stuart’s Genestealer Cult

Supply Drop, Tipping Point

Stuarts’s list (Outlander Claw): 2x Kelermorph, 3x Reductus Saboteur: Assault Commando, Cartographic Data-leech, 4×5 Acolytes with Hand Flamers, 3×10 Neophyte Hybrids, 3x Goliath Truck, 1×2 & 2×1 RR w/ Mortar, 3×5 Jackals, 3x Goliath Rockgrinders

The pictures are back baby. Outlander Claw GSC! A list I’ve been wanting to put on the table for a while but there is no way I’m buying 4 more Goliath Truck boxes, and I also just swapped my entire GSC army for a sister’s army.

Don’t ask me about it. I’m not accepting questions at this time.

By this point I had a pretty good idea of the durability of my list, and I knew exactly what Stu’s could output.

I was going first.

This was Supply Drop, so I didn’t have to hold my home objective.

I moved all of my units as fast as they would go at Stu and attacked him with everything I had. In my opinion, this is what you need to do to win against GSC, especially on the play. While they can slow you down with Infiltrating units and move blocking, because I wasn’t required to hold my home objective the GSC needed to meet me in the middle where I was strongest.

Thanks to my 2+ saves and high toughness the GSC mostly bounced, and I also had some pretty amazing rolls, rolling box cars multiple times on my Obliterator shooting. The discolords were fantastic hammers for all the vehicles in the GSC’s army.

I did my best to avoid Mortals from Sabo’s and Jackals and managed to get a 19-1. In hindsight, if I went second, I believe this would have been a 10-10 at best.

We narrowly managed a draw this round which was honestly a fantastic result into a team of such great players and again is a testament to our pairings. I’d like to thank all my teammates for putting up with my questions and ‘theory crafting’ throughout the event.

Team result: Draw 46-54

Round 5 – Team pairings – Human Highlight Reels (our team – their team)

• Imperial knights – Aeldari 19-1
• Leagues of Votann – Imperial Knights 13-7
• Thousand Sons – Thousand Sons 6-14
• Chaos Space Marines – Genestealer Cult *No spoilers
• Tyranids – Chaos Daemons 5-15

Round 5 – Adam’s Astra Militarum

Terraform, Crucible of Battle

Adam’s list (Hammer of the Emperor): Gaunt’s Ghosts, 2x Dorn Commander, Sly Marbo, Tech-Priest Enginseer, 10x Cadian Shock Troops, 2×10 Catachan Jungle Fighters, Chimera, 2x Taurox, 10x Kasrkin, 2x LRBT, 1x LR Exterminator, Scout Sentinel, Tempestus Aquilons

Back to no photos, which was sad, as this team had the best painted armies at the entire event.

Once again, an absolutely gas pairing for the army designed specifically to kill vehicles. Despite not having photos, you’ll have to take my word that the terrain for this match up was absolute piss.

Adam also had a few scoring units which initially meant I would need to trade down and expose expensive pieces, such as lord discordants, to being shot by big spooky tanks. Unluckily for Adam, my dice were disgusting this game.

In his turn 2 he moved up a Dorn Commander to pick off a Discolord, however, in my turn 2 a single unit of havocs one-hit the Dorn in return and then went on to miss all of their shots in the next turn, random.

Ultimately, this game was close until it wasn’t. Adam made some great plays, but the dice were on my side. He rapid-ingressed a unit of Aquilons to make a play and take my home objective, forcing me to 3 points on primary in the following turn. However, my Daemon Prince was within 12″ of this unit, and I rolled an 11 on my charge, making it in and picking up the unit.

Challenger cards also felt incredibly silly in this match up, as although Adam had a strong start, getting ahead on primary and forcing me to trade poorly. I scored 6 on Challenger cards, entirely negating any advantage Adam gained early by making up the points later on.

Thanks to a Votann – Knight and IK – Aeldar pairing (on light terrain for the IK), we managed to win our final round, and our team ended with a score of 2 wins, 2 draws and a loss.

Team result: Win 56-44

We ended up placing 8th out of 18 teams and I placed 12th out of 80 in the singles placings, which don’t actually mean anything really.

This far exceeded our expectations as we mostly just went to get some more games in and support Michael as he spent the months prior to the event harassing me about signing up.

We recruited a few more people from Bendigo and are now planning to attend an 8-man teams’ event at the same venue but run by different TO’s in early October.

I did enjoy teams but don’t really enjoy playing terrain layouts and rules FAQs that aren’t officially supported.

It feels weird.

A lot of 40k player hold teams in high regard and boast it as ‘the most competitive way to play Warhammer’. But in my opinion the most competitive way to play Warhammer would involve players bringing multiple lists, having a drafting system for the lists and playing multiple games across varying missions on different GW layouts, similar to what Lorcana and Hearthstone do for their tournaments.

Is this viable where a game of Warhammer takes 3 hours? No.

In my view teams is a fun way of playing Warhammer but leads to a lot more skew match ups where you may not really have a chance to win. It tends to be more interesting as every decision you make and point you score can lead to an extra team point which can make the difference between winning, drawing, or losing, as did happen in the rounds we played over the weekend. But bastardising a ruleset into what could be construed as a more competitive format, just because it is more competitive than a similar format doesn’t mean it’s better, or even good for that matter.

It doesn’t bother me too much as the pairings and match ups I expectrf to play against in teams weren’t that skewed at strength in numbers, and shouldn’t be in the future as we will never do well enough to be paired into them.

As usual, I’m there to enjoy a weekend away with friends and play an enjoyable wargame all day, forgetting the troubles in my life and laughing so much my throat hurts for days.

Thanks for reading losers, x