Litanies of the Faithful

Hello,

I’m back with another tournament report, but this time a little bit different. I’m kind of over giving play-by-plays of each game and instead am going to try a more vibe based event report. This is because I’m both lazy, and don’t think the specifics of most games are very relevant to why I’m writing this in the first place.

On the 9th of January, I travelled to Wagga Wagga in NSW to attend a two-day GT hosted by the Exterminatus Tournaments Group. This would be the first time I attended this event, but the 11th time it has run. Assuming they continue to run this event at around the same time of the year I’ll definitely be back next year. It’s at the perfect time for me with school holidays and was mostly comprised of great people with good attitudes.

With the bushfires recently raging around Victoria and it’s surrounds it probably wasn’t the best idea to drive up, but we mostly managed to avoid them. Pictured above is as we were travelling through Cobram a grass fire appeared in front of us and we chose to detour around it. As it turned out, on the way home 3-days later this area had developed into a bush fire so we avoided it entirely.

The event was your pretty typical GT with GW terrain layouts which is a nice mix up from the trash WTC layouts half the Victoria TO’s expect SINGLES events to be played on. If you don’t know WTC stands for World TEAM Championships. A format specifically designed for TEAMs play.

I was running Genestealer Cults playing the Final Day detachment. It turned out to be pretty good, although I’m still massively skill gapped by this army and detachment. I’d only had four reps on the detachment in the past 6 months (and only really 5-10 games with GSC in that time) prior to this event. Luckily for me being skill gapped means I have room to improve and more to learn which is a great feeling, rather than feeling shit because your army is just “bad”.

My list:

• Abominant
• Benefictus: Inhuman Integration
• Biophagus: Enraptured Damnation
• 2x Reductus Saboteur
• 1×5 Autopistol Aco’s
• 1×20 Neophytes
• Goliath Truck
• 1×5 Aberrants
• 2×1 Mortar RR
• 1×2 Laser RR
• 1×5 Atalan Jackals
• 1×10 Hybrid Metas
• Deathleaper
• Neurolictor
• 2×5 Hyperadapted
• 2×3 Von Ryan’s

I don’t know how I feel about lists anymore, or maybe the only army I ever felt like I understood was the Adepta Sororitas. I was always confident with my unit choices and believed they were solid, and I could get the best out of them. No matter what list I play with any other army, I always feel like I’m making compromises, weird vibes.

Maybe I just know more about the game now, or maybe I’m just an idiot. As usual, my problems with Warhammer lay in not believing in myself.

My first few games were pretty chill, I’d only played this list once before so I was still figuring things out. Thinking back on it there are definitely some different decisions I could have made regarding deployment and putting units back into reserves etc.

I played a game against a great bloke named Damian (pictured above and below). He definitely could have beaten me due to a misplay I made in the first turn, but I had a bit more experience over him and was able to push and pull out a win in the end. He was really vibing his army though and came up to me after round 5 to talk to me about how his other games went and said that he was feeling really good about Raven Guard and playing it at future events which was nice.

I ended up playing against 3 players from the Australian Capital Territory team for rounds 3, 4, and 5. Although I ended up going 1-2 against them (3-2 at the event total), I was in winning positions in both of my lost games which I thought was fabulous. To be honest, the game I won was probably the only one I deserved to lose.

In game 3 I was going first on Purge against Tyranids and gave up 16 primary on turn 2, awful. However, I stuck in there and kept my head down. The dice went back and fort but I pushed and made the best plays I could. Unfortunately my opponent wasn’t able to draw any scorable secondaries in turn 5 and I won by 2 points, close as.

Game 4 I played on stream against another ACT player (link below). I ended up getting pretty low on time because I was talking so much shit, but we also weren’t keeping time accurately and forgot to hit the clock a few times.

I probably could have won this game had I had more reps on my list, and more reps into Chaos Daemons. My mental with Warhammer hasn’t been great recently and if I think a list is too strong, like the new Scint Legion, I kind of give up before the game. I often undersell the strength of my units and list while overestimating the value of my opponents. A few different decisions here may have been the difference, but I didn’t have my heart in it, so it’s ok.

To put it simply, my last game was shit. You know it’s going to be a rough one when the players team mates warn you about them before the game. This was reiterated by local players who asked me how it went afterwards. Maybe that’s part of the problem though, I was primed with the expectation that it was going to be a bad game and let myself feed into it.

I probably could have still won this game but I gave up a bit after realizing what I was in for, and that I wasn’t really playing for anything. I am going to vent a bit but I’m not innocent in this interaction. Differing expectations and motivations can cause clashes and I found the terrain difficult to work with.

One example being I put my Neophytes back into reserves at the end of my opponents turn 1 – I was going first – and dropped them down behind the bottom left ruin with the intention of hiding them from at least one of the Despoilers (the black one), however, I had a single Neophyte sticking out that my opponent drew line of sight to from across the board. This came after, in the middle of my shooting phase, my opponent rotating cultists so their guns wouldn’t be visible that I was actively shooting at in an attempt to get them out of line of sight.

I didn’t say anything, or have a conversation with my opponent about it because at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter, it’s just toy soldiers, and you should be responsible for your mistakes and not try to alter the game state whenever you feel like something is happening you didn’t expect. However, it did feel like my intention did not matter, while my opponent ignored measurements and claimed intent so their units should be where they intended them to be regardless. I also despise complaining and whinging during a game, I think it ruins the experience for both people and takes away from what you’re really there for.

I was pretty over it by this point, there was a lot of incessant complaining about what could have/should have been done/happened, which can be difficult to listen to when you’re slowly losing.

I ended up spending most of my time this game away from the table which helped, watching my 3rd round Tyranid opponent get obliterated by Scint legion on a nearby table was fantastic.

This isn’t to say they were a bad person, we had a lovely chat and spent some nice time together, the game was just difficult to play. I also could have played better, and I can’t fault my opponent for that. In the end, they did play very well.

All in all I had a fun event, met some new people and will be seeing a few of them again in a month or so at a teams event in Sydney.

Not that I even did poorly, but if I was to do better, I need to do more than just put together a list I reckon is alright and show up. I can’t have that expectation without doing more, especially in the current competitive climate.

That being said, both of the games I lost, I had winning chances.

It did remind me of why I stepped away from competitive play, but I definitely have aspects of the game to work on, especially my mental fortitude and how to play GSC.

Thanks for reading, x