Some Opening Thoughts

Matched Play Horus Heresy is a mixed bag at the best of times, and when you don’t need to get soft scores to win prizes, it brings out another side of the community.

The weekday Warhammer events are run using the Best Coast Pairings. This means you can pre-register and upload your list in advance of the event, and other people can see it. Now, I am personally of the opinion that list tailoring is for cowards and is essentially “gaming for advantage”, but I know it happens with these events. So of course while The Casual, our friend, and I were traveling down in the car, we were discussing some of the opposition we might have to face that day and boy did it look to be some stiff competition. The lists for the day included (but were not limited to):

• A seven-dreadnought Iron Hands Fury of the Ancients list
• Stone Gauntlet with twenty Phalanx Warders
• Two Imperial Fists armies featuring a Castellan and twenty heavy weapons marines
• Two different takes on “Six Plasma Myrmidons, Whatcha Gonna Do About It”, one with the Preferred Enemy toting archmagos Malagra and a paragon Thanatar-Calix, the other running Myrmidax with the Thanatar-Calix that makes Myrmidons scoring
• An Alpha Legion Headhunter Leviathal army with twenty nemesis bolter recon marines
• A Dynat/Huscarls Pride of the Legion list
• And apparently me, according to the friends I play tested the list against

While I am no stranger to competitive wargaming (I spent a lot of time at university playing 40k 8th Edition ITC events), this does not fill me with a warm fuzzy feeling. Heresy has not traditionally been any form of competitive game, with instead a heavy focus on narrative. The fact that this event was advertised as Matched Play seems to have made people come out of the woodwork and bring their nastiest lists.

I’m going to apologize in advance for the lack of pictures in this one, I was mostly focused on gaming rather than photography!

What I Took

With Theoderic’s Demise under my belt, this was the second of my trifecta of November events. This list was actually the one I planned out first, and then built the 2000pt Doubles list (that event hasn’t happened yet) and 3000pt Narrative list for Theoderic’s Demise on top of this to reduce the number of models I had to paint. This event wasn’t split by Allegiance, so you take your match-ups as you get them.

Primary Detachment: Raven Guard

[Rite of War: Decapitation Strike]

• Orlos Kasmoryn, Praetor with a Hammer, Raven’s Talon, and Corvid-pattern Jump Pack [Warlord: The Hidden Hand]
• Aetrio Ordaris, Legion Herald with a Legion Standard, Hammer, and Corvid-pattern Jump Pack
• Phryn Qeld, Legion Chaplain with a Hammer and Corvid-pattern Jump Pack
• 1 Apothecary with Legion Warhawk Jump Packs
• 2 10-man Tactical squads in Rhinos, with pintle-mounted multi-meltas
• 2 10-man Dark Fury squads, both upgraded to have 3 Choosers of the Slain

Yup, that’s it. My entire shooting phase is two tactical squads and two rhinos. I am unashamedly looking to get to the assault phase as quickly as possible, at which point I will be proceeding to rip and tear. The extra movement reaction from The Hidden Hand continues to be invaluable for allowing my infiltrating units to avoid getting charged, and the small unit count means you get more value out of using Fade to Black on a scary units as it lasts all phase.

The Games

The way this event worked was pretty simple. The first round was seeded randomly, and then after that the players were paired up by position: 1v2, 3v4, 5v6 and so on.

Round 1

My random round was against Death Guard. The army was gorgeous, a classic heavily weathered paint scheme with plenty of rust and streaking grime-style effects. As a testament to this, my opponent won the gold medal for Best Painted in the HQ painting competition! Very well deserved, especially with what I’m about to recount. His list was roughly:

• Calas Typhon
• Cataphractii Herald with a power sword
• Siege Breaker with a power scythe
• 1 Apothecary
• Contemptor with a gravis bolt cannon and power fist w/ heavy alchem flamer
• 5 Grave Wardens with a mixed loadout (four power fists, one chainfist, one heavy alchem flamer)
• A 10-man tactical squad in a rhino with a heavy alchem flamer
• A 10-man tactical squad with chain bayonets
• A 10-man Lascannon heavy support squad

The mission was one objective in each deployment zone (1VP each, 3VP if you had both). Opting for night fighting, I got the first turn and choose to deep strike my praetor, chaplain, and 10 furies. My tacticals deployed on my objective, infiltrated and then disembarked to contest the other one, and my furies with the Herald managed to charge and kill the rhino turn one, so I was 2-0 up. His first turn didn’t do much, other than shooting the furies a bunch, who used Fade to Black to survive the lascannons.

Turn two my deep strike arrived, and I lost three to interceptor. The other furies multi-charged both tactical squads, at which point my opponent opted to hold the line with his unit containing the siege breaker. He didn’t know that if you failed the Morale test to hold said line, that you had to fall back. This would have caused him to lose the unit as they were on the edge anyway, so because he told me he didn’t know that I suggested we say that the other tactical squad had opted to make the reaction instead. They fell back, I rolled a bad charge, and didn’t get to them anyway (though I did get to the unit with the consul and proceeded to eat most of them with Raven’s Talons).

As he had used his assault reaction, the deep striking furies multi-charged the wardens and the lascannon team. Typhon only did one wound at initiative 5, and the furies killed him, the Herald, and 3/5 wardens before initiative 1. They also killed half of the lascannon team. Both units then failed their morale tests, at which point I opted to try and run down the Wardens/Herald and succeeded, allowing the lascannons to escape. I scored slay the warlord and both objectives this turn. On his turn the dreadnought failed a charge and the lascannons failed to rally. My turn three saw my clean up the dreadnought and heavy support squad, then my turn four finished off the tactical marines for a bittersweet tabling victory.

The end result was 17-0, which I did feel was something of a crushing result, but my opponent was very gracious in defeat. It’s hard to know what to do after a game like that; you want to chat with your opponent afterwards and ask them if they had fun, but it was relatively clear from his body language (if not his actual words) that he hadn’t enjoyed it. I suppose such is the way sometimes, you can’t force your opponent to have fun. More than one person after the match asked me how I scored that many points, and I had to somewhat awkwardly count out on my fingers what happened while trying not to sound like I was boasting. The Casual told me I was a bad bad man for what I did, and I had to concede that he had a fair point. A mixed emotional bag, but a clean win, and first place coming out of this round. (1-0)

Round 2

My round two was against a gorgeous Solar Auxilia force, resplendent in their purple and white livery. If I could have voted a best painted army instead of an HQ unit, it would have been this one. He had an interesting gimmick with this list, in that if you take a Legate Marshall in a reborn cohort, he becomes Leadership 11 and can transmit that army-wide by being in a Tactical Command or Lifeward section. Definitely a good angle to play into given Solars can have Leadership issues compared to marines, especially in combat. This list looked like:

• Legate Marshall with a Lifeward section, a command vox, and an Aurox with a heavy flamer
• 4x 10-man Rifle sections in Auroxes with heavy flamers
• 2x Hermes sentinels with multi-lasers
• 1 Aethon heavy sentinel with an incinerator and the barrage missiles
• 3x1 Leman Russ Vanquishers in a Tercio, with autocannons
• Artillery Tercio of 3 Heavy Bolter rapiers and 3 Laser Rapiers (two separate units)

The mission was three objectives in no man’s land, and I once again had the first turn. With the same deep strike as last round, I bagged one objective with tacticals, contested another, and abandoned the one furthest from his army to make a turn one charge with my furies and Herald into an Aurox for first blood. His first turn involved shooting everything at my furies (who chose to Fade to Black, not that it helped them), reducing them to one man and the Herald. My turn two, the deep strike arrived largely uncontested. My Herald split to join a tactical squad to grant them fearless (and a thunder hammer), and the one fury on his own squared up to the two Hermes. My Herald and tacticals charged and killed the Aethon, and the single fury swept the two Hermes.

On the other side of the board, I experienced some of the most one-sided Warhammer I’ve ever played. My praetor, chaplain, apothecary, and 10 furies instigated a five target multi-charge into both rapier units and all three Leman Russ tanks. I assigned two furies to each rapier team, one chooser and one fury per tank, and the praetor and chaplain to separate tanks. Thunder hammers made short work of rear armour 10, the furies massacred the rapier teams, and one Russ even exploded and penned the one next to it to save me some effort. I killed everything I charged and only lost a single fury to the exploding tank.

After that it became a game of chasing down the individual rifle sections and tickling them to death with the claws, while the Lifeward section high-tailed it away in their Aurox so that my pursuing rhino couldn’t pop them open with its multi-melta. In the end, the game was 10-2 to me, with slay the warlord eluding me. Less one-sided than the previous round felt, my opponent just ran into a very bad matchup for them and I got lucky on my one big charge in the corner. It did let me hold on to my first place spot by a single point though. (2-0)

Round 3

This was the point in the day where I had already counted my chickens and fully expected to come up against something really horrible. Thankfully, due to a particularly good showing in the previous two rounds, I managed to dodge both of the 2-0 Myrmidon lists, and Fury of the Ancients. Instead, I was matched up against the list we had simply called “Alpha Legion Twenty Snipers”. On reflection this was a good thing, though it didn’t seem it at the time. My list had a huge capacity to be hobbled by weapons with pinning. Their actual list was:

• A barebones Delegatus
• A Herald on a jetbike with a lightning claw
• An Abominatio assassin
• Double gravis lascannon boxnaught
• 10-man Assault squad with a claw on the sergeant and two power axes
• 2x 10-man Recon squad with nemesis bolters
• 10-man Tactical squad with a claw on the sergeant
• 5-man Sky-Hunter squad with volkite culverins, a claw on the sergeant, and a vexilla

The mission was six objectives in No Man’s Land, each worth 1VP, and when you scored them they were removed from the table. My opponent did win the roll for strategic advantage in this game, but I managed to seize the initiative. I will admit, I largely attribute this singe roll to my subsequent success. His warlord trait allowed him to re-deploy three units after said seize roll, though he was happy with his initial placement. I would have made some drastic changes had I been in his position, as he had an excellent opportunity to re-deploy an infiltrating unit behind my lines and force me to split my offensive, but alas, I was not my own opponent.

No deep strike this game, I needed al my guys on the board to minimize the threat of a big pinning interceptor reaction. I split my characters into praetor/Herald with one unit of furies (fearless making them immune to pinning unless the Herald got sniped), and chaplain/apothecary with the other unit for Leadership 10 and Stubborn, plus Feel no Pain to try and avoid being pinned. On my turn one, I pushed quickly up the board, managed to get lucky and pick his Abominatio assassin off with a multi-melta rhino, and got a turn one charge into one recon squad which I then ran down with the chaplain et al. My other unit of furies rolled one inch short to be able to charge their desired target, but managed to surge move out of line of sight of the other recon team by getting underneath the sector mechanicus platform they were on.

His turn one saw his recons try and fail to pin the Chaplain’s unit, though his dreadnought did kill three furies. The jetbikes pushed up to hunt my tacticals at the back, and his assault squad charged my chaplain’s unit. This did not end well for them, in that I suffered no casualties and he had no assault marines left. On my turn two, my opponent got unlucky and rolled snake-eyes for two saves he tried to tank on his Herald, and then I managed to charge the second unit of recons and the tactical marines with the Delegatus. I killed his warlord, his second unit of snipers, and he was reduced to two jetbikes that couldn’t score and a dreadnought. At this point, he chose to concede and we talked out the rest of the scoring for the game, agreeing that I couldn’t score all six objectives, but could likely get four (plus secondaries) for a total of 12-0. (3-0)

Thoughts on What I Brought

In the car on the way down we’d jokingly decided to call our results. All three of us called a final result of (2-1), as we were all confident that even though the lists were mean, we could play into them well. Now in fairness, we did all go (2-1) or better, but by virtue of some good luck (and some Dark Furies), I managed to come first overall! Second was a good showing by one of the Myrmidon lists that I beat at the Clash of Arms 2 event earlier this year (who would have known that Militia Ogryns were able to beat Myrmidons to death in a fight?), and third was one of the Imperial Fists lists with twenty heavy weapons guys. I was absolutely chuffed to bits, as I’ve been coming to Warhammer World’s Heresy events since the beginning of 2019 (after being int he game about 6 months), and getting some recognition for how far I’ve come as a player was really validating.

However, what I’m almost prouder of than the gold medal for first, is the bronze medal for Best Painted HQ. I’ve been striving to improve that aspect of my hobby for the last year or so, and getting some recognition for that in the eyes of my peers (especially when there was some serious competition there) really brought a smile to my face.

In terms of the list itself, it did exactly what I wanted it to do: go fast and kick ass. Dark Furies are a seriously under-estimated unit in my opinion, though I think that stems more from Raven Guard being an under-represented legion in the wider community than anything to do with the unit themselves. my opponents (and my teammates) seemed collectively surprised that a list could do so well with so little shooting as well; considering this was what I was most afraid of from the myrmidon lists at the event, but thankfully they were made to play one another round three, and on the table next to mine.

Looking Forwards: Throne of Skulls 2025

Decapitation Strike is very strong, as one of those rites that doesn't really have a downside, and has the huge potential to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by scoring the extra points from Slay the Warlord. I ran it here and I ran it at Theodoric's Demise, and while it's good, I need to play something else. Given the change in how Throne of Skulls is scored now (wins/draws are worth 3 and 1pts respectively, rather than 6 or 2pts) thus making soft scores even more important, the army needs to change. Gone are the days of going 5-0 and scratching up some votes to win a trophy, now the votes are even more important.

I'm going to be running Liberation Force, the other Raven Guard rite of war, where I can take my Militia allies. For those who don't know, despite being a bit rubbish, Militia hold an incredibly special place in my heart when it comes to Heresy. Thrones gives me an excellent excuse to build up something fun but silly, so that's exactly what I intend to do. 2025 is going to mark the beginning of me starting to take Heresy a bit less seriously, having done two and a half years of playing good armies, moving now into a new year of what I want to call "optimized garbage".

To Conclude

I had a fantastic day off work playing toy soldiers, and I can not only add another bronze medal to my collection of them (I now have three from Warhammer World and three from judo) but also a fabulous gold one alongside my silver and bronze chainsword trophies. As always, I would happily go again, but I definitely need to play something that isn’t Decapitation Strike. I’ve also sworn a pact with the second-place Myrmidons player to not bring this list again, so long as he doesn’t bring his, so I’ll have to think up something else for next year.

As always, you can find out more about events we run in the future over at the CatD Content Hub on Facebook, follow us on Eventbrite for more details, and can keep up with my various army escapades over at my Instagram: @mjcwargaming.

Until next time!