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This week has been an absolute hobby bananza - I have painted, learned, and played a new army. The culmination was this weekend where I had back to back RTTs. I can’t wait to break it down in this weeks post.

Hobby Progress

This week has been an impressive week (if I do say so myself!). In order to get my Genestealer cults ready for their debut showing on Sunday I needed to finish off:

12 Grendade launcher Neophytes

8 Special weapon Neophytes

20 Acolyte Hybrids

2 Primus’

2 Nexos’

1 Clammavus

and quite possibly a partridge in a pear tree…

And a Daemon Prince for my Daemons list to run on the Saturday.

Still WIP but battle ready at least

None the less I completed these to a decent battle ready standard, ready to field and learn in the RTT. Along side I also completed a quick test scheme for the slaves to darkness army I am working on too.

Onto the events

This weekend I had two events, both following the latest dataslate, on Saturday I was at Element Games in Stockport for Mordian Glory’s Bug Hunt 2023. And Sunday for Element Games store champions RTT. Both days were fantastic and the team at Element always put on an amazing event.

Saturday: Daemons 2.0

So the balance dataslate was relatively light on daemons, a few not-undeserved points increases, that now mean my list has to lose a big daemon. The new list was:

Shalaxi, Belakor, Kairos, Lord Of Change, a Nurgle Daemon Prince, The Changeling, 3 x 3 Flamers, and 2 x 3 Nurgling swarms.

Not a massive change from the list I ran last week - still tough to kill and still hits like a brick. I was confident I could have a strong showing here especially with the drop in dev wounds in many lists.

Game 1 Genestealer Cults

The first game was into Rob and his GSC, his list had 100 neophytes in it so I knew I would have to really focus one brick at a time in order to stop the resurrection shenanigans. And failing that, use my nurglings to stop the blips.

This plan worked swimmingly, as I bravely hid behind belakor’s please dont shoot me aura then proceeded to flame and chop bricks to their consituent parts.

Daemons Win - 100 - 25

Game 2 Custodes

Following onto that I paired into Ed and his Custodes list, for this I was quietly confident that whilst I wouldn’t be able to stop him scoring a reasonable amount on the primary - I knew I could essentially outrange him and his combat threat. And I did just that, slowly picking apart the squads as they came forward. The changes to the golden boys were really noticable here, as I could kill each squad quite quickly through their groups of 5.

Daemons Win 95 - 50

Game 3 Imperial Knights

Things went from bad to worse for the final pairing, into Markus and his imperial knights. We had vital ground and scrambler fields - effectively neutering my teleport shennanigans. Markus is also a very strong player and gave me no chance to capitalise on any of his positioning. A few spikes in dice rolls lead to me losing shalaxi and the lord of change much quicker than average locked in the deal.

Imperial Knights win 100 - 38.

A fantastic event, and helped prove that my deamons are still very competitive and a solid option for the end of the year as LGT approaches.

Day 2, RTT 2 - Genestealer Cults

The Sunday was back at element for their store champions RTT - for this I had decided to take and learn the cults, especially after the dataslate - as I have been collecting this army for quite some time now but never got it to a point where I was able to run them in a competitive setting. Now I had never played GSC before that day, and rarely played against them as it was. So I was expecting my head to be fried by the end of it. Fortunately for me I had a team mate coming along who has plenty of experience to help keep me honest.

My list was 2 x 20 neophytes, 2 x 10 + 1 x5 Acolytes (demo charges), 1 x 10 Aberrants, 2 ridgerunners (mortars), and a smattering of characters. The list was designed to be as few datasheets as possible for me to be able to focus on learning.

Game 1 Votann

The first game of the day was Jim and his Votann, and I will make no bones about the fact that I was worried in this match up. I think that Votann are some of the big winners in the dataslate, and the hearthguard bricks are absolute monsters in terms of their output. case in point, 73 shots with sustained 2 from just the grendade launchers when he shot them at one of my neophyte bricks. Fortunately however, I was able to keep them contained a bit with the use of an earthshaker cannon and rapid ingressing outside of line of sight to make a strong charge the next turn. This and the absolute brick that gsc shooting is helped me table the votann across the game and secure the result.

GSC win 99 - 86

Game 2 Custodes

Yet again my post lunch match was into the emperors golden boys, a very interesting list and I knew that if I ever got charged I would lose whatever he touched. However with the earthshaker I was able to slow down one of the threats and use the neophyte bricks to deal with the other really enabled me to mitage the pieces one at a time. It was a very short game and was over by the end of turn 2.

GSC Win 100 - 17

Game 3 Genestealer Cults

The final game was into the GSC playing team mate I mentioned earlier, I did not expect to do too well into this, and annoyingly this match up would likely prevent our team being able to take the 1st place. An interesting mission but ultimately his experience and going second helped him shut the door on me, but thanks to late game scoring I still had a respectable result.

GSC (Not Me) Win 75 - 64

Overall

A fantastic event to end out the weekend and I loved playing the cults, I defintiely think they could be a strong contender for my LGT run, if not the Votann who I think also have a lot of play. Finished 5th overall on Sunday and 4th on Saturday so I would ultimately call this week a big win.

Next week I will be working on the Cities of Sigmar box, and some exciting announcments to follow so come back next week for that.

Thanks for your time,

Charles