Tournament Review: Singidunum Winter Clash GT by Ranko Z

With this year’s tournament season winding down, I thought I’d take a stab at writing up my own tournament report from this year’s largest regional GT, which I coincidentally ended 3rd overall at. 

I switched a few armies this year, starting the year with Grey Knights, moving on to Thousand Sons, Black Legion and then Sororitas for the last tournament leading up to our own Singidunum Winter Clash GT, the Slovenian Aemona GT in Ljubljana. I really like sisters as an army, and it was a blast playing them in Ljubljana, but for our own GT, I wanted to play a completely different style of list – one that goes out and dominates primary objectives, rather than play passively and outscore via overtuned secondaries. With the CSM codex being something that I really enjoyed from a thematic perspective, and with Abaddon being my favorite character in-universe, it was a clear choice – I would play Black Legion. 

My first consideration was the fact that we would be playing WTC scoring. In this type of game, your objective is to create the largest possible gap between your points and your opponent’s points. Because of this, you not only have to score high, you should also attempt to deny your opponent’s primaries and secondaries to the best of your ability. Black Legion are well suited for this task, because of their nigh invulnerable Terminator brick that has access to Objective secured, as well as Legionaries being able to turn off your opponent’s Objective Secured. With Black Legion, your win condition is taking over your opponent’s side of the board – if you don’t, chances are you are losing the game due to your less than stellar secondary game. 

My second consideration was that we would have some very good players attending the tournament, and that those players would most likely be far readier to face a run of the mill Creations of Bile or Emperor’s Children list than some form of Black Legion shenanigans. To this end, I also brought out my Rubric Marines armed with Warpflamers, and a Terminator Sorcerer equipped with the Black Legion relic Veilbreaker Plate, which allows you to teleport the bearer and one additional core unit 9” away from your opponent once per game – Rubric Marines are core, can benefit from Abaddon’s wound rerolls, and hit incredibly hard with an additional 2 shots from each of their warpflamers due to Let the Galaxy Burn rule.  This gave me a huge threat to work with, because an average of 55 shots that auto hit, have access to full wound re-rolls and +1 to wound in the form of Veterans of the Long War flatten both big, tanky units and horde units alike. Their built-in shooting durability as well as a very dangerous overwatch means they create a very big problem for the opponent in the turn they teleport in, letting terminators and Abaddon have free reign in the middle. Also, the fact that you can teleport in such a way makes your opponent use more brainpower in order to screen himself effectively and making your opponent think is always a good thing. 

With these things settled, I went into battlescribe and filled out the rest of my list. 

Abaddon, Dark Apostle, Master of Possession and the aforementioned Terminator Sorcerer were filling my HQ slots. My troops were made up of two units of Accursed Cultists and one unit of Legionaries. The accursed cultists were something I was experimenting with, and found to be a solid alternative to regular cultists, in that their resurrection rule can put your opponent in a tricky situation, where they need to dedicate actual firepower to take them out, rather than simply allocating spare bolters or stubbers to it, since with this unit, anything other than a wipe means free movement. The Legionaries were kitted out as follows – Power Fist, Heavy Chainaxe, Chainswords, and Tome, marked by Slaanesh and carrying its Icon. This meant that with Black Legion legion trait, my power fist and heavy chainaxe was hitting on 2s, which is a pretty big bonus. This squad was also in charge of being the “I can turn off your obsec at any time” threat. 

With HQs and Troops filled, and having Terminators and Rubrics dialed in, I moved on to the rest of the list – with 385 points to go, I didn’t have a lot of room to work with, but I knew I needed some faster moving units, as well as some additional melee power. I settled for Possessed for 2 reasons – first, they are fast and can raise my banners, and second, they are tough and hit hard without the need for buffs or support of any kind. The remaining points were filled out by a Venomcrawler to make my casts more reliable, as well as have a backup fast moving unit, that also happens to have a huge base that can be used to moveblock knights and monsters on WTC terrain. 

With my list done, I eagerly awaited the weekend of the tournament, determined to despoil some worlds in the Warmaster’s name. 

ROUND 1: 

Mission 33 – SECURE MISSING ARTEFACTS 

Vs Enes Humić playing Goffs, Orks. 

My first game was against Enes, a fantastic player and great friend from Croatia. We already played a game in Slavonski Brod this year and having lost that to his spectacularly painted Chaos Daemons, I was ready to settle the score. Enes brought Orks this time, with Ghaz, two kill rigs, two squads of ten Beast Snagga boys, and three squads of Squig riders. As always, Enes’ army was incredibly well painted, even down to the gretchins. The list wasn’t optimized in any way but having seen what he can do even with weaker armies, I was sure this would be a great game. 

Enes got first turn, teleported one of his Squighog boyz units and charged my possessed, wiping a squad and threatening my Priority objective. I retaliated by killing them with my Rubrics and opening up Ghaz’ trukk with Terminator meltas. Raised a couple of banners and prepared to face the wrath of an Ork Waagh. In the second round, Enes called the Waagh and charged in – Ghaz went in first and to my delight got overwatched by the terminators, taking four damage. Most of his units ended up charging in this turn but couldn’t do significant damage to the terminators – which proved fatal in my turn. Abaddon and his bodyguards tore open the kill rig, killed the Beast Snaggas, Ghaz and the rest of the gretchin, while another squad of possessed and rubrics took down the other two Squighog units, practically ending the game. Turn 3 and 4 were just clean up, and the game ended 13-7(97-78) in my favor. Overall fun game against an army I don’t fight often, and one that is painted to a very high standard (he won best painted at the tournament, too!) 

ROUND 2: 

Mission 32 – DEATH AND ZEAL 

Vs Matija Mandurov playing Emperor’s Chosen, Adeptus Custodes 

Matija is a great friend of mine whom I met whilst playing X-Wing competitively a few years ago, a game in which he was one of the best players in the Region. He headed the Croatian team as Captain for a few years and had made great efforts in both Singles and Teams brackets for Croatia. This is all to say, he was a better X-Wing player than I ever was, and I was really happy when I heard that he moved on to 40k because I knew the regional scene would be greatly improved by an addition of a fantastic player such as him. 

Matija brought Custodes, his first and only faction. This was his first big tournament (possibly his first tournament period) in 40k, and keeping that in mind, his performance was spectacular and an awesome start to his 40k career.  

My game plan was simple – take over the middle and outscore him on primaries, while scoring Interrogation, Banners and Long War if he tried to take one of the objectives away from me. This proved easier said than done, because he managed to take away a couple of my objectives due to my poor estimations of his offensive output. This alongside the tertiary objective of taking over your opponent’s objectives made it so that we both maxed our primary. I managed to deny his Grind Them Down every turn, and that made the largest difference – the game ended in a 11-9 (86-78) win for me. A poor showing on my part, but a win, nonetheless. 

The most noteworthy part of the game was Abaddon being stuck in melee for 4 fight phases with a Contemptor and a Blade champion, either side being wholly incapable of killing the other. However, in the last turn, Abaddon fell back, shot Trajann to death and charged in, picking up both the Contemptor and the Champ. Vindication. 

ROUND 3: 

Mission 22 – CONVERSION 

Vs. Mate Csaszar playing Emperor’s Children Legion, Chaos Space Marines 

 Mate was one of the favorites to win the entire tournament, so when we got paired in round three, especially when considering that it was a mirror match – I was not optimistic in the least. 

Mate’s list was one of the better Chaos Marine lists I’ve seen – Terminators with max power fists and chainfists, buffed by the Apostle and Master of Possession, with a Daemon Prince and Abaddon serving as two big fighty characters. And the best part – four units of blastmaster noise marines. However, luckily for me, Mate’s dice gave out when he charged Abaddon into my terminators, killing only one, and dying in return to my fall back-shoot-charge combo. My Abby picked up half of his terminator squad, and the rubrics burned two noise marine units to a crisp – effectively ending the game. The remainder of the rounds were merely a formality, and the game ended 17-3 (83-43) in my favor. Mate was a great sport and it was interesting to play into a mirror, which was a first for me.  

Day 1 was thus over, and I was still undefeated – a great success in my book. However, I was then paired with Saša, one of my teammates from Novi Sad, and his Chaos Daemons. 

ROUND 4: 

Mission 23 – THE SCOURING 

Vs. Saša Lalić playing Undivided Chaos Daemons 

I didn’t know what to expect from this game, mostly because I didn’t face any Chaos Daemon armies after the new codex came out. Also, Saša played against my Black Legion before, and was present during my rants regarding the list I was bringing, and what my plans were for each unit. This made it so that I was in a bit of a disadvantage, so I made a daring move – I teleported the Rubrics into a ruin onto his objective and took out one of his flamer squads. This put him into a very awkward position – he had to take the objective back but couldn’t quite do so while the Rubrics were there. He also couldn’t safely bring in his daemonettes nor his bloodthrister, because the “auspex-scan” stratagem that my Tzeentch marked units can access meant that he could easily lose the unit before it does anything. A couple minutes and two CP later, my Rubrics shot an additional two times – once at a teleporting unit, and once via overwatch. The bloodthrister killed the rubrics, but not before they squeezed out three full shooting phases of damage, more than making up their points investment. 

This teleport proved game-winning, as the number of units Saša needed to commit in order to simply control his own backfield objective allowed me to take over the rest of the board uncontested. I won the game 16-4 (88-67) and moved on to the finals. 

Round 5: 

Mission 11 – RECOVER THE RELICS 

Vs. Nikolas Papadopoulos playing Undivided Chaos Daemons 

Oh boy, the finals. To be perfectly honest, I did not expect to reach the final game, not with this list in any case, but now that I did, I had to think of a way to give myself a fighting chance. The mission was not in my favor, because with 6 objectives, 3 of which are basically in our deployment zones, and a hold one hold two type of scoring, this meant that the Primary was easily scorable and very difficult to deny – which meant that my army’s main strengths were neutered. Also, Chaos Daemons had two easily maxed secondaries – Reality Rebels and Raise the Banners High, while I only had one easily maxed secondary, Banners. Some quick maths made it clear that if we both stay in our deployment zones, I will lose by 15 points – and Nik will win the event. So, I had to come to him. The plan was to buff my terminators as much as possible, roll an advance, chug a beer, and hope for the best. Unfortunately, I couldn’t autopass my Illusory Supplication, because of the Mission rule where you only receive your command phase CP if you control an objective in no-man’s land, and I started with only 1 cp. Of course, this meant that I had to roll a 1 on a 2+ chant. Fine, I’ll just buff their toughness, give them a 5+++, and tank the potential charges. I failed to cast either of these. Yikes. I raised some banners, shuffled some units around, and resolved to wait for the next turn, delaying my forward push. 

Nik, being the experienced player that he is, simply raised his own banners, and passed his turn. 

Now, I am not proud of this next part, but I rolled for the chant again in turn 2, and after failing a second time, and delaying the assault a further one turn, I also rolled for it in turn 3, failing a third time in a row. Now, while the odds of this happening are 1/216, I am thoroughly convinced that the odds jump to 1/1 when you are greedy enough not to spend the CP for it for the second time. However, after finally paying for the stratagem in turn 4, I rolled again just to see what would happen – of course, it was a 1 again. 

Unfortunately, by the time I was able to leave my side of the board, it was too late, I couldn’t deny enough points to win the game by more than 6 points, and anything other than a 11-9 would mean Nik wins the event – we figured this out in turn 4, and simply scored the rest of the game.  

Key takeaways from this match were that even a game that has the entire tournament on the line can still be friendly, fun and respectful. We both played by intent and had a great time discussing tactics and alternate approaches to the matchup. The final score was 8-12 (71-86), loss. 

Nikolas is truly a world class player who plays several games per week, both online and over the board, and he absolutely deserved 1st place at our GT. He managed to score a total of 91/100 WTC points. For reference, our 2nd place, Luka, had a total of 71/100 points, and I had 63/100 in the 3rd place. 

Overall, I was quite happy with both how the event played out and with my performance. I did not expect much from Black Legion, but I was proven wrong, and for that I am glad. 

Until next time!