TheChirurgeon's Road Through 2025, Part 44: Furious Prep for WCW

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing hobby and competitive progress series for 2025. Previously on Road Through 2025, I was testing Veterans of the Long War and making some decisions about what to bring to the WCW and starting on the hobby work I need to do. This week that work continues.

Another Test of the Army

As I get into painting, I'm starting to make some rough decisions about which units to bring. UNFORTUNATELY, the cutoff for list submissions for the World Championships is tomorrow at midnight, so that means I need to figure out what I'm doing this week. And I'm starting to make decisions based on models painted moreso than value, and that's always a hairy situation. The big cut I'm looking at right now is the Noise Marines and second Predator.

Here's the current version of the list I'm looking at, for Creations of Bile:

My List? - Click to Expand

Creations of Bile 2,000 Points

CHARACTERS

Chaos Lord with Hammer and Precision Enhancement

Cypher

Bile

BATTLELINE

Legionaries x5

Cultists x10

DEDICATED TRANSPORTS

Rhino

Rhino

OTHER DATASHEETS

Chosen x10

Bikes x3

Obliterators

Obliterators

Nemesis Claw x5

Raptors x5

Warp Talons x10

Predator Destructor

Vindicator

It's very similar to what I was running earlier this year and also Liam VSL's list. The big swap here is moving out the second predator for a Vindicator, then dropping the Noise Marines for Raptors. They're a better melee threat and scoring piece here and well, they're already painted. This list needs to be a little more aggro than the Veterans List but I like what it can do, and I don't need to do as much cycling the Noise Marines back into a Rhino. That said I'm also looking at Plague Marines instead of that unit of Raptors, where I like their durability and the ability to bring two good guns for a Rhino's firing deck.

Khorne Knight Kharnivore - Norman

Another Test Game: vs. Norman's Chaos Knights

Whether I run Veterans or Creations, I need to get in test games with this army. This week Norman helped me out but I've put out a call and my plan is to get another 3-4 games done in the next two weeks so I can get some good reps under my belt before I head off. This first game was really educational.

Generally, I need to figure out the following:

How to handle big threats like Knights
How to use the Chosen brick, in either list
How to use the Bikes, in either list
How to handle Eldar and GSC
How to handle melee pressure lists

Norman's list helps me with that first question. He's running the Infernal Detachment with three big knights - two double gatling Despoilers and a double battlecannon guy, plus three Karnivores, three beasts of Nurgle, a unit of Plaguebearers, and two units of Nurglings.

We play a game on Layout 2, Search and Destroy Deployment. I get the first turn but don't really want it. I rolled +2" movement and +1 Strength. Getting the Warp Talons to S6 is pretty big, so I take it.

That said, the middle ruins on layout 2 are good for staging because I can easily block Norman out of them with my Chosen and use Cypher to project his +1 CP cost aura. I set them up and then position to take shots on one Karnivore. The key to this matchup will be killing the Karnivores early but the nightmare is those three big knights - those Despoilers will kill anything they see and this isn't a good trading list.

My Vindicator gets a good shot count but whiffs twice on Norman's Karnivore, leaving it on 2 Wounds despite pushing through 5 unsaved (I rolled 9 damage on those dice), and failing to kill it in overwatch on the following turn. Norman dropped the Vindicator with the battle cannon despoiler, and on the following turn I picked up all three Karnivores, finishing one off with a free grenade and killing the other two in melee, one with the Chaos Lord's unit and the other with the Chosen. I drop both units of Obliterators and get some good shots off with them and the Predators and drop one of the big knights to 12.

On Norman's turn he picks up the Chosen (Bile survives but can't kill the Beast of Nurgle that charged him, leaving it on 1 wound so it regenerated), the Legionaries, and the Predator. Then on my turn I haymaker back, killing two of the Despoilers and dropping 17 damage on the third. At this point it's become clear that despite my losses I can pull the game out - I have two units of Obliterators on the table, plus the Raptors and a Rhino full of Nemesis Claw I had admittedly forgotten about. It's a low-scoring game, but I can definitely finish off Norman's last big knight and and leave him with too little to work with.

I felt better about this game but it also hammered home that I should just be playing Veterans of the Long War - a frustrating result, but I'd have been much better off had I just had full re-rolls to hit on some of these targets. Re-rolls to hit on the Warp Talons with Lethal Hits would have been better than +1 Strength and so god help me, I'm leaning into going with Veterans. Damn you, Liam VSL and your incredible list building skills!

That does mean I'm running a worse version of this if I take Raptors instead of Noise Marines, but I may be able to substitute Plague Marines in there and get pretty close to the value I need. That will also leave me 10 points left over for the re-roll enhancement on the Chaos Lord and I don't hate that, either.

This was a fine game and it helped that the Bile Detachment rule and Strats did very little for me during it (I mostly popped smoke and took re-rolls). Makes me feel better about trying out Veterans again, and I have another game tomorrow to test and decide.

Hobby Progress

More hobby progress! I have a bunch of half-finished models at this point, which is great, but I'm also starting to finish some of them. The latest pair are one of the four Obliterators I need to paint and a combi-weapon Chosen. I have to paint four more Chosen and if I can finish other stuff early I may paint 5 or 6 to replace some other, rougher models in my unit.

They're coming along very nicely and I haven't yet dropped my painting standard to speed things up yet. I am hopeful that I won't have to, but ask me again after I've done all of the gold trim on all of these guys. Right now I'm almost done with the next Obliterator and I have paint on every model still on my list.

Next Time: The Final List

That's it for this week, but I'll be back next week with the final list I have to submit tomorrow and more test game results. It's going to be a frantic road between here and the WCW and I plan to document all of it this year. Not sure if I'll do live updates yet but I'm definitely going to give a thought to daily updates. let me know if you have a preference.

See you next week.

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