Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of hobby and competitive progress through 2026. Last time around I was doing my final prep for the Las Vegas Open Teams Tournament, re-gluing and pinning spikes on vehicles and painting one final unit of Poxwalkers for the event. I had that all ironed out Friday morning, and with that out of the way it was time to hop on a flight to Vegas.

My wife (she of Niche Tea fame) and I arrived at the house on Friday night. My teammate David Miracle picked out the house and handed car rental this time and he found an interesting U-shaped bungalow about 15 minutes from the venue. It's kind of a wild place - there's a pool we didn't use since temps dropped to about 30 degrees at night - and a lot of pictures of older movie stars on all the walls. Plus a large wall supplied with sidewalk chalk, on which we were asked to draw things.



We make a quick trip to the local Walgreens for a lighter for the grill and end up grilling some burgers and vegan hot dogs the first night. They turn out pretty solid, though I gotta say it's always a crap shoot when you go to one of these places and have to find and work with whatever spices they happen to have deck. We managed to find some salt and pepper and a few other things to work with.



From there it's a game of fighting off sleep as we hang out, drink, talk shop, and plan some matrices. We haven't done much pre-planning to this point - I've told our guys they need to go out and get in some practice games so we have reps - but very little team practice outside of that one day we got together. Our matrix construction mostly involves planning four our round 1 opponent and listing off how we feel about matchups on a scale of 1-5.



David has put together a workbook for us to go through here; it's more compact and I'll admit, a bit easier to work with than a spreadsheet. One key interesting wrinkle with this event is that, after the defender chooses the terrain layout, the attacker will choose the mission from two options with the same deployment map. This is really interesting, and I like how it can give the attacker a bit of help and let players avoid bad missions.

My Army

I've already posted this list several times, but just to recap, here's my list:



I've got a good all-rounder list and I can be put out as an Attacker or Defender. Our general plan early on is to use Astra Militarum and World Eaters as defenders, as they have a bigger reliance on terrain. I'd end up defending a bit later to pull undesirables and just score more points but for the most part I'm here to fill gaps.

Saturday

We get up early and head over the venue - Day 1 is a full three rounds and figured to be pretty grueling, running from 8am to 9pm. The venue itself was very nice - well lit on the top floor of the convention center, with a great view of the mountains. That doesn't mean much if you're stuck inside all day, but it was a great view to have from time to time and there was a nice outdoor area to step out to between games.

Round 1: vs. Flagged for Heresy

First round, and we're paired off against Team Zero Comp. I should say now that we played five great teams and every game I played was against swell players, each of whom I enjoyed playing against. There was only one bad game across our entire team's experience, and it wasn't a game I played in. So I'm going to say nice things about everyone I played at the event, but if I don't or I forget, know that everyone I played was an absolute treat and I had five very chill, fun games great people.

Pairings

We lose the roll-off and put out World Eaters as Defender 1. Most of the time, that's so we can get Layout 8 (trenches, dense terrain) for the World Eaters so they can avoid getting shot as they move up the table and engage key shooting threats. However in this case their Black Templars player, JR is running melee-only Black Templars in Wrathful Procession, with only a single Impulsor for transport. So our plan is instead to have Thomas take him with World Eaters and go to Layout 2, which is wide open and will let him take big nasty bites out of those 20-man Crusader Squads with his Forgefiends, which can throw out 3D3+15 shots against a full unit. We take the Haywire-heavy Drukhari into our Ultramarines - a matchup we're fine with - and then drop Astra Militarum as our 2nd Defender, because we really want to avoid having Chris play on Layout 8. David ends up running his Scintillating Legion into Chaos Knights, a matchup we can live with, and I end up playing into Leagues of Votann.

My Game: vs. Bryce Wilson's Leagues of Votann

Bryce is running Leagues of Votann with the Hearthband Detachment. His army has a really neat pink/purple fade and teal color scheme. We end up on Layout 8, which is OK - it'll keep Morty clear of Hekatons, but I have longer range than most of Bryce's units so it hurts the Bloat-Drones a bit.



This is an interesting list, and one I wasn't expecting to play against - The Hearthband Detachment relies on the Hearthguard units to drop in and mash out a bunch of 2-damage shooting from Deep Strike, delivering a hammerblow to big units like Mortarion or the Daemon Prince, and if they're on an objective when it happens the Leagues player will get some extra bonuses when it happens.

That is... not good enough for going into my list. What Virulent Vectorium offers first and foremost is the ability to drop incoming damage by 1 for a phase using Disgustingly Resilient, and my plan is to keep that available all game, every game. That unit relies on high volumes of D2 firepower to function and once you drop it to D1 you essentially take its legs out from under it.

The Mission: Purge the Foe + Hammer and Anvil

Bryce picks Purge the Foe, which is a better mission for me than him. I pick Rattlejoint Ague (-1 to saves) and end up going second, which gives me a big edge there. I was very lucky in that regard this weekend - I ended up going second in all of my games. Though going first isn't a big problem for me, given I can sticky midtable objectives with Poxwalkers and then move off them.

Playing into Leagues of Votann with Death Guard is usually a trading game. Bryce's list has more units than you normally see at 15, but many of them are fairly fragile and I can usually kill two at a time if I need. The goal here is to trade the Poxwalkers early and pick up the bikes and Yaegirs, and once I get 1-2 units up, we can trade on a more 1-for-1 basis and I'll just run him out of units in the end. I need to keep units back to deal with the two five-man Hearthguard units which can drop in, and I need to avoid being shot by both Land Fortresses at the same time, but even there I have a good chance to tank at least 1-2 shots and if I live it'll be Leechspore time.



This is more or less what ends up happening and when the Hearthguard finally do drop, they shoot everything into Mortarion, I drop his damage by 1, and end up losing something like 3 wounds. The one in my backfield goes down to bloat-drone gunfire and a Fleshmower, while the one dropping in front of me is picked up by Deathshroud. I don't quite get all of Bryce's Yaegirs early as one lives, but I get there eventually and Morty and the Deathshroud will take out the Hekatons.



That failed Hearthguard drop was more or less the backbreaker in an already rough game. I end up maxing primary and pulling 38 on Secondary to finish 98-63, good for a 16-4 victory. Our pairings strategy generally worked - KC and Thomas dominated their opponents, while Chris did just fine into Imperial Knights. David struggled a bit into Chaos Knights, but even a 1-19 loss there wasn't going to derail us.

Result: 16-4, Win

After the first round we felt pretty good. It's always a relief to win your first round, and after we hit the bar to grab some lunch. We'd originally planned to bring sandwich stuff from the house but forget to bring it both days and so ended up eating Chick-Fil-A sandwiches being sold by the venue. They were OK, except for the part where the pickles had made the bottom half of the bun a soggy mess and there was no honey roasted bbq sauce. Tragic.

Cool Thing: Judge QR Codes

We had to call a judge about timing rules in round 1 - this event lets you use infinite triggered effects - and that's when I learned that the event uses QR codes to call judges. You load one up and you get a website where you can give them your table number and notes on what the issue is. This was surprisingly effective, and when I talked to Jake Jacobson about it, he mentioned that it was also intended to give players a way to call a judge to come watch their game discreetly, so they could do so without having to confront their opponent directly. I thought this was a pretty cool idea - kudos to Frontline Gaming for doing it.

Round 2: vs. 4 Horsemen

With a belly full of lunch it was time to take on our next opponents. 4 Horsemen had an interesting team comp, and our plan was to get our Scintillating Legion player matched into them, as they can drop a 4+ feel no pain against mortal wounds and psychic attacks using the Improbable Shield Aura on a Lord of Change.

Pairings

We win the roll-off and put out World Eaters as Defender 1, this time actually hoping to take Layout 8 for the World Eaters. We do that and pick Orks, while they pick me as an Attacker into their Fellhammer Siege-Host CSM. Our reasoning here is that the attack on death and anti-infantry capabilities on the World Eaters will help Thomas at least keep it close. Meanwhile, Fight on Death is a nightmare for melee armies so we put out Space Marines as D2 and take World Eaters, while they pick Astra Militarum into Votann, leaving Daemons against Grey Knights - just the matchup we wanted. We were pretty happy with pairings here, though admittedly Orks vs. World Eaters isn't amazing.

My Game: vs. Andrew's Chaos Space Marines

I fully blame my Goonhammer co-author Mike Pestilens for this sudden onset of Fellhammer Siege-Host lists from people who have been conned into playing it in teams. It's not conceptually terrible but with Death Guard I'm not going to sweat going from a 2+ to wound to a 3+ thanks to the Detachment rule.



This is far from the optimal way to run this list. The dual Forgefiends + Helbrute are much more a Pactbound Zealots play, the Havocs feel out of place, and the Possessed only ever work in units of 10, not 5. My biggest threat here is Vashtorr, who can do some damage to my little vehicles (but will get shot full of holes first), and the Forgefiends, who can throw out dev wounds.

The Mission: Purge the Foe + Hammer and Anvil

I picked Purge the Foe again here, and that's a good one for my Death Guard to work with. I end up going second which again, good for me. I take Rattlejoint Ague (-1 to saves) - I need the kill power against Terminators.

The thing about Fellhammer is that you know pretty early what the game plan is, especially if they have no vehicles. Those Terminators are going to walk to some objective, likely in the middle of the table. 3W models are just not a problem for me, especially if they can't hit with 3 damage or just have a bunch of anti-infantry shooting. Andrew drops his Nurglings first, then I put my Poxwalkers around the other two objectives during deployment and hold the third back with my Daemon Prince. My goal is to protect him from Forgefiend shooting until he can strike, while picking off Andrew's units as they come out.



Andrew gets an early drop on me with his Lord Discordant but bounces off my Blight-Hauler when I give him -1 damage - I have the extra CP here and stopping purge can be a big deal. I move Morty up toward the top of the table to stage, where Andrew has his Daemon Prince walking up behind his Possessed. I've been using the reactive move with my Poxwalkers and MBH up there to pull back as he approaches, keeping him from charging.



When the Terminators finally do make it to the middle of the table I'm able to clear them out using my three Bloat-Drones while Mortarion moves up and clears out the Daemon Prince. Andrew drops a Beast of Nurgle in my backfield and while I should have dealt with it instead I decided to just leave it alone and not chance it. This probably cost me a point or two as he'd go on to draw Establish Locus and Behind Enemy Lines and score those but going after a Beast of Nurgle with just a Fleshmower is a dicey proposition - you wound on 5+ and you need to land 4 unsaved wounds out of ten attacks to make it happen.



Mortairon up there in Andrew's backfield is a pretty good indicator of how things went - I took out both Forgefiends with my Blight-Haulers and Bloat-Drones and just hauled into his deployment zone. I don't think there was really a point where this one was ever contested and I finished without losing a single vehicle or big unit.

Result: 17-3, Win

Andrew had started playing right when tenth edition came out, and was inspired to start when he saw the Chaos Space Marine Combat Patrol box with the Helbrute in it. This marks him as a gentleman of wealth and taste, to which I can only say: "Hell yeah." His list had some solid elements but needs some refinement as its sandwiched units-wise between Fellhammer and Pactbound Zealots. He put up a solid effort but this was a tough matchup for him.

That said, I probably should have tried to prevent those points, as the round would end up being very close. David somehow failed all of his feel no pain saves into the Grey Knights matchup, losing 1-19. Chris and KC score solid wins in their games, 14-6 and 15-5, respectively, but Thomas dropped his game to Orks 8-12. That's not bad but David's big loss means we end up lucky to scrape by with a win here - we finish 55-45, which is normally a tie in Europe but the narrowest of wins here.



That leaves one more round for the day and now we're scrambling for some kind of dinner. I end up grabbing a shitty burger from the venue bar. It tastes like a microwaved burger and the fries are dry as hell but I need something to eat at this point to get through the final round or I'm gonna be dying on my feet. It would end up being a wise move.

Round 3: vs. Zugzwang USA

Round 3 would end up being the most difficult round of the event for us, putting us into Team Zugzwang, staffed by some very good players. Our biggest fear here are the Admech, who have a very solid game plan and can just cause real problems for anyone on our team. I think I have an OK match up into them - a 3 - but the bigger issue is that they're being piloted by Floof Cox. Floof is someone I've met in passing when they played as a merc for team Sanctum last year at Challengers Cup. Floof is currently ranked 35th in the world in Stat Check's Elo and by most accounts is a better player than me. They've also got several other heavy hitters and most of their team are in the top 500. For the record, I'm something like 1,360 right now and I'm probably the best player on our team (though Thomas and KC are close).

So it's an uphill battle.

Pairings

We're less confident this time around and have had less time to prepare. No one wants to go into Admech, regardless of who's playing it. But if it has to be someone, it's probably going to be me. We put Space Marines into their T'au list, telling KC to keep it close. Thomas gets the Thousand Sons, where our hope is that his Forgefiend and 3-damage melee can handle all the Terminators. Chris gets space marines, and David has to contend with Astra Militarum. That leaves me facing down Floof on Layout 8 - this gives me the best chance to avoid massive volleys of withering fire from the Kataphrons and Ironstriders. So it's at least the table I wanted.

My Game: vs. Floof's Adeptus Mechanicus

Floof is normally a GSC player and if they were on GSC I'd have likely been cooked, especially given this isn't a Hammer list. Judging by the results, I think Floof fell on a lot of grenades.



Playing into new Admech at that RTT two months ago is paying off - I'm not liable to be surprised by how nasty Admech... everything... can be, and I know the Kataphrons are a real threat here. Specifically, the Breachers, who have a 3-damage attack and hit on 5+ when firing Overwatch.

The Mission: Take and Hold + Hammer and Anvil

I'm going second which again - very lucky. Admech tend to have invulnerable saves one worse than their armor saves, making Rattlejoint Ague kind of pointless. So instead I take Skullsquirm Blight (-1 to hit rolls). Floof puts the Breachers into Strategic Reserves and that's fine by me but I'll have to worry about them later. My plan is to keep things even scoring Hold 2 on Primary, then outscore by Floof on round 5. That's easier said than done given how fast some of their units can be.



The big thing Floof attempts to do most of the game is drop Pteraxii down in front of my lines to stop my advance. But Mortarion and the Bloat-Drones can just jump over them, making it only a factor for slowing the Daemon Prince. And the Daemon Prince's 12" aura stops that from being too big a deal. I kill two out of the three Pteraxii units this way while the third drops down into my deployment zone to try and blank me on primary. Unfortunately, that -1 to hit does its work here and Floof only kills two Poxwalkers, bouncing off and leaving me with my home objective. That's enough to swing this game bigtime as my Fleshmower makes its way back over there.



Things get spicy after the Breachers show up; I need Mortarion to handle the Destroyers at mid-table so I charge with him and end up taking 9 wounds in Overwatch from them. I then fail 7 out of 9 saves for 21 damage and save 7 of it, leaving me to take 14 damage and drop to exactly 1 wound. Morty then goes on to wipe the Breacher Squad and clear the middle objective while my Deathshroud take out Cawl.

At the game's end I can move back onto the middle objective for a final score , letting me narrowly eke out a win here.

Result: 11-9, Win

Floof was a great opponent and this game was exhausting. Admech are really good and breachers are a nightmare for me to deal with, especially when they have [LETHAL HITS] to go with it from a Manipulus. Still, while I was able to eke out a win, we lost all four of the other games, mostly by narrow margins. We take our first loss of the day and end up 2-1.

That said, no one is upset about this - we're happy with 2-1 and ultimately we'll be ecstatic if we can go 3-2 against a crowd as good as this one. We head back to the house and end up picking up some Digiorno pizzas along the way, and second dinner becomes frozen pizza and sandwiches. Three games of team Warhammer in one day is a grueling affair, and Sunday promises to be much easier on everyone.

Sunday

Sunday is just a much more chill affair - the first round doesn't kick off until 10 am, so we're free to hang out and chat, strategize around pairings, and eat some actual breakfast. I house some of the leftover pizza from the night before and we head back over to the venue for round 4.

Round 4: vs. Sanctum CGC

We're well rested and ready to go. This round looks to be tough - Sanctum CGC are a Southern California group who do teams events often. They're all-in on melee threats; none of their armies have much shooting. It's a hell of a skew.

Pairings

This time around we want Astra Militarum as D1 so Chris can take Layout 2 and ensure he gets the points he needs. With three units of Wolf Guard Terminators the Space Wolves player is tough, but we're counting on Thomas to use a mix of anti-infantry dev wounds and fight on death to be able to handle them and stay on the table. I'm out as D2 and Emperor's Children are an easy pick - I think they have a terrible matchup into Vectorium, and I know how to play it. That leaves KC to take on Sisters and David to take on Daemons, where we're just hoping he can hang on to keep it close. They have a lot of Bloodthirsters to drop on the table and that'll be a problem for David's army if they get in.

My Game: vs. Chris Morales' Emperor's Children

Chris has a relatively standard Coterie list - two units of Infractors in Rhinos, two units of Tormentors, three Winged Daemon Princes, three units of Noise Marines, and a Maulerfiend. There's no Lucius here, but plenty of fast threats.



The key to playing Coterie is to not let them have their stupid Coterie points. The whole point of the list is that they supercharge good datasheets with cheap army-wide re-rolls, so your mission is to keep them off points until round 3 - at which point it'll be too late. So you drop back with the Poxwalkers instead of using them to screen or stop enemy units from crossing midfield and use them more as action units and threats for depleted five-man units. Meanwhile the list really doesn't have good answers for Mortarion and the Daemon Prince - the Maulerfiend doesn't have enough attacks to reliably get in and the Daemon Princes don't have a high enough strength value.

The Mission: Take and Hold + Hammer and Anvil

I took layout 1 - it has a good staging area for me to hide from Noise Marines while still having big, open channels I can fire down with my Bloat-Drones. I also took Rattlejoint Ague (-1 to saves) in order to ensure I'd get damage pushed through - that's more important than -1 to hit since I don't plan to be spending too much time getting hit in melee. The plan is to hang back and pick up his units piecemeal while staying close so I can use Mortarion's reactive move and Heroic Intervention to avoid combat and punish charges. The Blight-Haulers here are going to do work into the Rhinos and Daemon Princes and while I'm going second, that's exactly what I get, destroying both Rhinos early as they stick out.

By pulling back with my units and using Disgustingly Resilient I'm able to blank Chris on the first round for his Coterie points - a big win - and hold him to a single kill on the second round when he'd wagered three points. This ends up being the game, as he can't get anything going until round 4.



I'm able to drop a unit of Deathshroud into his deployment zone late, stealing his home objective while pushing across the table with Mortarion after destroying his Maulerfiend. I pick up both Daemon Princes by the end of the game and this was another one where I lost very little - two units of Poxwalkers, the Blight-Haulers, and one unit of Deathshroud. Emperor's Children lists really don't like to trade down, and even when I'm not giving up the Poxwalkers easy, I can still gladly give them up in order to take down a much more expensive and valuable threat.

Result: 18-2, Win

This was a tough round. Chris delivered in his game with a 14-6 victory while KC ground out a 12-8 into Sisters. David pulled a draw with his Daemons which was more or less what we wanted. But ultimately Goatboy let us down in this one, getting completely obliterated 20-0 after he failed every. single. fight on death roll. Thirty plus of them, by his count. The end result is that we finish 54-46, which is a tie by the narrowest of margins. That puts us at 2-1-1 and while I'd rather be 3-1, I'm not gonna complain about this result. If we can score one more win at this event we'll have more than beaten my expectations for the team.

Lunch is a shitty personal Papa Johns pizza. I was wondering what the venue was going to have instead of Chick-Fil-A on Sunday and the answer was "a lukewarm circle of ass." I eat it outside with Chris and we head onto the final round.

Round 5: vs. You Bet Your Bippy

And so we went into the final round, certain we'd pull either You Bet Your Bippy or Obliterati as our final opponent. We pulled Bippy and I'm glad for it - they were a joy to play and we very much had a good time in the final round.

Pairings

This time I'm first defender. I have a four into every matchup here and I'm comfortable with whatever. I take the 30x Possessed list because no one else wants it and I put them on Layout 2. Their Space Marine player gets his choice of Daemons or World Eaters and opts to go into David's Scintillating Legion list. Chris goes out as second defender and gets paired into their Plague Legion daemons list, while the Necrons player opts to face Goatboy's World Eaters and we end up with KC's Ultras fighting their Custodes, another matchup we wanted.

My Game: vs. TJ's Creations of Bile

TJ was a treat and while my game against Floof was my favorite game of the event, TJ was my favorite opponent. A real chill guy.



TJ is running a lot of 3-wound models, as his list name would suggest. That's normally a tall order... unless you have Bloat-Drones to clear them out. Of course, the challenge there is that the drones can be swingy, so you never fully know how it'll turn out, but they're a good contender for best way to deal with the list. It's also a pretty fast list with those Possessed, though I won't know until game time if they get the +2" movement. TJ has no shooting to speak of, so Layout 2 is an ideal place to confront him and I can just put Morty and my DP in the open and never worry about lone operative. The big problem here is the Possessed... but not for me. At AP-1 and 2 damage, they are utterly neutered by Disgustingly Resilient and I intend to use that to stop them dead.

The Mission: Purge the Foe + Search and Destroy

One more round on Purge, and again I'm going second (very lucky). I take Rattlejoint Ague (-1 to saves) and drop my Poxwalkers at mid-table to stop him from coming out beyond 9" from his zone. My goal is to stop him there, then deplete his forces with shooting and render that first wave unable to get the job done. I'm going to give up 4 points on turn 1 for Purge but that's an acceptable cost. TJ comes out hot with his bikes, Possessed, and Chosen and kills my Poxwalkers for four points. Then I retaliate by killing his Bikes and a few Possessed, but have a real rough turn into his saves so he only loses a few models beyond that. Unfortunately for him, Mortarion is now in the middle of the table and when his Possessed go into my Blight-Hauler, I use Disgustingly Resilient to keep him from killing it, and blank him on "kill one" on round 2 - a brutal result.



Bile's Chosen hang on a bit in the middle while the Chaos Lord's chosen end up being very annoying to remove near my home objective but the game more or less ends when I drop in my Deathshroud - one unit takes TJ's home objective and kills a 10-model Possessed unit in a single turn of shooting + charge (the Lord of Virulence giving them re-rolls is so, so good into heavy infantry). This leaves TJ with just two units of Obliterators, Bile, and a Terminator Sorcerer and Mortarion clears out the Sorcerer and Obliterators while the Daemon Prince and a Fleshmower kill the other and Bile drops to Deathshrouds.

Result: 17-3, Win

That could have been 18-2 with some slightly better secondary draws but I'm always a little wary about spending CP for that when I need it for Disgustingly Resilient. Unfortunately Thomas ate absolute shit in his game, losing 6-14, while Chris pulled an 11-6 win, on par with his prediction. KC helped out bigtime here with a 16-4 win over the custodes, also meeting prediction. That just leaves David, who has had a bit of a rough event. He's managed to kill the Repulsor Executioners in the Space Marines list but is struggling with Guilliman and Calgar. This one goes down to the wire, and David manages to eke out a 5-15 loss. That's good enough, however - we end up winning 55-45, putting us at 3-1-1 for the event.

Hell yes.

That is better than I expected and it feels good to squeeze that out after three tough rounds. I buy TJ a drink, we talk to their team and exchange handshakes, then pack up and head out. Caroline found an all-you-can eat Korean BBQ place on the strip, so we head over that way and get fucked up on galbi and bulgogi for about an hour and a half.



The place was called Gen Korean BBQ and I'd recommend it - the dumplings were great and the ribeye was particularly buttery. The glass noodles were also excellent. Just a really great meal to finish things off with and we housed the shit out of it while watching the Patriots dominate the Chargers.



After that we hit up an escape room - Caesar's Palace has a number of high-end escape rooms it turns out, and we did Descend, which sees players attempting to dive down to an undersea research facility to find some secret experimental data and return with it to the surface. This was a really cool escape room with some cool elements and an exciting escape sequence. I'd recommend it. We finished with about 8 minutes to spare.

After that it was back to the house where we drank and talked for as long as our bodies would allow us to maintain consciousness. We all had early flights but the general vibe was that everyone had an amazing weekend and a great time, and I'm very much inclined to agree.

Five-Man Teams Is the Superior Format

After two big teams events in 2025 I'll admit I'd gotten tired of the format. Trying to coordinate food, transport, and lodging for eight adults, employed full-time with their own families and time constraints, was a massive pain in the ass and having to fill in two spots not once but twice during the year left me burnt out on the idea of doing more this year.

So I'm happy to report that, having done this event, I'm once again back on the Teams wagon. But five-man teams, specifically - the logistics for five-mans are just so much better: It's much easier to fit five people into a single car, book a house or restaurant, or generally just go places and do things. You can yell about game balance and team strategy in eights until you are blue in the face but I'm just wholly uninterested in the marginal tactical benefits of eights compared to the massive logistics hassle.

I've got Challengers Cup to attend later this year and will likely do Ottawa but those will be the only eights I attend. Five man events are just way more fun and way less of a pain in the ass. Also it seems that every team struggles to fill eight slots but can magically form two or three five-man teams when called.

On that note, I had a blast. FLG ran a fantastic event, and now I'm inclined to go to more of their events this year, particularly as I've scratched some of the other Texas events off my list. The Dallas Open in particular is one I'm looking to attend again this year after a two-year hiatus. I'm going to sit down next week and do a proper calendar accounting of my events this year.

Next Week: The Palm Springs GW US Open

That wraps up this week's recap for the LVOTT - a strong start to the year events-wise. I finished 5-0 but it's a teams event so that's not particularly noteworthy - too much ability to pick opponents to take that much pride in it - but I'm very proud of my team's 10th place finish at 3-1-1. This weekend I'm off again, this time to Palm Springs for the Games Workshop US Open event. It's kind of insane to do back-to-back travel weeks and I'm not anticipating doing this again for a long time but I'm looking forward to going to Palm Springs for the first time.

I originally wanted to do run Nightmare Hunt at Palm Springs but it's looking like I won't have time to finish the army so it's going to be Death Guard again - I don't even have to unpack the minis, after all. It's a strong list and I'm hopeful I can make top cut with it.

See you next Thursday with the recap.

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