TheChirurgeon's Road Through 2026, Part 8: Huron Testing, Part 2

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog of hobby and competitive progress through 2026. Last time around I was playing a test game with the new Renegade Warband Detachment, trying some things out with Huron Blackheart and the rest of the Red Corsairs. This time around I'm doing more testing with the new units and trying to figure out what I should be running in two weeks at the Clutch GT. I've got a tough decision ahead of me, and no matter what I choose it's liable to be a pain in the ass to be ready in time. So let's just dive in.

The Clutch City GT

My next big event is a week from Saturday - the Clutch City GT here in Houston. With a rules cutoff of last Saturday, this one's a bit of a weird one in that I am perfectly able to use my Red Corsairs at the event, since those datasheets, points, and detachments dropped last Wednesday. That's cool, but it means that if I wanted to bring the army I'd have to put in some real work getting them ready and painting them. And with only about ten days I am really not sure I have enough time.

The challenge here is the usual one for me: My best army is my Death Guard. They're a solid B-tier force right now and I've both played them a ton and I can play them well. I enjoy playing them. They're fun on the table.

HOWEVER.

They don't win Best Painted. And also I don't know that they're good enough to actually compete with the top armies at the moment - specifically, C'Tan-heavy Necrons. I have a rough idea of how I'd handle them on the table but trying to take down four is a big ask. And beyond all that, I'm kind of sick of playing them. They're fun, but something like 80% of my last hundred or so games have been with Death Guard and now I'd like to change things up.

If I were smarter, I'd go back to Thousand Sons. A quick look at Data Slate shows there are a number of strong lists recently running things I have most of the models for - I have plenty of Scarab Occult Terminators; I mostly need to paint some Sekhetar Robots and Tzaangor Enlightened, plus another unit of Tzaangors and I'd have more or less everything I was looking for. That's not a bad place for me to go and the army is really good right now. But I'm not there at the moment, and need to spend some time painting.

And anyways, I'm not that smart. I keep trying to make Chaos Space Marines work, despite my better judgment. I just don't enjoy playing this army much at the moment - the datasheets just aren't great, built for an earlier time in the edition when AP-2, 2 damage was the pinnacle of melee technology and AP-3 was hard to come by. They tend to be overly fragile and underpowered on the whole, and it makes for an army that has to overcommit everywhere to kill anything while being fragile as tissue paper in the return salvo. Its best units may very well be Noise Marines, borrowed from another army.

So this is all a roundabout way of saying I don't know what I want to play but right now I'm leaning toward Red Corsairs as a way of chasing paint awards. I've really enjoyed painting the new models and want to keep on working on the army. So I'm going to keep testing different strategies.

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

Testing Veterans of the Long War with Huron

With that in mind I invited my buddy KC over for another game, this time to test a new list concept with Huron. I wasn't wild about the Renegade Warband Detachment after a game and I wanted to try something specific this time around - namely, having an army with two units capable of hopping back in transports with Reactive moves. Huron's unit gets a D3+3" move built in, while the Detachment gives a 6" reactive move via a Stratagem. My notion was to take one unit of ten Chosen with Bile, plus another unit of five with Huron and the Masters of the Maelstrom, and have them both able to react.

I went with some standard support on top of that - two units of Obliterators, two Predators, a unit of Warp Talons, and a unit of Bikes.

The Game: vs. KC's Dark Angels

KC's running Dark Angels with two Vindicators, Lion'El Jonson, Azrael and a unit of Inner Circle guys, a unit of five Deathwing Knights, five Jump Assault Intercessors, five Intercessors, five Scouts, a Stormhammer, and a five-man Assault squad with a Captain attached. it's not a good matchup for me - I don't have a good answer for Lion'El, and the army generally outfights me with tougher units. My plan is to try and hang back and bait out the lion and kill him early.

The Mission: A - Take and Hold // Tipping Point

That doesn't really happen. I'm going second, which helps, but it also means KC can pick up the Lion immediately and drop him onto me with Rapid Ingress. My plan is to get out of the Chosen and Huron's unit, then use the reactive moves to put them back in both Rhinos to make for harder charges on KC's turn. That kind of works - they do both get back in - but KC just closes in with both units and then spikes on his captain's power fist, and it dies before the Lion fights. I can't fully get out so I take the emergency disembarkation and lose two guys in the process.

Then things go sideways - I throw everything I have into the Lion and only knock him down to 4 wounds using both units of Obliterators, two Predators, and the Masters of the Maelstrom. That's not great, and I lose all of the unit charging into the Lion to try and kill him, where Huron knocks him down to 1. The Warp Talons kill the Jump Assault Intercessors, the Chosen kill the Impulsor, and I get a semblance of possibly turning things around here, though KC has crushed me on secondaries so far.

I'm able to finish off the Lion and kill Azrael's unit after they charge in and don't finish off the Chosen, but the Warp Talons bounce off the Storm Speeder after it pops Armour of Contempt to stay on the table, and then one of the remaining Vindicators kills my second Predator, which then explodes and kills... everything else. Cypher, Bile and his unit, one unit of Obliterators, and one of the Obliterators in the other unit. It's a brutal blow that makes this game unrecoverable and so we call it.

Result: 48-93, Loss

This one really didn't work. As cute as the double transport reactive is, this list just doesn't have enough damage output. I think this is the kind of thing where I need more shooting and probably a different detachment. I'm seriously considering a swap to Huron's Marauders and Renegade Raiders - and I'm leaning toward the latter just for the novelty. I need another test game with the Detachment before I can commit to it, however.

Hobby Progress

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

It's all about the new Red Corsairs this week. I've been working on them and you can read more about the work I've been doing with the new models in my review. I really like these models and have had a good time painting them but I still have no idea how I'm going to actually turn this all into a coherent army. Of these, the Corpsemaster is my favorite.

I don't have a strong idea of what else I need in the army at the moment but I know I'll need Rhinos and so I'm working on another one of those, plus a Vindicator as well. Both are getting the raised icon treatment, done in plasticard. This always feels like a pain in the ass but the effect is very worth it.

Realistically I think I probably need a second Vindicator rather than a Predator and I'm strongly considering it. That said, it's something I kind of loathe doing - I know it's stronger, but it's not conducive to winning paint awards and it's just more fun to paint different stuff. There's also a big question as to how much I can realistically get painted before next weekend. Vehicles tend to be easier/faster in a lot of ways, but there are strong units I need for the army to actually work and I'm not sure I'll have time to get those painted.

Worst case I'll say "fuck it" and just run Death Guard, but right now I want to get these guys going.

Next Time: Final Clutch Prep

Alright that's it for this week but check back with me next week to see how I ended up on my decision to run Red Corsairs. My goal is to get in at least one practice game with the final list between now and then, and hopefully whatever I go with will either be my Death Guard, or something I can win a paint award with. Nightmare Hunt is also still an option, but needs just as much work from a painting standpoint.

See you next week.

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