TheChirurgeon's Road Through 2025, Part 48: Post-Worlds Hangover

Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing hobby and competitive progress series for 2025. Previously on Road Through 2025, I was recapping my games and experiences at the 2025 World Championships of Warhammer. This week I'm uh... taking a break, I guess? I didn't get in any games, at least.

After a big trip and eight games of Warhammer, I shamefully took a week off from playing. This was mostly because I came back from the trip with a nasty cold - one that had been brewing on the final day of the event. So I decided not to get in any games during the week. But that didn't mean I didn't want to. Despite the time investment, I found myself inexplicably motivated to paint and play more Warhammer than before. Probably because I lost the final games. In any case, I was immediately thinking about getting back into the swing of things and looking at upcoming events.

On that note, let's talk about what's next for me:

The Asgard November RTT. Asgard Games runs a monthly RTT and while the list is full I can usually count on taking the space of a no-show. It's usually a great time in a cool space and I can usually show up and walk away with Best Painted, if nothing else. My plan this weekend is to potentially take Soulforged Warpack - more on that in a minute.
Rise of the Empire GT. It's not a teams event this year but I'm considering the Rise of the Empire GT in mid-December. It's largely going to depend on how I feel by then and whether the next Dataslate is out - and also what's in it. I may also consider an RTT instead, either at Ettin or Asgard, depending on timing.
The LVO Team Tournament. This is a five-man teams event in January (1/10-1/11). I enjoyed the teams events I attended this year quite a bit, but I'm not a huge fan of needing to plan and coordinate around the schedules of eight adults - in my estimation, five man events are much more fun to plan around logistically. When LVO announced they'd be doing a 5man teams event in January, I was interested. When some of the local Houston guys said they wanted to go, I was in. I'll talk more about this event in two weeks but for now I've got a team set and I'm planning to go.

Regardless of which events I hit up this year, I'm four games off from my 2025 goal of "Play 100 games of Warhammer 40k," and so I'm all but guaranteed to hit that one. I have a few others I want to hit, some of which will mean getting more time in with my son and 40k in the next month or two, but I'll tackle those when he's off for Thanksgiving break.

My Night Lords

I'm more or less done with my Night Lords now. I may revisit them occasionally to add a few more Raptors (there are some new models coming out), and maybe a few more basic Legionaries so I have a full 20 or so, and I'm going to touch up that second Heldrake, but for now the army is complete. I had a wonderful time painting them and bringing them up to standard, and they're now easily my best-painted army, something that brings me constant satisfaction looking back on the last 30 years in this hobby.

Someone in the comments last week asked me to show off the finished army and I thought I'd just go ahead and update my old Army Showcase article to reflect all the work I've done. If you missed that one, you can find it here:

[embed]https://www.tabletopbattles.com/army-showcase-thechirurgeons-night-lords/[/embed]

It was a lot of fun working on that article and the army but now it's time to move on. I may play my Night Lords again this weekend at the Asgard RTT. It'd be an easy Best Painted, at least, and I like the army's odds of going at least 2-1. But I'm also looking at doing something different now, and I'd be lying if I said the call of running Crazy Bullshit wasn't very strong at the moment. In particular I've been thinking of running a Soulforged Warpack list with Vashtorr and the Heldrake. I really liked the list Wallace ran on my team at Challengers Cup.

Right now here's what I'm currently considering:

Look at this shit - Click to Expand

dec Asgard black legion? (1990 points) Chaos Space Marines Strike Force (2000 points) Soulforged Warpack

CHARACTERS

Lord Discordant on Helstalker (180 points) • 1x Bladed limbs 1x Bolt Pistol 1x Baleflamer 1x Impaler chainglaive 1x Techno-virus injector • Enhancement: Forge’s Blessing

Vashtorr the Arkifane (175 points) • 1x Vashtorr’s claw 1x Vashtorr’s hammer Warpsmith (95 points) • Warlord • 1x Flamer tendril 1x Forge weapon 1x Melta tendril 1x Plasma pistol • Enhancement: Tempting Addendum

BATTLELINE

Cultist Mob (50 points) • 1x Cultist Champion • 1x Autopistol 1x Brutal assault weapon • 9x Chaos Cultist • 9x Autopistol 9x Brutal assault weapon

Cultist Mob (50 points) • 1x Cultist Champion • 1x Autopistol 1x Brutal assault weapon • 9x Chaos Cultist • 9x Autopistol 9x Brutal assault weapon

OTHER DATASHEETS

Chaos Vindicator (185 points) • 1x Armoured tracks 1x Combi-weapon 1x Demolisher cannon 1x Havoc launcher

Forgefiend (180 points) • 1x Armoured limbs 3x Ectoplasma cannon

Forgefiend (180 points) • 1x Armoured limbs 3x Ectoplasma cannon

Helbrute (130 points) • 1x Close combat weapon 1x Heavy flamer 1x Helbrute fist 1x Multi-melta

Helbrute (130 points) • 1x Close combat weapon 1x Helbrute hammer 1x Twin lascannon

Helbrute (130 points) • 1x Close combat weapon 1x Power scourge 1x Twin lascannon

Heldrake (205 points) • 1x Hades autocannon 1x Heldrake claws

Venomcrawler (110 points) • 2x Excruciator cannon 1x Soulflayer tendrils and claws

Venomcrawler (110 points) • 2x Excruciator cannon 1x Soulflayer tendrils and claws

ALLIED UNITS

Nurglings (40 points) • 3x Nurgling Swarm • 3x Diseased claws and teeth

Nurglings (40 points) • 3x Nurgling Swarm • 3x Diseased claws and teeth

Exported with App Version: v1.44.0 (104), Data Version: v715

The general idea is to just have a lot of vehicle bullshit. Ideally I'd be running three Venomcrawlers but well, I only have one painted and even that one isn't painted great. I'm really banking on my ability to get one more assembled and painted before Saturday which, is definitely doable... I think.

The Heldrake is my favorite part. He just charges into the enemy lines on turn one and causes Problems. Is he overcosted? Yes. Is he underpowered? Mostly. But can any other unit in the game do what he does? Absolutely not. He's my stupid idiot son and I will yeet him directly at the enemy whenever I can.

The rest of this is based around what I have. I only have two Black Legion Forgefiends, so I'm running two. They'll get Warpsmith support. I have a Lord Discordant, so he's going in. I have Vashtorr, and that's part of what sparked this whole dumb idea. The Vindicator can drop the t1 Stratagem to become a daemon vehicle, and I have three Helbrutes to give me double Pacts and just generally cause more problems. Ideally I'd have three Forgefiends and three Venomcrawlers instead but well, I don't at the moment so I'm going with this. If I can get it all painted by Saturday, this is what I'm running.

Hobby

I better get cracking! I took one look at my Black Legion Heldrake and decided he was just not up to standard.

Shameful

It looks OK but there's not enough going on with it and just flat black panels aren't going to cut it with my current Black Legion style. So I set out to add some interior panel highlights and silver edge highlighting on the trim, as well as some additional OSL around the ribcage. The end result is much more striking:

It adds a lot more depth to the black and makes the whole thing pop, and the silver edge highlights really help make the gold look cleaner and more shiny. So I'm happy with this guy following his glow-up.

Next up is my Venomcrawler. I don't think I ever posted a photo of him on Goonhammer, likely because well, I painted one quickly for an event and it didn't look great. So I started touching him up to, ending up with this:

Again, really happy with the result and the panel highlights make a huge difference. This guy is ready to go out and be incredibly gross on the battlefield and enjoy a +2 Strength buff from Vashtorr that gets him to S10. I'm also working on the second, assembled and primed last night:

Will he he up to that standard in time? Probably not! But I'll get him 80% of the way there and well past "tabletop ready."

Finally I also decided to go back to working on some terrain early in the week. I've had these pieces sitting around a while, acting as additional Ls for my terrain layout, but they've only been zenithal primed until now. I painted them up using the same method I devised for my Volkus terrain earlier this year - it's an adapted version of Paulie "SkySerpent" Wallis' method, only without oils, and I'm really happy with the results. I just need to do a couple more pieces to finish off all of my Volkus terrain.

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

I also wanted to do some new terrain bases to go with them. We're planning a Houston Narrative event at some point early next year and we're going to need more terrain for it and crucially, terrain bases. Warhammer 40k just doesn't work without terrain bases, but I understand anyone who doesn't like playing with clear plastic tiles. So I'm working on some good solutions that create the right sense of being real terrain but serve the same purposes. I'm making them out of adhesive-backed vinyl floor tiles, and I really like the result so far:

They're pretty easy to make and they look great with the terrain. I want to play around with the setup a bit more and figure out if I want to do all of them as standard Games Workshop layout tiles or mix them up a bit, but I think the next one will be a companion to this one that allows for a paired ruin/full building.

It doesn't take a lot to make these and I'll be posting a tutorial for them soon. It's worth looking into if you want to make your own area terrain tiles at home.

Next Time: The Asgard RTT

That's it for this week. Swing by next week when I'll be recounting my experiences at the Asgard RTT, possibly with Soulforged Warpack, a Detachment I have played all of twice so far. Should be a good time.

See you next Thursday.

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