Palm Springs Open 2025

Palm Spring Open 2025 

Sup guys,

Well, its about time I resurrect this blog of mine, its been lets say a long time and I am not going to bore you with the details.  Suffice to say my last post was during an older edition of both 40K and Horus Heresy so yeah, pretty terrible.  Anyways, this last weekend was Palm Springs Open in which I took part in the Horus Heresy event.  This event is rather new for me with last year being the first time I went to it, the event has been around for several years now but starting last year, a 30K event has been added to it.  The 30K event, ran by my buddy from our club was super fun last year and since the location is relatively close to where I live, I had to make it this year as well.  

This year it was no different, the event was super fun, with playing games with amazing folks, chucking dice on beautiful tables and the models where in short incredible to look at.  This was also our send off for HH 2.0 as 3rd edition actually released the same weekend as the event.  This was my last chance to run my full drop pod Nightlords army so I made sure that I got everything done and painted in time for the event.  The event also gave me an excuse to finally build my Atramenar terminator squad using custom bits and the GW Tartaros kit.  I wanted to bring a fluffy list, looking for themed army for this final farewell to 2.0 and I think I achieved it or at least got close to it.  So here is the list I took - 

LA - VIII: Night Lords - Nightlords PSO 3K

## Allegiance

Allegiance: Traitor

VIII: Night Lords

## Rite of War

Rite of War: Drop Pod Assault^

## HQ [305 Pts]

Centurion [85 Pts]: Centurion

• 1x Legion Centurion [85 Pts]: Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Refractor Field, Bolt Pistol, Artificer Armour, Power Weapon (Chainglaive)

Sevatar [220 Pts]: Artificer Armour, Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades, Iron Halo, Krak Grenades, Night's Whisper, Psychic Powers, Master of the Legion, Sworn Loyalty, Warlord

## Elites [815 Pts]

Contekar Terminator Squad [255 Pts]: Chainblade, Tartaros Terminator Armour, 5x Volkite Cavitor, Preysight, Escaton Power Claw

• 4x Contekars [40 Pts]

• 1x Dissident [65 Pts]

Contemptor Dreadnought Talon [305 Pts]:

• 1x Contemptor Dreadnought [190 Pts]: Atomantic Deflector, Gravis Power Fist with in-built ranged weapon, Volkite Dual-Culverin, Combi-Bolter

• 1x Dreadclaw Drop Pod [115 Pts]: Dreadclaw Drop Pod

Terror Squad [255 Pts]: Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Power Armour, 8x Volkite Charger, Preysight

• 1x Headsman [38 Pts]: Chainglaive, Artificer Armour

  Drop Pod (Pintle Mounted Twin-linked Bolter)

• 7x Executioner w/Chainsword [18 Pts]: Bolt Pistol, Chainsword

## Troops [940 Pts]

Atramentar Squad [266 Pts]: Tartaros Terminator Armour, Preysight

• 1x Atramentar Trucidor [47 Pts]: Volkite Charger, Thunder Hammer

• 1x Atramentar [40 Pts]: Minor Combi-Weapon - Flamer, Chainglaive

• 1x Atramentar [37 Pts]: Volkite Charger, Chainglaive

• 1x Atramentar [37 Pts]: Volkite Charger, Lightning Claw

• 1x Atramentar w/Heavy Weapon [45 Pts]: Heavy Flamer, Chainglaive

Atramentar Squad [269 Pts]: Tartaros Terminator Armour, Preysight

• 1x Atramentar Trucidor [47 Pts]: Volkite Charger, Thunder Hammer

• 1x Atramentar [37 Pts]: Volkite Charger, Lightning Claw

• 2x Atramentar [40 Pts]: Minor Combi-Weapon - Flamer, Chainglaive

• 1x Atramentar w/Heavy Weapon [45 Pts]: Heavy Flamer, Chainglaive

Tactical Squad [135 Pts]: Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Power Armour

• 1x Legion Tactical Sergeant: Bolter, Bolt Pistol, Power Armour

• 9x Legionary [10 Pts]: Bolt Pistol, Bolter

  Drop Pod (Pintle Mounted Twin-linked Bolter)

Tactical Squad [135 Pts]: Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Power Armour

• 1x Legion Tactical Sergeant: Bolter, Bolt Pistol, Power Armour

• 9x Legionary [10 Pts]: Bolt Pistol, Bolter

  Drop Pod (Pintle Mounted Twin-linked Bolter)

Tactical Squad [135 Pts]: Frag Grenades, Krak Grenades, Power Armour

• 1x Legion Tactical Sergeant: Bolter, Bolt Pistol, Power Armour

• 9x Legionary [10 Pts]: Bolt Pistol, Bolter

  Drop Pod (Pintle Mounted Twin-linked Bolter)

## Fast Attack [255 Pts]

Storm Eagle Gunship [255 Pts]: Legiones Astartes (X), Multi-Melta, Hull (Front) Mounted Vengeance launcher (Vengeance Launcher), Two Hull (Front) Mounted twin-linked lascannon (2x Twin-linked Lascannon)

## Heavy Support [685 Pts]

Fire Raptor Gunship [295 Pts]: Hull (Front) Mounted Twin-linked Avenger Bolt Cannon, Four Hull (Front) Mounted Tempest Rockets, Two Sponson Mounted Gravis Autocannon Batteries

• 1x Legion Fire Raptor Gunship

Leviathan Dreadnought Talon [390 Pts]:

• 1x Leviathan [290 Pts]: Atomantic Deflector, 2x Leviathan Siege Claw, Phosphex Discharger, 2x Heavy Flamers (2x Heavy Flamer)

• 1x Dreadnought Drop Pod [100 Pts]:

  • 1x Dreadnought Drop Pod

So here it is, full drop pod army so no deploying on the board until my opponent does but of course at the cost of having to deal with disordered rolls or master of signals but luckily for this weekend, all I had to deal with was bad disordered rolls as none of my opponents took a master of signals.  Bad rolls?  yup, rolled a 1 in two of my games on Saturday which really determined my games and if it wasnt for my opponents being cool about it, would have been a one sided affair.  The list is based around my first drop neutralizing any threats to both of my planes or my 15 terminators that would come in via deep strike to take advantage of Sevatar's warlord trait.  I could just imagine Sevatar being with his personal guard of Atramentar Terminators as well as a squad of Contekar to keep folks "eye on the prize" so to speak back up by a fast moving Fire Raptor and Storm Eagle.  The real meat of the list of course is the 2 dreads who need to do the heavy lifting on the first turn allowing my tactical squads to either support them or setup to get on objectives as soon as they could.  

The Atramentar are really just a fluffy choice but with Fear 1 and deep strike built in, could do some damage if I have them go after my softer targets.  No way would they have a chance to go after more elite units but like the Contekar, are really just big bullies and I would use them to bully tactical squads or anything with a 3+ armor save.  The list was just fun to play and with the rumors of version 3 not allowing more than 1 unit to deepstrike a turn is really a bummer as I would love to play this army in this new edition.  We will see if GW gives me some sort of DLC to run something similar or if the community will allow it but I will have to wait I guess.  Pics are of my army and I plan on getting in a little detail on my 3 games.

Until then

Completed Thousand Sons Rubrics

Hello everybody,

So I wanted to post pics of my completed squad of rubric marines.  I am currently working on a squad of Tzaangors in which I am using more airbrush for them then I did for the rubrics in terms of getting their skin painted in different shades of blue-grey.  The plan moving forward is finish these tzanngors and then move over to doing my exhaulted sorcerers or Rubric terminators next.  I really want to get this army done as I am excited about my next project in which I might cheat on my Thousand Sons and start it.  Truth be told, I cant stand painting Tzaangors, I really dont know why but I think it has to do with the fact that I have never painted anything like them before since i painted up a daemon army many years ago.

The Daemon army was quite easy as I used just washes on them except for my daementtes in which i used an airbrush for their skin and then used washes on their armor and claws.  I keep telling myself that I cant start my new army until I get this one done but now I am like, if i get done with these tzaangors, then i can cheat and start building them.  We shall see however.  Let me know your thoughts on these.

WIP Thousand Sons Rubric Marines

What is up everybody?  Hoping everybody is keeping safe from this Corona Virus outbreak.  If you would have asked me a couple of weeks ago that the US would be in total shut down due to the corona virus, I would have laughed at you.  But here we are hunkered down in our homes trying to keep safe.  The only good thing about this is the time we have with our familes and our hobby.  No more excuses everybody, we need to get cracking and get some models painted.  So I wanted to share this quick post on my work in progress Thousand Sons.  So with the Coronoa Virus situation going around, a lot of us are getting more and more hobby time and I for one want to take advantage of the situation.  These past few days my wife and I have enjoyed playing some old school Xbox live games, watching Netflix, playing video games, and getting some more hobby time in.  I am finally able to concentrate on my 2020 army now, the Thousand Sons.  About 2 years ago for Christmas, I was gifted by my wife several of the new Thousand Sons kits.  

I have always been a Thousand Sons fan since back in the 3.5 codex days and have a sizeable old Thousand Sons army.  Once the new kits started coming out, i instantly fell in love with this and decided to make the hard decision of replacing my old rubric marines with these new kits.  I plan on keeping these old ones and maybe use them for bigger games after i rebase them.  I am planning on keeping my custom made sorcerer to go along my new exalted sorcerers and of course my old Ahriman metal model to go along the new Ahriman model.  

I plan on running a heavy character army for all that smiting spam goodness but will be taking several units of rubrics instead of cheap Tzaangors.  Dont get me wrong, Tzaangors will have a place in my army and I will still be bringing a 20 man unit.  For their cost, they are pretty good and make a mockery of cultists.  I have already started working on my first 10 Tzanngors and have already built my 3 exulated sorcerers.  Those models are just amazing, the amount of bits you get allows you to build truely unique characters for your army.  Once I get some paint on them I will show those off next.  Until next time.

The Dark Mech Continues...

Greeting all,
So in this post I wanted to continue going into my dark mech again.  i got to tell you all, i have been having so much fun with the army that at this point I dont care what people tell me.  The community I play in is all in with the ITC and so most games are played using their missions and even so I dont care.  I have played 3 games now and all 3 were great games with fun opponents, all 3 i actually pulled wins out of against space marines and blood angels which is pretty crazy considering how overpowered they are at the moment but I have to tell you, all were close games and if I made a big mistake, i would have lost them.  The power of the army has got to be the "base" of my army which centers around the Master of Possessions and both the infernal power and cursed earth psyhic powers.  Around her I have 2 forgefiends with hades autocannons and 2 units of 2 obliterators.  Giving her the daemonsmith warlord trait adds to the magic causing exploding 6's on all daemon units that are 6 inches away from her.  This has caught a lot of my opponents by surprise as now you got forgefiends even with their crappy BS getting some additional hits on even average rolls.  Now the key is getting both psychic powers off as having 1 fail really knocks down the power of their firing.  Now dont get me wrong, even with one power, the 2 forgefiends are still pretty potent and it was evident in my games when i could only get 1 power off.  What i did notice however is that infernal power seems to be the key power, rerolling 1s on hits and wounds is very good.  Dont get started on the oblits, these guys are amazing and with the master of possessions even better.  Their only issue is the lack of range, if they just had a 30 inch range or even 36 inches, these guys would be more of an autotake.  In my 2000 pt list, i take 3 units, a 3 man unit and 2 two man units that I deepstrike with a cheap termi lord for the re-rolls of 1 on hits.  These guys allow me to reach out and touch anybody on the board and helps keeps my opponents honest.  

Now lets talk about the units im disappointed with, im going to start a little controversy but the first is the Lord Discordant.  I absolutely love this model, love the potential it has but unless im running more than 2, they will never get to the opponent.  I run 1 and that is probably my issue but wow, unless i run it as Alpha legion, its not going to get anywhere before dying.  I love the model so i will keep running it along with 2 maulerfiends which is the second unit that I just really want to love.  I run 2 and just like the lord discordant, they just die without doing anything.  I really wish they increased the movement speed of it to 12 like it used to have to match the disco lord and maybe give it 14 wounds like a defiler but i still think it wont be enough.  What I will try to do is to run 3 with 2 rhinos full of berserkers and a heldrake basically a threat overload list to see if that works better.  So far they havent done much but again, because i love the models, i still want to continue to run them.  I might switch out the list to include some Chaos wardogs to see with their increased speed and resilence, i can get the rest of the army to hit home.  i did have some success my last game with the Lord Discordant by keeping him close to home against another daemon engine army that was running 3 vemon crawlers with a lord discordant so almost a mirror match however he was also running a mini possessed bomb with all the characters and so his shooting was pretty limited.  I definitely outgunned him and it showed as I had him tabled by top of turn 5.  In this game the Lord Discordant buffed my forgefiends betting them to fire their 16 strength 8 ap 1 shots with better accuracy combined with the Master of Possessions daemonsmith warlord trait and his infernal power spell.  I used the maulerfiends as blockers and by turn 3 rushed them and the lord discordant to kill off the remaining vemon crawlers and his lord discordant and they also helped in mopping up the possessed bomb.  Fun game and it taught me that maybe not charging headlong into the enemy especially since im only running one of them might be a good idea sometimes.  Pics are of a small game I had (1000 pts ) in which I ran a spearhead detachment made up of the following models

++ Spearhead Detachment +1CP (Chaos - Chaos Space Marines) [60 PL, -2CP, 1,000pts] ++

+ Configuration +

Legion: Iron Warriors

+ Stratagems [-2CP] +

Field Commander [-1CP]

Specialist Detachment [-1CP]: Soulforged Pack [-1CP]

+ HQ [14 PL, 248pts] +

Lord Discordant on Helstalker [9 PL, 160pts]: Autocannon [10pts], Mark of Slaanesh, Master of the Soulforges

. Helstalker: Techno-virus injector

Master of Possession [5 PL, 88pts]: 2. Daemonsmith, Cursed Earth, Force stave [8pts], Infernal Power, Mark of Slaanesh, Warlord

+ Heavy Support [46 PL, 752pts] +

Forgefiend [8 PL, 128pts]: 2x Hades autocannons [40pts], Daemon jaws [8pts], Mark of Slaanesh

Maulerfiend [7 PL, 122pts]: Lasher tendrils [12pts], Mark of Khorne

Maulerfiend [7 PL, 122pts]: Lasher tendrils [12pts], Mark of Khorne

Obliterators [12 PL, 190pts]: Mark of Slaanesh, 2x Obliterator [12 PL, 190pts]

Obliterators [12 PL, 190pts]: Mark of Slaanesh, 2x Obliterator [12 PL, 190pts]

++ Total: [60 PL, -2CP, 1,000pts] ++

Super elite army at a 1000 pts, but it was super fun to run and something I wouldnt mind running more of.  I absolutely love small games as they force you to make hard decisions, games are fast, and it allows you to test out unit/units quickly before you try them in larger games.