Obscurity is the Guy Phobos Tells You Not to Worry About: Against the Chaos Cult at Kansas City Open
Pre-Game Jitters
Liam and I arrived in Kansas City the Friday before Kansas City Open with the hopes of bringing home a Golden Ticket and eating lots of BBQ. Liam took the newly released Fellgor Ravagers (goats) and I took my usual team, Phobos Strike Team. By the end of Day 1, Liam was 2–1 and thus out of contention, but at 3–0 surprisingly I still had a shot.
With likely day 2 matchups into Chaos Cultists and JD’s Wyrmblade, I was tense Saturday night. Wyrmblade seemed doable depending on the board and mission, and while I rate JD the better player between the two of us, I had faced his Wyrmblade at Chicago Open and know his play style.
But Cultists were brand new and with fifteen (!) operatives, they have a reputation for steamrolling elites. Plus the matchup would be either Capture or Secure — one of which doesn’t even have mission actions. And Blayne’s a top tier player. How was I going to kill enough cultists to stay on the board?
The most likely matchup appeared to be the Capture Mission (no mission actions) on the Flank board. I hit up my Saturday night brain trust and hashed out some plans.
Some rough ideas:
- Plan A: Take five Reivers with four grav-chutes and a frag. Forward deploy to set up as many charges as possible for turning point 2. The sixth operative would be my trusty Incursor Marksman. The Reiver with a frag would rush the clustered cultists and hit as many enemy operatives as possible, all at once. But what if the devotees were protected by the Iconarch’s Ruinous Invigoration and my frag whiffed? Not good!
- Plan B: Five Reivers, this time with five shock grenades. And perhaps take the Infiltrator Saboteur as the sixth operative to blow himself up in the midst of the scrum. A Suicide Squad! Yeah! But when had I ever played Phobos like this? And would -1 APL even apply to a devotee after it mutates? (Turns out yes, but I didn’t know that at the time). And did shock grenades even make sense when the Cult Demagogue can hand out free fight actions like candy? Not good!
The Day of the Battle: There’s Some Hordes in this House
Sunday morning came with a curveball: I faced Cultists in game four, not game five, it was against Jack, not Blayne. Jack and I had connected briefly on Discord and he was (and is) a great guy, but I had no idea what to expect for his playstyle. He went into day 2 undefeated, so he had to be a strong player. The board was Sector, not Flank, and the mission was Secure, not Capture. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” indeed.
But one of the surprises had an upside: Secure requires you to perform the Secure mission action for 1AP, and this meant Phobos would have an easier go of it than on Capture, which requires no mission actions. This also meant the Vanguard Strat Ploy would give me an edge. Even if the odds were still against me, they were a bit better than what I’d expected.
Although Phobos is an Imperial Faction, they play just like Alpha Legion — the sneaky, ambiguously evil (oh really?) traitor (or are they?) legion led by Alpharius (who?). I steadied my nerves, looked at the board, and asked myself: would Alpharius send a suicide squad into certain death, only to fight a noble last stand? Hell no!
The original plan and lineup went into the waste bin.
What would Alpharius do?
- Hit hard, hit early
- Set up roadblocks and traps
- Get the mission done as expeditiously as possible
- Use the enemy’s strengths against him, and last of all…
- Run away like a coward and refuse to fight
There’s no upside in picking fights I can’t win, and I knew once Jack started sending Torments with five relentless attacks across the board at my operatives, the game would be over.
The KCO boards, like Adepticon, were relatively open and all Octarius: one piece of heavy terrain with no vantage, immediately adjacent to each drop zone; two pieces of heavy terrain with vantage on either flank; and a heavy water tower in the middle of the board to disrupt firing lines. “If you’re not complaining about tournament layouts, you’re not playing Kill Team,” my granddad used to say. But this was a good board for a shooty team that ignores Obscuring, so I decided to go Incursor heavy. My lineup:
- Incursor Sergeant (leader), for 2+ shots with No Cover, ignores obscuring
- Incursor Marksman, 2+ shots, AP1, Lethal 5+, ignores obscuring. Always my MVP on open boards
- Incursor Minelayer, also ignores obscuring, but his job was to block movement with the Haywire Mine.
- Infiltrator Veteran, whose Custom Bolt Carbine had Balanced (so I wouldn’t burn CP on rerolls) and Lethal 5+.
- Two Reivers, both equipped with Grav-Chutes for forward deployment. One with a krak grenade and the other with a frag grenade.
Jack’s roster was fixed: Demagogue (leader), Iconarch, Mindwitch, two Blessed Blades, and ten Devotees. I won the roll off, and Jack chose Defender.
Jack faced a hard choice:
- Cluster too much behind the heavy terrain and he’d be too far away from objectives to grab them — and he’d give me a juicy target for a frag grenade.
- Spread out too much and he’d expose too many devotees to shots too soon.
Ultimately he placed as well as he could given the terrain: ten operatives behind & underneath the heavy terrain next to his drop zone, two devotees on my left flank behind light, traversable terrain, and three devotees on my right flank behind a scramble pile. All were on Conceal.
I spread my operatives evenly across my drop zone, putting all on Engaged except for the Minelayer (whose Haywire Mine can shoot even when the operative is Concealed) and Reiver with a frag. I wasn’t familiar enough with Cultist movement to know whether I’d have the chance to charge an operative TP1, but I wanted to have access to Stealth Assault just in case.
Jack and I both took Infiltrate as our Scouting options — which meant as Attacker I could pick who would go first. Normally against such a big horde I would let my opponent go first, but I wanted to hit him before he could get his plan underway. Supplementing with a Recon dash for the Marksman via Elite Reconnaissance, after taking a 4" normal move with the Reivers the board was set.
Here’s our layout at the end of the Scouting phase. The Minelayer is hidden underneath the heavy terrain:
I asked Jack if I could come around to his side of the board, and this is what I saw:
The Infiltrator Veteran had Visibility on several Cultists behind the heavy cover, and used his Omni-Auspex to ensure the Mindwitch couldn’t activate first. For Strat Ploys I took Vanguard (to ensure I could grab objectives quickly and Secure them for 0AP), and Bolter Discipline in order to shoot twice each activation.
You already spotted my mistake, didn’t you? We’ll come back to it.
For Tac Ops, I revealed Rout and Executioner, appointing my leader as my executioner. Jack revealed Seize Defences.
Jack mutated a Devotee into a Mutant underneath the heavy terrain, selecting Winged as his Accursed Gift. No matter what, a Torment was coming through that door next turning point, and it was going to be moving fast.
The Marksman raced up onto vantage, with a clear Line of Sight on four devotees since he could ignore obscuring.
And he commenced to kill cultists. Two shots, two kills.
I think Jack felt pressure to disperse his horde from behind the Octarius terrain because of the concealed Reiver with a frag. Thus, he left his devotees on his left flank exposed for one, crucial activation longer than he needed to. As it turned out, the Iconarch negates so much damage that his horde would have laughed off my frag. But we didn’t know that at the time. Pressure!
Jack started moving up the board, and as I made my next shooting attack I realized my mistake — I had forgotten to take Deadly Shots. This meant instead of relying on virtually guaranteed kills from my Veteran and Sergeant, I would need to have some lucky rolls.
Overwatch and the Multi-Spectrum Array made it extremely hard for Cultists to move up the board safely. Fortunately my luck held — it’s better to be lucky than to be good — and by the end of the turning point I had killed six devotees, set up a choke point with the Haywire mine on Cult’s side of objective 2, and Secured four objectives with the help of Reiver’s 0AP Terror. Cultists had two objectives and were going to struggle to catch up on primaries.
At the top of turning point 2, I revealed Shock & Awe, which didn’t synergize well with going out so grabby. Jack revealed Seize Defenses and Faction Tac Op 2: Profane Defilement. I appointed Jack’s leader as the enemy operative to be Executed this turning point.
It was time to execute the last two steps in the plan: use the enemy’s strengths against him (aka “force hard choices”) and stay alive (aka “run away like a baby”). Jack took Fleet as his second mutation, meaning his Torments would move just as fast as my Phobos with Vanguard. Which was going to make the “run away and stay alive” part of the plan tricky. The Torments burst through the door and onto my left flank (the right mid-board was still protected by the Haywire mine and the entire breadth of the board was covered by the Marksman’s Track Target), ignoring terrain and barricades and started mowing down Marines. But that was OK — Torments can’t perform mission actions and Cultists didn’t have the bodies to Secure the objectives they grabbed from me.
The Incursor Sergeant moved to get a shot on the Cult Demagogue, rolling a crit and three hits — and forced a hard choice. Soaking up the hits meant not only losing his leader, but also giving me the second point from Executioner. So Jack invoked the Faithful Follower Tac op, and dumped the shots into a nearby Devotee (“look out, sir!”) who was promptly incapacitated. Thus the leader stayed alive, but one more source of mutations and mission actions was eliminated. The Sergeant took a second shot at the leader, who survived with four wounds. And with only three devotees left alive, Cultists couldn’t afford to throw a mook into the Haywire mine.
With Sickening Aura reducing my Weapon Skill characteristic by 1, combat was hopeless. As Jack’s Relentless Torments overwhelmed my left flank, he revealed Implant. But without the bodies for mission actions, the game was effectively over in TP2.
By the end, we had nearly tabled each other: Jack’s last survivor was his Demagogue, and mine was the Sergeant, who was uninjured. I managed to score four points from primaries each turning point while holding Cultists to two points per TP. Cultists maxed Implant and Seize Defenses, while I maxed Rout but only scored 1 each from Shock & Awe and Executioner.
Final score: 20–12 (before Battle Ready points).
Let’s Hear from the Cultists
I asked Jack to share his thoughts on the tournament, and the matchup:
This game in particular and tournament in general were an absolute clinic in how to play this game properly. Prior to the event I had a total of 24 games of kill team played, 9 with phobos, and decided to bring cults on a whim since I knew they would be fun win or lose and wanted to try the opposite of the 3 APL elite teams I had exclusively played prior to the tournament.
I was very surprised and nervous to find myself sitting just below a who’s who of GT players at the end of day 1. Day 2 vs Papa Phobos (does that make Ace Phobos Papi?) might as well have been my first time ever seeing the team in action. The absolutely insane toolkit they bring, piloted by someone who can track all that is a really hard match up for anyone regardless of anything else. He did a really good job of picking away at the cultists from range starting on turn 1, which prevented me from getting the mutant farm spooled up to full production, and doing so in a way that left me very few options for punishing him back. I had joked with my friends over dinner that the newness of the team is what carried me 3–0 day one, and I was going to get smacked back down to the JV tables by whoever I played game 4, and that is exactly what happened.
After the Battle & Lessons Learned
While the score might appear lopsided, the game felt a lot closer than it looked. Cultists are thrilling and terrifying to face. It’s hard not to get rattled when Torments who can move just as fast as you start to race across the board and mow you down, and Jack kept up the relentless pressure. Had we played on Capture instead of Secure, Jack’s Cultists likely would have won the game.
Phobos punishes me every time I try to play on auto-pilot. Changing strategies and operatives at the last second meant I failed to re-think Strat Ploys (Deadly Shots) and Tac Ops (Shock & Awe). But they are infinitely flexible and reward creative, savage, cagey play.
I wrapped up the tournament with a fun fight against Braden’s Farstalker Kindband, and ended up going 5–0, coming in second to Blayne’s Chaos Cultists due to strength of schedule.
Jack placed 6th, an outstanding result for his first tournament. Overall Chaos Cultists ended the tournament with an incredible 90% win rate, only falling to my Phobos.
Liam and I wrapped up the day with Burnt Ends at Jack Stack BBQ — easily one of the best meals we’ve had in years. Thanks to the local KC players for the recommendation. And thanks to GW for putting on an outstanding tournament with lots of space at the tables in a great venue! We hope to return next year.
