The Immaterium’s Finest: A CSM Tournament Report Featuring Traitor Guard

I heard what people were saying after I took Grey Knights to my last GT (and went undefeated, but who cares how that army of uptight Daemon haters does).

“Mike must be washed up. He can’t win with Chaos armies anymore.”

“He has to meta chase to win even a single game.”

“Mike probably hasn’t even read the Black Legion series.”

“That beard he’s growing isn’t covering up the fact that he’s put on a lot of weight over the last few years.”

Wow. Hurtful stuff.

Did anyone actually say this? No, thankfully, because my feelings are very sensitive. But I did need to get back to Warphammer’s roots.

I needed to remind people that when it comes to coming up with weird Chaos ideas and making them work competitively, I’m him.

So I sat down with the CSM index and started looking through for units that no one else was running. I found the Traitor Guard datasheet, and was really intrigued. I started thinking about a tournament list running Traitor Guardsmen in Rhinos.

But then I remembered the most important factor: Psychological damage. Imagine I got paired into a Guard player. They probably have some amount of Guardsmen or Kasrkin or Catachan in Chimeras. Rhinos and Chimeras are pretty similar in value. If I roll up with my Traitor Guardsmen in Rhinos, that’s kind of cool. Those loyalist Guardsmen will look at my Traitor Guardsmen, and realize that they could be treated just as well on the other side. They’ll start thinking hey, maybe those Chaos Gods aren’t as bad as I’ve heard after all.

But if the opposing Guardsmen roll up in Land Raiders? Those loyalist Guardsmen will have no choice but to look back at their shitty mass-produced Chimeras and realize that they’re fighting for the wrong side. Those Guardsmen will be begging for the Dark Gods’ gifts after that.

So with a list designed for maximum psychological damage, I headed out to roll dice with friends at the Frontier Open this weekend. It was my first time attending this particular event, but I had such a great time all weekend on and off the tabletop. Without further ado, let’s dive into how our brave Traitor Guardsmen did this weekend.

Final Results

I always like to spoil the results so you know what to expect. We finished 4-1 (WWLWW). We were the highest placing Chaos army, so we got the Best Chaos award. Much more importantly, we earned a Thousand Sons Combat Patrol, full of Tzaangors. You can literally never have too many Tzaangors, so this was quite the treat. Big congrats to my local friends Brandon Roddy, Tucker Rickey, Cody Jiru, and Colin Kay for also walking away with various awards. I’ve played each of these guys many times, and know they’re all great players and fun opponents.

The Frontier Open was a well-run event, and one that I’m definitely going to keep coming back to. It was relatively easy to get to, the hotel did a good job hosting the event, and there was a convention with lots of vendors selling cool items. More importantly, a lot of friends were there and the vibes were excellent all weekend.

I sound like a broken record by now, but it’s yet another event with 5 great games and super friendly opponents. At this point it’s been a very, very long time since I’ve had even a single difficult moment in a single game at a GT or Major. If you’re on the fence about attending events, just do it. It’ll go a lot better than you think. I can’t promise you that you’ll win a game, but I can promise you that you’ll (probably) have a good time.

My Chaos Space Marine List

I need you to promise not to laugh at me: A key part of the list was using the Land Raider’s Assault Ramp rule to charge Traitor Guardsmen into the enemy.

You promised not to laugh! I’m also realizing how absurd this sounds, so let’s discuss the list in more detail so you can see how it fits together.

• 10 Traitor Guardsmen (Nurgle, 2 Melta, 1 Plasma)
• 10 Traitor Guardsmen (Nurgle, 2 Melta, 1 Plasma)
• 10 Traitor Guardsmen (Nurgle, 2 Melta, 1 Plasma)
• Land Raider (Nurgle)
• Land Raider (Nurgle)
• Land Raider (Nurgle)
• Abaddon
• 5 Legionaries (Heavy Melee Weapons, Lascannon)
• 10 Cultists (Nurgle)
• Helbrute (Nurgle, Melta , Fist with Flamers)
• Predator Destructor (Nurgle, Lascannon Sponsons)
• 5 Warp Talons (Slaanesh)
• 5 Warp Talons (Slaanesh)
• 3 Nurglings
• 3 Nurglings
• 3 Nurglings

How the List Functions

One as my strengths as a player is adapting to every board state rather than getting stuck executing a single gameplan, so I never like to say, “Here is XYZ list, and here is exactly how it operates”. Every game is its own puzzle to solve. I like taking broad toolboxes that give me multiple options to respond to certain situations. But broadly speaking, I’ll try to summarize how the list functions so players of every experience level can try something similar.

Deployment was similar in every game. Each Nurgle Traitor Guardsmen squad goes into a Nurgle Land Raider. Cultists start with one model on the backfield objective and then as far forward as they can safely be. 2 Nurgling squads start on the board, pre-measured to score Homers or Investigate Signals or go for early moveblocking/tying up plays. Abaddon attaches to 5-Legionaries and starts in or behind a midfield ruin, with the Helbrute nearby.

1 squad of Nuglings goes into deepstrike to score Secondaries. The Predator goes into Strategic Reserves to keep them honest on angles that my slower Land Raiders can’t reach. It can also use its OC4 to charge onto a side objective or Rapid Ingress and walk onto the objective. I’m telling you, I really try to get maximum value out of every part of a unit’s datasheet.

Early on, the Warp Talons and Nurglings go out as the first wave. What they’ll do is moveblock, tie up, or destroy their skirmishing units that could threaten my Traitor Guardsmen. I don’t really care about trading down per se, and my 110 point Warp Talons often killed 70 or 80 point units or tagged stuff without killing them. Points are meaningless once the game starts, so who cares?

At the same time or the following turn, we dump 1 or 2 units of Traitor Guardsmen onto midfield objectives. At that point, we move up the unit of Cultists that stickied the backfield objective into a now empty Land Raider so we have another contest/moveblock unit for later turns. Abaddon and the Helbrute are waiting behind or in a midfield ruin to give re-rolls to the Land Raiders.

Now we have a great board state. I’ve got a ton of OC in the midfield objectives, my backfield objective is stickied, and I’ve 3 Land Raiders with the game’s best buffs lined up to shoot them if they try to approach my objectives with Traitor Guardsmen. And because we have 48″ range on our main guns, it’s really hard for them to avoid our guns on the approach.

If they’re like “wait Mike, you’re winning? Now we have to rush you and try to change this board state”, I’ve got Abaddon with full Hit and Wound rerolls ready to advance and charge and annihilate something big in the midfield. If you haven’t had the chance to roll out Abaddon attacking near a Helbrute lately, you’re missing out. It’s an experience.

Why Traitor Guard?

Traitor Guardsmen are a really strong unit, and I’m very happy with their inclusion in this list. They’re an interesting tech piece for CSM lists.

The main issue that they solve is a lack of OC. CSM have incredible shooting and melee, but you need something that will force opponents to come interact with your damage output. Traitor Guard are by far CSM’s highest OC per point.

CSM also have limited ability to go for OC contest plays and are vulnerable to OC contest plays themselves. By sticking up to 20OC behind a wall, the opponent needs to send something very real to deal with them or let you hold that point all game.

By being able to move 9″ if they get out before the Land Raider moves or up to 13″ after the Land Raider moves and then still charges means they can reach objectives reliably. It also means Traitor Guardsmen are really good at wrapping opposing transports by charging in. For example, if I faced Death Guard and they staged a Rhino behind a wall, that Rhino is going to be wrapped by Traitor Guardsmen the following turn and they’ve lost an entire turn from their gameplan. I’m not going to charge my Traitor Guardsmen into Death Company, but there is a lot of stuff that doesn’t want to be wrapped by 20OC.

Traitor Guardsmen are also elite units for doing actions. Land Raiders mean they can reliably reach midfield objectives turn 1 and still do actions. They have a Pistol to action if they’re tagged, and they can also spend 1CP to Fall Back and still be eligible to shoot or do actions. Neither of these things came up in this event, but they came up in some test games and felt pretty strong.

Most interestingly, their shooting is actually pretty vicious into C’tan. I also really like the Grenades keyword on my cheap contest unit. I would always warn my opponents before the game about the Helbrute giving crit Lethal/Sustained on 5’s and Abaddon’s rerolls, but they just don’t understand how much damage it actually is. I remember messing around on UnitCrunch (amazing resource) before the event to get a feel for various unit outputs since I didn’t have time to get a lot of reps. 2 CSM Land Raiders near Abaddon and a Helbrute kill a Monolith on average. A Traitor Guard squad averages 4 damage to a C’tan, 6 if we chuck Grenades first. That is a huge chunk of damage.

From a practical perspective, I wouldn’t recommend going out and buying 30 Traitor Guardsmen if you don’t own them already. Who knows what synergies will be broken in the new codex, or if the best detachments will want Traitor Guardsmen in them at all.

But I will say that there are always way more viable units that you realize, or that the echo chambers that are most “competitive” channels will realize. If a list concept makes sense to you and you have the skill to adapt it to a variety of matchups, then just fucking send it. I don’t want average results, so I don’t listen to average players getting average results when they tell me something is good or bad.

I will say, this event made me appreciate the Warphammer Discord even more. I floated the idea of Traitor Guardsen in Land Raiders in a few other discords, and got laughed at. I posted it in the Warphammer discord, and got told it seems awesome and I should definitely run it.

If you want to join a community of players focused on trying different ideas and playing their best while still having fun, join the Warphammer discord today! https://discord.gg/r4eF3wJm

Round 1: James’s Gladius Task Force DA (W, 93-52)

James’s List: Apothecary Biologis with Fire Discipline, Azrael, 6 Eradicators, 3×3 Devastator Centurions with Grav, 3×5 Deathwing Knights, 3×5 Scouts, Henchmen

James was the TO of the last event I attended, so it was cool to get to play him in this event. I know he is an experienced player and had a feeling we were in for a battle. It was an extremely friendly game start to finish, and I’m looking forward to facing James in another event anytime.

I’m just going to say it: I think this game was one of the best games of 40K I’ve ever played. I really wish this game was on stream. The Dark Angels had an absolutely incredible amount of anti-Vehicle firepower. In theory, I think this is a bad matchup. If I let him unleash all of that melta and grav into me, I could get crippled in any given turn.

On the flip side, all of his vicious anti-tank firepower was carried by some of the slowest units in the Imperium. This meant we were able to pre-measure a lot of angles and threat ranges and stand in the perfect spots to minimize damage back.

Because Gladius has the ability to advance and shoot we were rarely able to stay entirely out of threat ranges while being where we want to be. Instead, there were a lot of situations like, “If you roll a 4 on your Eradicators advance none of them can shoot, if you roll a 5 then one can shoot, if you roll a 6 then two can shoot”. Eradicators have an issue in that their highest damage is concentrated in 2 models in the squad, so even if you can’t avoid everyone in the squad you can at least focus on not being shot by those two models. The Centurions had a huge issue with Dark Obscuration, as they’re not fast enough to line up shots on two different squads if I pre-measured correctly.

The Traitor Guardsmen were absolutely money in this game. One squad advanced out of a Land Raider early to grab a side objective, putting too much OC on it for James to go for OC contest plays. Turn two, James had 2 or 3 Terminators on the midfield objective. I switched on Abaddon’s invuln aura instead of the reroll aura and strung a few models in my Traitor Guard squad out onto the objective. Because I had OC6 on the middle objective, he had to send something real to kill them. When the Terminators charged the Traitor Guardsmen because they couldn’t contest the objective otherwise, we were able to Heroically Intervene Abaddon’s squad through the nearby wall and rip a huge chunk out of the Terminators. If I didn’t have the high OC from the Traitor Guardsmen then Abaddon’s squad has to be the one to step onto the midfield objective, and then the big man himself gets evaporated.

Traitor Guardsmen Grade: A

Round 2: Randall’s Hypercrypt Necrons

Randall’s List: Nightbringer C’tan, Monolith, The Silent King, Imotekh, Chronomancer with some sort of Fulcrum, Plasmancer with Arisen Tyrant, 10 Immortals with Gauss, 10 Immortals with Tesla, 10 Lychguard, Tomb Sentinel, 3 x 1 Lokhust Heavy Destroyers

Continuing my theme of “playing versus people who TO events I’ve attended”, I got paired into Randall’s Necrons for round 2. I’d seen Randall a lot at our events before but had never had the chance to play him, and knew we were in for a great game. He got some bad dice early and continued to battle, which I always respect in an opponent.

Randall’s list was very strong, and I think had favored matchups into most of the field. Unfortunately for his Necrons, he ran into a list that was literally tailored to kill his exact profiles. When Randall had to send his valuable units out to play because we were grabbing control of the midfield objectives, our counter-punch was so extreme that the game ended quickly.

Turn 2, I got to put on my Babe Ruth jersey and call my shot. I pointed to the Nightbringer, I pointed to the Monolith, and said I was going to kill them both this turn. This turned out to be false. I killed the Nightbringer, I killed the Monolith, and I also killed 9 Lychguard and a Heavy Destroyer on top of that.

A big part of that was the mobility of Traitor Guard out of Land Raiders enabling me to get 2 squads in range to shoot the Nightbringer. Meanwhile, 3 Land Raiders were lined up to shoot the Monolith (some could also see the Monolith as well). Abaddon’s squad’s Lascannon could see either unit, while that squad used Unnatural Swiftness to line up a charge with the big man himself into the Lychguard. Boom, boom, almost boom.

CSM damage output is pretty crazy, especially when the dice decide not to roll any saves like Randall’s did. We ended up splitting an incredible steak later, so ultimately both of us came out as winners.

Traitor Guardsmen Grade: A+

Round 3: Tucker’s Genestealer Cults (L, 62-86)

Tucker’s List: Biophagus with Inscrutable Cunning, Clamavus, Kelermorph, Nexus, 3x Primus, Reductus Saboteur with Prowling Agitant, Reductus Saboteur, 2 x 10 Acolytes with Demo Charges and Flamers, 2 x 20 Neophytes with Seismic, 10 Neophytes, 10 Aberrantes, 2x Ridgerunners

Tucker is one of my favorite players to play in our local scene. First of all, he’s an extremely sharp player. Our games aren’t just one of us making a play and one of us using the “pro move” counter, but both of us seeing the counter to the counter and battling for every edge. But most importantly, I think he has one of the best attitudes of anyone I’ve faced, which is especially impressive considering he’s the youngest player in the field. He’ll actively remind you of GSC specific rules (like reminding you he can Lone Op a unit if you’re drawing range to it), and focuses on playing his weird army to the best of his ability instead of complaining about his army’s standing in the meta or the opponent’s army. As someone that acts the same way, I can appreciate that.

CSM have a fundamental problem with the GSC gameplay loop, and my style of list always gets destroyed by them. Showing up danger close with enough ablative bodies to soak my limited Overwatch and then evaporating my units while having a ton of OC spread out all over the board does not lead to a good time for us. Tucker’s unique twist is the Infiltrating and Redeploying 10 Aberrant brick. This is an incredibly powerful unit, and it is so demoralizing when you finally kill it round 3 and they come back. Tucker had the win locked up by then, but the mental damage is still massive.

In hindsight, I should have taken Assassinate and Homers instead of Tactical. I’m always hesitant to take Assassinate when they have a large amount of Characters, but his units need to bring the Characters close to me to do damage. We both really struggled to hold Primary, and having a large amount of Secondaries in the bank would have let me keep the game close for 5 turns.

Traitor Guardsmen Grade: C-

Round 4: Bryan’s Guard (W, 87-58)

Bryan’s List: Lord Solar, Command Squad, Ursula Creed, Demolisher Tank Commander, Infantry Squad, 2×10 Kasrkin, 2 Chimeras, 2×3 Bullgryn, Basilisk, Demolisher Leman Russ, Exterminator Leman Russ, Rogal Dorn, 5 Scions, Callidus Assassin

Bryan and I hadn’t played before, but I could tell right away it would be a friendly game.

I was able to take advantage of a few weaknesses of Guard in this game, as well as Bryan whiffing on the dice in some spots early. The main issue Guard have is that they can’t dig themselves out of melee (outside of Bullgryn, who are pretty weak offensively) and their Demolisher cannons have pretty short range. The lack of Fall Back and Shoot in that army is also an issue if the opponent can see plays that result in multiple units getting tagged, especially with Warp Talons.

To be honest I don’t remember a ton about this game (other than that Kasrkin kept coming, taking a chunk out of my Helbrute, dying, and then resurrecting), but I have to give Bryan credit for continuing to battle even when some dice went very poorly early. He was able to laugh off rolling 1’s like few other players I’ve seen.

And if any of Bryan’s Kasrkin ever want to pimp their rides, they’re welcome to switch sides and join the good guys. I’m sure I can find a few seats open in my Land Raiders.

Traitor Guardsmen Grade: B

Round 5: Troy’s Salamanders Ironstorm (W, 55-52)

Troy’s List: Techmarine with Augury Web, Techmarine with Adept of the Omnissiah, Vulkan Hestan, Company Heroes, Phobos Librarian, 5 Infiltrators, 2x Gladiator Lancers, 2x Land Raider Redeemers, 2x Repulsor Executioners, Callidus Assassin

Fun fact: I’ve already played versus Troy twice this edition with triple Land Raider CSM (once before LVO, once before this GT). Troy and I had each won one of those games, so I knew we were in for a battle. As always, Troy and I had the friendliest possible game (and watched some hockey on his phone) while battling hard on the tabletop.

Just like round 1, on paper this is an actually overwhelming amount of CSM-killing firepower. I was 100% convinced I was going to lose coming into this game, especially against a player as good as Troy.

The key factor in this game was that because of Dark Obscuration, I could expose 1 unit every turn to shoot without risk while anything he exposed was always at risk of taking damage. We both had 4 pieces that could threaten a tank at long range (3 Land Raiders and the Predator versus 2 RepExes and 2 Lancers). My goal was to set up situations where I could “gang up” on tanks individually by playing angles. Let’s call his tanks A, B, C, and D while my tanks are W, X, Y, and Z. I wanted to set up situations where W, X, and Y could shoot A and B while avoiding angles from C and D on Troy’s next turn. Z could get into a position to see anything it wanted in Troy’s army because I could just Dark Obscuration it. So as long as I killed either A or B, instead of getting shot by 4 pieces next turn I would only be shot by 1. This obviously required a lot of pre-measuring and planning, but it worked out in the end. Despite losing a Land Raider early, we were able to execute this plan for the first 3 turns and grind down his anti-tank. We just had to whittle down enough over the first 2 to 3 turns that by the end game, we could just bumrush the midfield objectives with Abaddon and Cultists and Traitor Guardsmen and the Helbrute and take advantage of his lack of OC. Once Abaddon came out to play, it was over.

Traitor Guardsmen Grade: C

Closing Thoughts

The main thing I would tell any newer players is that if you see a matchup that on paper seems terrifying, just take a few deep breaths. I can’t promise you’ll win, but you’re not going to just automatically lose. Visualize a path to victory, stay mentally engaged, and focus on executing your gameplan. The Dark Gods reward their faithful.

Before you go, why not join the Warphammer discord? It’s the best use of 0 dollars you’ll spend today: https://discord.gg/PyFQeUPn.

And if you want to spend more than 0 dollars, feel free to support Warphammer on Patreon today! https://www.patreon.com/Warphammer