The best part of a Warhammer tournament? Hanging out with friends, both old and new.
The second best part of a Warhammer tournament? Waging the Long War.
When you can do both of those at the same time, you know you’re having a good weekend.
Last weekend, I took my Chaos Space Marines to a 8-person Teams event held in Colorado. I also captained our team during the event, doing pairings and getting us ready in between rounds. My teammates were a bunch of absolute gems. They made pairings so easy by accurately evaluating their matchups and communicating well with each other and myself. Not everyone on our crew had Teams experience, and that was totally fine. Not everyone on a team has to know how to run a team. As long as they’ve got a good attitude and are fun to be around, anyone is welcome!
Our local organizers put together an incredible event, and I’m so happy to see 8’s continue to grow as a format in the US in general. 8-person Teams is the absolute best way to play Warhammer, and I’m excited to already have a couple big Teams events lined up with friends on the Obliterati and Yallhammer teams for 2025.
With all of that out of the way, let’s get to what you really came for: My Chaos Space Marines list, our general strategy, and the games we played along the way.
My Individual and Team Results
I always like to put the event results at the start so people know what to expect, so let’s get that out of the way.
There were 12 teams at the event. My team, the Denver Mountain Trolls, got 1st place. Here was our team composition, as well as my general pairing strategy for each army:
- Drukhari (Cody Jiru)
- Cody is one of the best players in the US. Drukhari always have 1 or 2 matchups they really want to avoid in an opposing roster, but I know Cody would put up big scores into most armies.
- Thousand Sons (Chris Van Winkle)
- Thousand Sons are best used to hammer good matchups for 20-0 scores. Chris is a naturally confident and aggressive player, and he crushed it in this role all weekend. Chris averaged an absurd 19.5-0.5 score per round, so I think our Thousand Sons gameplan worked out well.
- Ultramarine Vanguard (Ben Neal)
- Ultramarines Vanguard are an extremely flexible army that can play into almost anything, and Ben (also one of the best players in the US) was willing to fight whatever I put in front of him.
- Tyranids (Matt Evans)
- Our Tyranids list was very melee focused, and I was more concerned with giving them table choice instead of matchup choice. Matt is a beast when he’s playing Tyranids, and I liked his odds into anyone as long as he didn’t have to play on an open board.
- Death Guard (Nick Melberg)
- Death Guard can be used to manipulate pairings you want because they completely shut out some matchups (like Custodes and World Eaters) and can grind out points into everything else. Nick had rapidly grown as a player leading up to the event and really performed his role well.
- World Eaters (Brian Schwinger)
- We used our World Eaters very defensively, using their speed and sticky objectives to grind out points versus shooting armies. Brian is willing to grind out points in bad matchups if it helps the team, and I used him to squeeze out ~5 points in a matchup no one else wanted all weekend.
- T’au (Tom Cohen)
- Retaliation Cadre don’t want to get pressured before they can set up their killshots, but if they get an opponent that lets them operate at their pace, Tom would do some great work with them.
- Chaos Space Marines (Mike Pestilens)
Here was the #1 deciding factor in our team composition: Bringing armies that people liked playing and were the most comfortable with.
I genuinely hate how many teams will tell people on their team to switch to armies they don’t want to play or aren’t familiar with to fill certain roles or “improve the matrix”. Telling successful players to swap to an army they’re inexperienced with is the #1 sign of a captain that think they’re better than they are. Just bring whatever army you want, and I’ll come up with a pairing strategy that works.
The 3 best Teams factions in this meta (rules locked before Grotmas started) were Guard, GSC, and Sisters. We didn’t have any of these armies. For the record, I don’t want to frame this as, “We didn’t have the best armies, so it was a huge uphill battle”. We were definitely one of the favorites in terms of player experience/prior success. There some other really strong teams (Fight Club, Mile High Militarum, Be’lakor’s Belles stood out to me) and a bunch of up-and-coming teams, like the crew coming up from the Colorado Springs, but having a loaded roster definitely helped.
Personally, I went 2-0-2, with 2 wins and 2 ties. I genuinely don’t really care about my own results in a Teams setting as long as the team wins, but it was satisfying to see my CSM perform well. This brings me up to a 15 game streak without a loss at Teams events in 10th. I’m proud of that because it means I really understand my armies.
Do you want to hear the moment I’m most proud of this weekend? In our final pairings, I correctly guessed the opponent’s final 4 armies in a row (technically 3, but I also knew what their Defender would be and wish I had called it out loud). That wasn’t the cool part. The cool part was when the 2 attacker cards were face down and I know those 2 cards were Death Guard and Guard, I pointed to which face down card was Death Guard and which one was Guard. I don’t think anyone watching picked up on that detail, sadly. Knowing which face down card is which didn’t matter from the 40K side at all, but I’m still giving myself a pat on the back for that. I don’t want to talk about how exactly I could call face down cards, but years of poker experience came in handy. Don’t forget that all of us are just semi-evolved apes! We communicate a lot with body language, whether we know it or not.
My CSM List
Below is my submitted list, along with the title that made me very thankful I didn’t get blown out in any games or I would have gotten so much shit from my team (and it would have all been richly deserved).
“The Fellhammer Siege-Host is complete garbage… this ruleset is so weak and so blanced that I’m surprised GW didn’t give it to the Imperial Fists.” – Mike Pestilens
- Fellhammer Siege Host and Daemon Allies
- Abaddon, The Despoiler, The Arch-fiend, the Warmaster of Chaos Undivided: Warlord
- Sorcerer in Terminator Armour: Combi-bolter, Familiar, Enhancement: Warp Tracer
- 10 Cultists
- 10 Cultists
- 5 Chosen: Icon, Fist, Twin Accursed, 2x Combi-weapon
- 10 Possessed: Icon
- 10 Possessed: Icon
- 10 Possessed: Icon
- 3 Bikers: Fist, Plasma, Icon
- 3 Bikers: Fist, Plasma, Icon
- Predator Destructor: Lascannon Sponsons, Havoc Launcher, Combi-weapon
- Predator Destructor: Lascannon Sponsons, Havoc Launcher, Combi-weapon
- Predator Destructor: Lascannon Sponsons, Havoc Launcher, Combi-weapon
- 3 Nurglings
- Beast of Nurgle
I developed the list concept several months ago, but have to give Dutch player and Fellhammer idea buddy Florian credit for figuring out the final version. I originally had 2 Predator Annihalators in there, before their dataslate buff. I am very happy they weren’t in the final list. I did not need anti-tank at all. If the tanks can’t kill you and they can’t out OC you, why do you care about killing their tanks at all? And worst comes to worst, Predators turning on Lethal Hits with full Hit re-rolls will do the job if needed.
Tactics
Here is the complete guide to playing 30 Fellhammer Possessed:
Step 1: Deploy Possessed on the line (kinda)
Step 2: Turn on Abaddon’s 4++ invuln aura
Step 2.5: Rush everything (kinda) up the board with zero regard for getting shot (kinda)
Step 3: Your opponent shoots you (kinda)
Step 4: Turn 2, you charge and tag everything and the game ends*
* Note: It’ll take 1 or 2 turns for your opponent to realize the game is over, but I promise you the game is already completely over by this point.
I can talk about playing the list more in-depth if people want, but that is a damn good summary if you want to try it out yourself.
Why Bring This List?
There is increasing information out there about Team events. As a result, there is increasing consensus out there about how certain matchups go. I tried to use that against my opponents.
I created my list as a “pairings trap”. People would have ideas of what CSM is good into, and what is good into CSM. Those matchups are completely backwards for the Fellhammer Possessed list.
For example, Guard and Retaliation Cadre were considered hard counters to CSM in a Teams setting. For my CSM, those were my 2 favorite matchups in the entire game. The good news is that because of some Fellhammer specific tech (specifically re-rolls after we are attacked in melee and an amazing -2″ to charge stratagem), I was also just fine playing into melee matchups! A list that could hang with Guard on an open board and could also brawl with World Eaters on a dense board is a valuable asset.
Alright, enough about that. Let’s get on to the games!
Round 1: Bryan’s Imperial Guard (W, 18-2)
Bryan’s List: 2x Rogal Dorns, Tank Commander, Lord Solar and his groupies, 2x Aquilons, Scions + Command Squad bomb, 3x Catachans in Chimeras
Bryan and I had played before at the Frontier Open, where he played a great game but had some genuinely cursed dice. I remember telling Bryan that if we ever played again, I hoped he had much fairer dice. Unfortunately for Bryan, his dice continued to work against him.
This will sound condescending, but I promise it’s not: This is an absurdly bad matchup for tank-heavy Guard, and Bryan did a good job of not getting 0-20’d with bad dice. He played a smart game, pushing onto objectives when he could and trying to score points. But the reality is Guard just do basically no damage into this, and once the tanks get tagged they can never dig themselves back out. The only real Guard guns that can kill Possessed are all Blast, which means once the board gets messy their damage is just entirely shut down.
It was a little embarrassing how pathetic my Possessed were in melee (I had 7 Possessed charge a 4-wound tank and fail to kill it). I had almost 20 Possessed wrap around a Rogal Dorn and it took 4 Fight Phases to kill it. But the reality is that none of this mattered. I am 100% okay if we spend all 5 turns tickling each other as long as we’re doing it while I’m on the objective and they aren’t.
Round 2: Zak’s Tau Retaliation Cadre (W, 20-0)
Zak’s List: 2x Riptides, Pirahna, 3x Stealth Suits, lots of different Crisis teams with different names
Zak was a very friendly opponent and nice guy to hang out with, and we had a clean game. I saw that his team finished 4th overall, so congrats to them on a great run.
This is a completely unplayable game for Retaliation Cadre. Zak’s dice were not kind to him. His cold rolling was tough to watch, including re-rolling a 1 into 1 on damage to not score Assassination. I also think the dice might have gotten a lot more blame than they deserved, if I can say that with all due respect to Zak as a friendly opponent and good player. The CSM won this matchup 100-24. We’re way past dice mattering at that point.
The fundamental gameplay loop for Retaliation Cadre is show up turn 2, nuke everything, and then your opponent can’t get back into the game. If the math is completely broken and they basically do no damage when they come down, there is no path to victory for them. They are just a bunch of short-range guns with no good targets. Another funny little quirk about this matchup: At only T5 and with 3+ saves, Possessed actually kill Crisis Suits really well!
Well, not really well, but well by Possessed standards. I can send 10 Possessed into a Crisis unit and expect to kill ~3 models. I’ll take it!
Round 3: Joel’s Green Tide (T, 10-10)
Joel’s List: 3×20 Boyz with Painboyz and Warbosses, 10 Boyz with a Weirdboy, Ghaz with 2 Meganobz, 2x Trukks with Flashgitz, some Gretchin
Joel and I always have great games, and this game was no exception. I so badly wish I had taken a picture of this game. Joel’s Orks are beautiful, and it was crazy seeing all of the Possessed and Boyz all smashed together all over the board on turn 3.
The last time we played, his Bully Boyz completely ran over my Veterans Of The Long War, but both of our lists were completely different now. This was anyone’s game.
The fundamental issue for both of us in this game? Neither of us could actually kill each other! Boyz can’t really kill T6 Possessed, and Possessed can’t really kill T5 Boyz that can resurrect. We both have access to various types of re-rolls that help, but this matchup is generally a pillow fight instead of a Warhammer game.
I had another fundamental issue. Joel can resurrect up to 8 Boyz in a squad, and can also make a Surge move of up to 6″ when I shoot him. This meant that unless I can almost one-shot a Boyz squad, I actually don’t even want to shoot them because I’ll just give them extra movement.
This game had a very weird pacing. I went first, completely whiffed with my 3 Predators, and pushed onto one objective furthest away from Joel. On Joel’s turn, he pushes up to stage his boys. At the start of the second battle round, Joel calls the Waaagh. He literally says, “You’re not one of those armies that will just run away and hide”.
Joel was correct about how CSM generally play, but he was wrong about me as a player. I have proudly self-described my playstyle as “playing like a little bitch”, and my ability to realize when I should avoid playing Warhammer during a game of Warhammer has bailed me out of tough situations.
The second Joel called the Waaagh, all 3 of my Possessed bricks rolled advances and headed straight backwards towards my deployment zone. I don’t know if an Ork army with +1 Attack on all of their weapons can actually kill my Possessed, but I didn’t want to find out. Part of my mindset in this matchup was that I thought we were heavily favored in the pairings. It was much more important for me to avoid getting blown out than trying to go for the win.
Turn 3, once the Waaagh had passed, our armies finally collided. Joel won the dice battle this turn, but the war was far from over and the dice swung back out way over the last couple turns. Heavily boosted by Persistent Assailants to keep getting re-rolls in sustained combats, we eventually started grinding his Boyz down. He used some smart resurrection tricks to score Primary, and I expected nothing less from a player as good as Joel. I also made what I thought was a pretty cool play to tie up Ghaz and his Meganobz buddies with some Nurglings, a Beast of Nurgle, and some Cultists. One of the biggest weaknesses of Green Tide is a lack of ability to Fall Back and do anything, and we took advantage of that whenever we could.
Once the dust settled and both of our armies had grinded each other down, we ended with a very well-deserved 10-10 tie. This game was Warhammer at its finest, as long as you exclude my complete lack of desire to play any Warhammer with Joel on turn 2!
Round 4: Brett’s Awakened Dynasty (T, 10-10)
Brett’s List: 3×10 Immortals, Imotekh, Plasmancers, Chronomancer, 6 Wraiths, Technomancer, 2×3 Floating Guys with Very Big Guns, Tomb Blades, Flayed Ones, Night Scythe
Brett and I had a really fun game. He was a great sport, and gave me a very detailed rundown of his list’s tricks. This match was a good way to end the tournament. I really liked his Immortal based team list in a Teams setting. It’s a really hard list to either blow out or get blown out by, and it was no surprise when I saw that Brett got around a 10 every round in the event.
The funniest part about this game was the ending. We were getting towards the end of the round. The rest of our team’s scores were in, and we knew our team had won the round. I told Brett I was happy to stop playing. I didn’t know exactly what the score would be, but it seemed he would win, so we could just put in an 11-9 and wrap up.
But Brett and I couldn’t stop playing, as the group of 15 people surrounding our table made sure to tell us. It turned out that the Denver Fight Club and Mile High Militarum were in an almost exact tie for 2nd and 3rd place. If Brett won 11-9, then Denver Fight Club would get 2nd place. If we tied 10-10, Mile High Militarum would get 2nd place. This meant that to be fair to MHM, I had to keep playing hard the whole way to figure out an exact score. I really liked both teams so I didn’t care which team got 2nd, but for the integrity of the event I decided to keep playing to score as many points as I could.
To get a 10-10 tie, I would need Abaddon’s unit to roll an 11″ charge to beat up some Wraiths on the center objective and get Abaddon’s 4OC where it needed to be. I cock back my arm, roll the dice, and get a…. well, did you think Abaddon became THE Warmaster by failing charges? Of course he rolled a natural 11 on the first try, turning the game into a tie. For a brief second I thought I might get an 11, but Brett played the bottom of his turn smartly and we barely held on for a tie.
Coaching (You’ll Want to Read This)
Coaching players and helping them grow has been so rewarding over the last few months, and I’d love to work with a few more people! Consider giving yourself (or your friend or your kid) the gift of more success and confidence in Warhammer by signing up for Warphammer coaching.
It’s developed into something very cool! Basically, have you ever watched a sports stream where the commentators are pausing the game and drawing lines all over the screen to talk about different plays both teams can make? Imagine a high-level 40K player doing that for your specific games! I have coaching clients bring pictures of their own games and break down all of the decisions in great detail. We both have so much fun doing this together.
By doing this, I’m able to open up their eyes to not only mistakes they keep making, but show them plays or alternate approaches that they’re not even considering. And that’s one of the best ways to get a player out of a rut, and start hitting a higher level of performance.
I wish I had access to something like this when I had started Warhammer 5 years ago, and I’m really glad that I can share this cool experience with everyone else now.
Other topics we talk about are improving your mindset, how to write better lists, how to approach your army’s tough matchups, and how to prepare for specific tournaments.
Coaching calls are done weekly. The cost is $200/month. If you’re on the fence, the start of a new year is a great time to give it a shot. If you’re interested, feel free to reach out to me via email at WarphammerOfficial@gmail.com or on Discord at Mike_All_In. I look forward to talking with you soon. Once that happens, I send you a questionnaire so I can tailor the coaching to your specific needs, and we’ll get the ball rolling.
Final Thoughts
I’ve enjoyed playing CSM the last few months, but Daemons are finally here. The time for our Daemonic gribblies is nigh, and I’ve already started grinding out reps to understand them. We’ve received such beautiful gifts. I’m going to enjoy them all. Keep an eye on Warphammer, because we’ll have some spicy Daemonic content coming out for you soon.
Interested in joining the best Warhammer community I’ve ever seen? Feel free to join the Warphammer Discord today! https://discord.gg/Gg56Xnep
Have fun, stay safe, and as always, may the Dark Gods bless your rolls!