JStove is back with another great article talking about an amazing Hellhound list from the LVO and why it was a game changer. Come check it out.
Jstove here, taking a break from my regular schedule of unfunny satire articles and ranting about Chaos (leave that to Goatboy, he does it better with 200% more spam!) to talk about my absolute favorite dark horse list from Las Vegas Open, my Olympic hero, the master of disaster, That Guy and his 15 hellhounds.
In case you don’t care about top tier 40k, going to tournaments, or any of that crap, here’s the short version- A bunch of really competitive best-in-the-world 40k players all went to Las Vegas to go get completely trashed and play 40k. Somewhere along the way, The Hero Gotham Deserves showed up with 15 Forge World Artemia Hellhounds and burninated his way to the top 8 tables. Want to see his list? This is his list. 15 Artemia Hellhounds.
How did he keep winning?
Two reasons:
- evil will always win because meta is dumb, and
- hellhounds are freakin monsters, and they literally do everything in the game that a good unit must do, and the Forge World Artemia Hellhound does all that and better. I’ll break down both points for you.
Meta is Dumb
When I was just a wee lad in junior high, it was the mid-nineties and the internet didn’t exist yet we played Magic the Gathering at lunch and on the weekends at my friend Richard’s dinner table. Back then, everyone had a local meta and you couldn’t netlist because a global netlist meta didn’t exist yet. Then the internet happened, and suddenly it’s 2018, and everyone shows up to the PTQ with the same god damn deck that they downloaded from the internet, and Magic stopped being fun.
40k has Magic’s problem to a lesser degree. Thankfully, because the units in 40k are actual models that require investment in time, effort, and passion to build and paint, there’s a bit of insulation from netlisting and meta-copying because only the most genuinely dedicated competitors will buy the models every 3 months to play the most abusive level of 40k. It’s not as accessible as going to a card show or a website with a shopping list and just dropping 300 bucks on the best deck in the game that block.
But in any game where you have a meta, whether it’s cardboard spells, plastic toy soldiers, or even just playing Monopoly, you’re going to see stagnant patterns of behavior and become bored of the same old stuff. Familiarity truly does breed contempt. Meta followers will defend the art of the meta by stating that if all other factors are the same, (IE, everyone running meta lists/decks/top hat) then truly the playing field is equal and the player who best executes the strategy and is the superior thinker wins. That is technically true. However, it’s also boring as hell. More importantly, that ideal only holds up as long as the meta doesn’t shift.
And how do metas shift? Easy- While all the meta strokers are abusing their net decks, a true creative genius rides in on a dark horse with something so far out of left field that the meta can’t handle it. Then he crushes them all, or at least enough of them that they have to adjust the meta to consistently beat him, and the hero becomes the villain. It’s truly a beautiful cycle of life. For the meta to shift, someone has to come in and not play the meta, throw it out the window. In games with a progressive meta, progress equals defenestration. So what’s the problem? Well, the problem is that with how easy it is to play to the meta and netlist, most of us would rather take the safe bet and not risk the back injury that could result from trying to throw things out a window. That’s why 15 Hellhound guy is a hero.
Philosophy rant over. Let’s talk about the Hellhound
I’m pretty familiar with the Artemia hellhound, I’ve been a fan of it since it showed up in the index. I’m not gonna sit here and claim that I’m so smart and I knew what was gonna happen- If I did, I’d be playing Hellhound spam at top 8 of LVO! But I did have a friend that plays Guard, and Guard is his passion army. We wanted to put together an all-comers leaf blower that he could paint to a high standard and always have fun with. We hit a lot of checks on his list- Manticores, Leman Russes, Death Korps of Krieg, a vulture with dual gatling guns because it’s fun, and our secret sauce… Artemia Hellhounds. We only had a handful of them… Not like the all Hellhound spam this Hero of Gotham had. But let’s explain why the Hellhound is so great, and why it’s a dark horse unit that you missed.
-Hellhounds hit automatically with their flamethrowers, so they’re immune to Ballistic Skill collapse from wounds.
-Hellhounds, due to their speed, have amazing threat range. In previous editions before vehicles had wound pools, the Hellhound had weaknesses- it could lose the flame cannon or become immobilized by an unlucky die roll, but in 8E, Hellhounds never stop when they are wounded, they just slow down. This means that the only factor that diminishes on a damaged Hellhound is threat range- Killing a Hellhound is an all or nothing gamble. You can’t just leave it wounded. As long as it’s still on the table, it will probably be able to hurt something.
-Hellhounds are cheap, and with their speed and cost-effectiveness, you can throw them away with relative impunity. They don’t actually have to kill anything to work, they just have to roll up the table full throttle on turn 1 and scare your opponent. Everything they actually kill is just a bonus.
-THE BIG ONE- The Artemia Hellhound is for all intents and purposes a typical cheap Flamehound, but with a major difference- When you roll for a number of hits, you roll 2 dice and drop the low, because, on Forge World’s Artemia, they know their stuff when it comes to fire.
The Hero You Never Knew You Had
Because the Hellhound is such a relentless aggression unit, it is often overlooked, and because the Artemia Hound is sitting in the back of an index somewhere, it’s even more of a dark horse. But ask any Death Guard player about the Foetid Bloat Drone- If it’s fast, cheap, doesn’t have to roll to hit, and you can’t kill it before it hurts you, it must be good. After years of being bogged down in True Line of Sight gun line shootout meta dominated by Utility belt Tau and D weapon Eldar, many players have lost sight of the worth of aggression short-range firepower. Getting in your opponent’s face is a weapon. Speedboats like Bloat Drones and Hellhounds are the Conor Mcgregor Weigh In Crap Talk of 40k- 75% of the match is verbal abuse before the match, 25% is actually Mcgregor throwing hands. 75% of speedboat flamer spam is moving models forward to corral your opponent. 25% is… Not having to ever roll to hit.
But can it be stopped?
Of course, it can. One cunning player cracked the nut by fencing in the hellhound spam with melee and locking up the parking lot for the whole game, winning on objectives. It turns out the weakness of 15 Hellhounds on the table is trying to fit 15 Hellhounds on the table. Catch them in a traffic jam, and you can play the game, not the opponent. That’s really the true beauty of it all- First, there was a genius that Trogdored his way to top 8 by ignoring a meta and bringing a dark horse ringer. Then, it was shut down by an equally creative genius who had the bright idea of… Charging Hellhound flame tanks? What a crazy galaxy!
Lesson Learned
So what do we take away from this?
You should have had hellhounds in your imperial soup all along. Seriously, they’re just better, faster, bloat drones, and bloat drones are ridiculous. How did you sleep on that amazing tank?
Never having to roll to hit means never having to say you’re sorry. The only thing better than picking up ones or getting re-rolls from a nearby character or psychic power is never needing a crutch in the first place.
When you play the same old meta, you get run over by a dark horse ringer. Don’t play the meta, be the ringer! If you’re not a ringer and it doesn’t work out, at least you tried. But if it does work out… You’re the 15 hellhound Legend of Las Vegas.
REMEMBER KID, HEROES GET REMEMBERED, BUT LEGENDS NEVER DIE.
