Three 12–8s and One Very Stubborn Poxwalker
Tournament evening: frustration, laughs, and objective play to the bitter end
We had one of those classic Warhammer 40,000 event evenings where the scoreline looks respectable, but the road to get there was… a lot rougher than the numbers suggest.
Michał had already finished his two games early, and after the dust settled there was still some post-game accounting to do. We went back through the points in Tabletop Battles / event scoring and found a couple of things that had been missed: one Sticky Objective had been forgotten, and Michał also hadn’t taken Challenger despite being the underdog. So there was a bit of that very tournament-flavoured ritual we all know: checking the score sheet again and trying to remember what happened three turns earlier.
At that point the other guys were still playing the last round, while Michał was already processing what sounds like a deeply character-building matchup.
Black Templars: somehow more frustrating than reanimating Necrons
According to Michał, playing into Black Templars was even more frustrating than dealing with reanimating Necrons. And that is saying something.
His summary of the experience was beautifully dramatic: the Templars apparently felt like they had “70 x D6 attacks, each doing d12+300 damage”, with a bonus to wound when hitting higher Toughness targets. In other words: one of those games where every enemy activation feels like a personal insult.
By the end of turn five, Michał had been reduced to a single Poxwalker. Not a squad. Not a battered remnant. Just one lonely little survivor, who switched fully into what can only be described as hidehammer plus runhammer mode.
And honestly? Respect.
That last Poxwalker was apparently doing the only thing left that mattered: sneaking around and touching objectives. Despite the battlefield disaster, the final score ended up at 52:64, which translated into a tournament result of 8–12. So while it definitely wasn’t a good time emotionally, it also wasn’t a total collapse on points.
When Ender asked whether it was a full tragedy or maybe something we’d want to play ourselves one day, Michał’s verdict was very relatable: for now, he’d had enough of 40k — but maybe someday, why not.
The final round: every duel ends 12–8
Later in the evening, once the last game wrapped up, we got the full summary: every single pairing ended 12–8. That alone gives the whole round a slightly absurd, almost scripted feel.
The last game also gave us the best story beat of the night. Marek won, but apparently it was a pretty funny one, because Wilini had nearly tabled him. So this was one of those very Warhammer outcomes where the battlefield looked like a massacre, yet the mission and scoring still told a different story.
And really, that’s a battle report mood we know well:
- one player feels like they’ve been fed into a shredder,
- someone else is somehow still scoring,
- a heroic last model is doing nonsense on objectives,
- and the final event standings end up looking weirdly tidy.
A very 40k kind of evening
This whole exchange had a bit of everything we enjoy writing down after game night: frustration, score corrections, exaggerated post-battle trauma, and the kind of absurd ending only mission-based Warhammer can deliver.
A lone Poxwalker playing for points until the very end is exactly the sort of tiny hobby legend we want to remember.