This past weekend was both a bumper one on the competitive scene but also probably one of the last big weekends for a while as more countries lock down again, so thisweek’s Competitive Innovations was split in two so we can give all the lists the attention they deserve. Today we bring you the second part, looking at the results from the Clutch City GT and the YHP Fall Brawl.

Part 1

Clutch City GT

You can find the lists for this event in BCP. As far as I can tell, at least the new FW Compendium was in play for this event.

Michael Dehoyos’ Harlequins – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Soaring Spite Harlequins add yet another trophy to their cabinet.
• Harlequin’s embraces favoured over kisses or caresses. A sentence Slaanesh would be proud of.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

We start off today with a familiar sight that serves to hammer home the fact that the new Marine codex has done nothing to slow down the frankly absurd level of dominance Harlequins are showing, given the percentage of the field they make up. With three of the sixteen top four lists from the weekend, including two of the first place finishes, they seem to be doing just fine, and of the three lists seen this weekend this is the most “by the numbers”, sporting the now classic bikes/boats/character trio setup. Team Texas have been putting in particularly strong work with Harlequins, so it’s no surprise to see one of their members at the helm!

One of the challenges when lists from factions with small unit counts come back again and again is finding something to say about them every week, but luckily this build does show one subtle trend to mention, which is the use of Harlequin’s embraces rather than either kisses or carresses. For a long time people have generally either gone for the multi-damage of the kisses or the S5 of the caress, but with marines continuing to be a big part of the meta, and Custodes and Sisters also having very relevant defences against AP-2, it would appear that right now the extra point of AP is viewed as more valuable than either of the other flavours (and also comes with the sweetener of being a point cheaper). We’ll see whether the ability to actually crack the defences of Allarus Terminators or Deathwing Knights ends up being what’s needed going forward, or if things shift back to a place where you want the extra strength.

That’s the main point of interest here, ultimately – for the rest of it you know the tune by now, and congratulations to Michael for playing it expertly!

Clifton Russell’s Genestealer Cult – 2nd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Who would win, a complacent metagame or 120 roasty bois.
• Heavy rock cutters on one Acolyte squad, potentially as a tech choice against Gravis armour.
• Cult Sentinels finally find a role as backline space fillers.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Sisters may have picked up a broad spectrum of new options from the wargear options, but it appears that one very important one has done a lot to improve the fortunes of the Genestealer Cults. As we saw from Alex Macdougall’s list last week, increasing the range of hand flamers substantially widens the capabilities of Acolyte Hybrids, letting them function much more flexibly and with far less mandatory CP spend. This list takes that all the way through to its logical conclusion by going all-in on what is extremely likely to now be GSC’s best unit. 120 Acolytes, half the units with deadly melee weapons as well, take to the field, and are going to present a huge headache for a lot of lists.

Thanks to They Came From Below, this list can, if it chooses, end up with all of the Acolytes in deep strike when it suits it, and in many games I suspect it’s going to – they don’t really want to be foot slogging across the field, and aren’t really durable enough to stand up to enemy shooting. I’ve got to assume the plan here is to make use of the sentinels and a couple of characters to do the absolute bare minimum to try and score 5-10pts on the primary turn one, then launch an absolutely brutal counter-assault into enemy positions over the course of turns two and three, overwhelming them and bodying them off the board.

Honestly? That’s going to be a pretty effective strategy a lot of the time. With no Sudden Death in 9th and less pressure to try and pick up kills, as long as you can pick up a few points from the early primary there isn’t much else you need to do, and if this list gets to go first it can take a credible swing at stopping the opponent picking up many points early as well. It does have to worry a bit about some opponents  – Infiltrators are a headache for it (and if this gets picked up by the metagame you better believe they’ll kick Incursors out of lists) and if it comes up against horde Orks on some maps it has to worry about getting boxed in by a squad using Da Jump, but the simple truth is that with GSC hardly a factor in the metagame until now, many armies have been skimping a bit on the level of dedicated screening they used to pack in 8th, and this list can exploit that.

When this army hits it hurts too. 2+ saves or t7+ are the only things that will really properly blunt the flamer output, and for those targets the heavy melee weapons are as deadly as ever (and with 4AE this list can pretty reliably lock in a charge on at least one key target). The use of Rock Drills in one squad is interesting – my assumption is that they’re there for dealing with 3W models, as between d3 damage and the coin flip to insta-kill the target if you don’t get 3 damage on the roll I expect you do waste fewer wounds than with the saws, and with Apothecaries in every list they’re a relevant factor against 2W stuff as well. I’d need to get Kevin to fire up the math-o-tron to be sure, but there are definitely at least plausible reasons for it.

With nearly 3/4 of the points spent on a single datasheet, there isn’t that much more to say here beyond yeah this probably is now something you at least need to think about when building your armies – if you don’t have any sort of plan against it it’s going to be a rough game. Congratulations Clifton for bringing The Fear back.

Colin Coons’ Custodes – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• When one gigantic Shadowkeeper flyer just isn’t enough…
• Relatively light spread of infantry units back up the two giant planes.
• The Forge World infantry make another strong showing.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

The threat of having to argue whether you’re using the Snyder cut of the deployment rules when you get a mission using Dawn of War doesn’t seem to be disuading players from taking out the Custodes planes, and this list (literally) doubles down on that particular goodness by bringing two. Packing half your points into two giant golden resin bricks certainly has its risks, but the flexible defensive options that playing as Shadowkeepers gives you means they’ll be very tough to down if they’re flattened against the back of your deployment zone, and taking an Orion here lets Colin squeeze even more value from defensive boosts by keeping some of the Infantry safe inside for the initial volleys as well. Some opponents are just flat out not going to be able to kill anything out of the gate, and against anything except hordes the response is going to be extremely brutal. It isn’t especially complicated, and we basically know how this list functions at this point, but it is good!

Obviously with a massive proportion of the army being Forge World, it’s worth looking forward at how it fares out of the updates. The two FW INFANTRY units both get better, which is obviously good news, but it does take a knock on the Ares. This goes up a modest 20pts, but more importantly sees its bomb changed to an AOE effect rather than dumping mortals on a single unit. While this is better against Elite armies, those aren’t really what this list has trouble with, and losing an angle to put 10 MWs on a big blob of Boyz or Necron Warriors is a very real loss. The Orion still packs plenty of anti-personnel dakka, but I think it’s plausible that finding a way to put more shots on the board will become imperative for this list going forward.

We’ll see what happens I guess – but right now, hats off to Colin for another win with it.

Jared Gomez’s Ultramarines – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Tigurius, the Seal of Oath and Dreadnought spam provide a powerful combination.
• The heavy bolter buff is apparently enough to get Razorbacks into real lists. What a world.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Ultramarines continue their relentless march back onto the tabletop, and this list demonstrates that it isn’t just Guilliman powering it. Tigurius throwing out an extremely reliable cast of Psychic Fortress to protect the Redemptors and various infantry here, especially when combined with another range-boosted Apothecary aura for the latter. Most of the rest of this list we’ve seen perform in the various other builds, but I’d be extremely remiss if I didn’t highlight the fact that there’s an honest-to-god Razorback here, just living its best life carrying around tactical marines. Turns out that being able to get a turn of AP-2 D2 heavy bolter fire in to kick off the game is kind of just a fine thing to drop into a list if you’ve got some points kicking around now. What a marvelous world 9th Edition is. Not too much more to say, but hats off to Jared for really bringing it old school right here.

The Rest of the Best

Once again at just over 30 players, this event ended up with one more player on 4-1:

• 5th Place – Steven Fox: Steven was playing a different spin on Kataphron AdMech, going wide with five minimum sized units each of Breachers and grav destroyers, backed up by some Fulgurite Electropriests and all enjoying the Lucius canticle and dogma for extra durability.

YHP Fall Brawl

You can find the lists for this event in BCP. It was not using the new FW Compendium or DW/SW supplements.

TJ Lanigan’s Chaos – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Just like giant dropships, apparently two gigantic wingèd Tzeentch super-psykers is better than one.
• Big Bird notably so good as the warlord that you’ll happily spend 3CP to take Magnus in a super-heavy aux so you can have Incorporeal Form.
• Lots of Nurglings continue to prove effective at gumming up the board, and they’re joined by a big unit of horrors with some reinforcement points in the bank.
• The Cult of Mutation shows up to take advantage of their movement-hampering power.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

This list generated quite a lot of chatter over the weekend and I’m reliably informed by the temporarily embarrassed major winners of Comp40K Facebook that it cannot possibly win in a metagame with good shooting, so I guess we just have to write this off as a fluke huh?

Yeah not really. Despite what people who’ve never tried to take down Big Bird might think, this list is a total nightmare, able to quickly generate strong board control between the Nurglings and the big Horror blob (packing some reinforcement points for splits, no less) then extremely capable of punishing an opponent who tries to take it back with the overwhelming psychic firepower it can bring to bear. The targets an opponent wants to kill bad are the Bird, Magnus, and the Horrors, but as soon as the latter two get their defences up they’re all disproportionately difficult to move, and the ones reliant on buffs can be thrown into deep strike or Strategic Reserves if needed – this list doesn’t need that much in the way of CP to operate on the table.

That means that shifting this army or reducing its offensive punch is really tough, and it even packs a good anti-horde spike in the form of a full volley from Flickering Flamesed Horrors. It also packs tricks to reduce the chance of it getting outmaneuvred as well, with Doombolt from Magnus and  the Cult of Mutation power from the Daemon Prince being able to slow a unit down substantially, for the latter including one that’s lurking behind a ruin, as it only needs line of sight to the terrain feature itself. With nasty Vanguard Veteran units being in vogue that’s a hugely powerful asset, as it makes it extremely tough for them to successfully land the first strike on one of the juicy targets.

What I see looking at this list is one that really puts an opponent on the spot – it’s going to take enough control early and racks up enough damage via psychic attrition that an opponent can’t really dance around it, so they’re going to have to go for a big swing – and if they try that and miss they’re going to get utterly demolished in response. With all of the key pieces being so tough to shift, and the speed of mobile threats being cut down by some of the powers at play, most such attempts are doomed to failure, and combining that with TJ’s exceptional skill, it’s no surprise to see this army on top.

Steven Christopher’s Necrons – 2nd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• The Novokh rack up the second Necron top four out of the weekend.
• Two large reaper warrior blobs and a flayer unit in a ghost ark provide formidable board presence and serious melee threat once the Silent King amps them up.
• Crypteks for days. Release the Chronomancer model GW. People are dying.
• Fast Canoptek constructs round the list out, providing rapid response and harrassment threats.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Great news Necron fans – two GT top four lists to mull over this week. After the somewhat out-there build from Nathan we saw yesterday, Steven’s build conforms a bit more to what I’ve been expecting to see doing well. Two big Chronomancer-buffed Novokh Warrior blobs, with the Silent King watching over them and a Technomancer whacking them with their staff to revive dead modelss represent a hugely challenging brick to shift, and can cheerfully murder most targets as well.

Getting encircled or outmaneuvred is, obviously, the big threat to them, and this list mitigates that by packing several fast melee units to respond to enemy flankers (Scarabs are surprisingly dangerous as Novokh thanks to getting AP on the charge), multiple units of Cryptothralls to lurk on home objectives or drop into Strategic Reserves, and finally a Ghost Ark mounted Warrior squad to either fill in gaps where needed or make a play for an early mid-board objective while the rest of the list gets into position (adding more Warrior reanimation to boot). I’m a big fan of Ghost Arks and am definitely inspired to give mine another runaround having seen this – it complements the overall plan very effectively and makes the army a bit more durable on the table. The other option in the slot would be a squad of Triarch Praetorians, who are no joke alongside the Silent King, but not really having the space to get them rocking an invuln from Orikan in the list would be a drawback.

Novokh are definitely my favourite flavour of Necrons out of their book and I’m even thus even happier than usual to see the faction doing well here (and am taking copious notes, oh yes). Now we just need the Chronomancer model. GW please.

Mate Csaszar’s Harlequins – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• “Soaring Spite but with the Yncarne” also racks up another strong showing.
• Hilarious aura trickery available on the Shadowseer via the Domino Shroud.
• Embraces once again the order of the day for special melee weapons.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Another Harlequin list, this time running one of the more popular variants that isn’t just down-the-line Soaring Spite build, which is adding the Yncarne in place of the last unit of bikes. I’m a big Yncarne fan, and generally high on this flavour, but we’ve seen it before and I’ve already talked about the shift to embraces today so that does leave me scratching around for more things to say about it.

Luckily, Mate has indulged me by coming up with a cool use for one of the Harlequin relics from their White Dwarf PA update. The Domino Shroud lets a model effectively teleport 12″ at the end of a phase without being subject to the normal 9″ limitation for where they can appear, and sticking it on a Shadowseer loaded up with both defensive auras is a neat trick. You can wait till the end of the opponent’s movement phase to see where they’ve set up their firepower, and teleport the Shadowseer to protect whatever’s in the firing line. With several popular Marine shooting options often operating right on the edge of their ranges, being able to suddenly reposition your Veil of Illusion bubble to counteract it is just horrifically brutal, and honestly going to be near game-winning if you pull it off against Plasmaceptors, as they’ll get to kill nothing in exchange for putting themselves squarely in counterattack range. The sheer wickedness of this warms my twisted elf-appreciating heart, and while I’m not 100% certain it’s actually better than just taking the Shadowstone in the long run, it certainly does give you more angles to catch your opponent out and steal a victory. Additional movement headaches your opponent has to consider in a list already packing the Yncarne is obviously nice too!

So there we have it – yet another strong performance from the clowns, and still bringing up the occasional surprise to boot!

Shane Watts’ Adepta Sororitas – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• We finish our full rundowns as we begun for this week with another top finish for a Goonhammer contributor.
• Pure Bloody Rose, but playing all the hits of the new infantry hotness, with Retributors and Celestians out in force in an infantry horde list.
• Seraphim and Repentia continue to provide excellent spike damage potential.
• A Battle Sanctum and the Triumph ensure a continuous flood of miracle dice to power up this army’s nonsense.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Last but definitely not least, our very own Shane Watts racks up another GT top four. With the Goff list he took to the top last time clearly now being too mainstream for him, he’s playing some more experimental material by taking out a new spin on Sisters. While we’ve seen quite a few of the tools here used successfully in other lists, the overall package is very much its own thing – Shane’s build passes up on Mortifiers, Exorcists or a heavy contingent of Rhinos and goes for a full-blown infantry horde list, with just a single Rhino and a Battle Sanctum breaking up the serried ranks of Bloody Rose Sisters.

The result is something that’s pretty well tuned to the current metagame. Melta weapons are everywhere right now, and shooting at massed 4++  1W infantry is about the worst possible fail case for them, and armies going hard on that are going to look a bit silly. This army’s offensive output, by contrast, is extremely broad. It has melta of its own to pop large targets at range, Celestians to sucker punch hordes in melee, and Repentia to come in from a board edge, auto-charge and kill almost anything. The broad range of tools the list has also means it can be profitably popping Miracles all the time (including shooting in the movement phase with Seraphim in a pinch), and with the Triumph, the Sanctum and Celestine’s warlord trait it’s going to have access to an ample flow of dice to use for this. With so much melta kicking around, and the Triumph to boost their value, pretty much any dice showing 2+ are actively useful, and even the 1s can be blown to auto-pass morale tests under the new rules. The list ends up exceptionally reliable because of it, and opponents have a tough choice in terms of what to do about it – they can swing at the Triumph to try and stop the Miracle nonsense, but doing that ignores the threats, but then on the flip side if they go for the best threats the Triumph lets everything else punch above its weight!

Beyond the Miracle power, being almost pure infantry and having every unit be at least OK in melee thanks to the Bloody Rose conviction, this list is just fantastic at playing 9th Edition missions. It can control the board extremely well, has a bunch of angles on actions, and while it theoretically gives up Assassinate, in practice you basically need to be tabling it to pull that off, and that’s extremely challenging for most armies. You also need to really know what you’re doing against this army – underestimating what it can achieve with Miracles is going to get you brutally killed in very short order. Overall, it’s a really neat build that does things just differently enough from the mainstream to wrongfoot the opposition, while still retaining a tonne of the raw power of the faction. Classic Shane.

The Rest of the Best

Four more players made it through to 4-1 records:

• 5th Place – Jonas Beardsley: The classic Knights and Scions build hovers just on the edge of a top spot. Like with the few other successful Knight builds we’ve seen, it’s very notable that three of the four big knights (three Crusaders and a Gallant) are packing defensive buffs rather than offensive ones.  That could help make the revised Forge World options look more attractive for loyalists, as in 8th not being able to take the relic weapons was their big drawback. If that isn’t as much of a problem any more, some of them are probably worth a real tryout.
• 6th Place – Daniel Paolini: A multi-Redemptor list performs as White Scars as well, backed up by Outriders and Vanguard Veterans.
• 7th Place – Josh Schutz: Josh’s Hive Mind list mixes up a hefty contingent of 6++ Gaunts with some GSC Acolytes and Kronos shooting to provide a relatively potent looking mixed build that seems designed to bait an opponent into committing to secondaries they fail on.
• 8th Place – Curt Phillips: In another piece of bookending, our very last list today is a Harlequin/Craftworld build, making use of Hornets and Shining Spears to back up the Frozen Stars.

Wrap Up

Finally done for the week – what a mammoth task that was. As a reminder, we’ll be taking a break from this column for a few weeks unless something very unusual happens in a Covid-safe part of the world, but what we’ve decided to do to fill in the competitive gap next week is take all our observations from these articles and update our tier list for next Friday. Make sure to check that out, and prepare your most powerful hot takes and comments (we’re certainly readying ours) and if you have any comments, questions or suggestions, hit us up at contact@goonhammer.com.