All looking a bit shiny out there huh? Tau and Custodes are hitting their stride, and that would appear to be bad news for everyone else – this week’s roundup touches on 73 lists once you account for all of the Best of the Rest sections, and just over half come from those two factions. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing else to talk about, as we’ve also got a couple of breakout performances from very different Genestealer Cult lists, in the hands of two faction experts, and some other cool lists besides, but the vibes out there are certainly starting to feel a bit hostile again, so there are probably going to be some Big Thoughts about certain factions when we take stock of the metagame for a mid-season Tier list in a few weeks.

For now, loads of events to cover, and I’m afraid this week some of the writeups are going to be a bit briefer than normal – there’s a whole bunch of armies, and I’m a bit shorter on time than normal. A usual, lists that entered the final round undefeated (or indeed finished undefeated but not in first) are marked with a ✪.

Note: There will, in fact, be a “part 2” tomorrow, since you have all firmly managed to achieve “Warhammer, but too much”. I hope you’re proud of yourselves. That will cover:

• Warhammer World Matched Play GT
• Void Hammer
• The Salty Classic
• The Victoria Masters

UKTC London Open

All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

David Gaylard – Tyranids – Crusher Stampede

Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Mani Cheema – Adeptus Custodes – Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff

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Secure Missing Artefacts

Thoughts

We’ve already seen Crusher vs. Custodes in one of these, and here we get it again in the hands of some of the best players in the UK scene. More than that, both lists are teched for this exact matchup, with the top metagame being more than polarised enough for that to start looking important to win a major. In the bug corner, the presence of a Maleceptor for Encephalic Diffusion helps to massively mitigate the expected losses from an early volley of salvo launchers, especially on the T8 Hierodules and the Flyrant with the Biomorphic Carapace. Crusher can’t afford to start losing units early on, and reducing the risk of an early blowout is good. The Maleceptor also brings Focal Essence to the table, which can still have an impact past The Emperor’s Auspice thanks to Single Minded Annihliation – shoot your second favourite target first, dare them not to use the stratagem, then switch gears to punking your priority option if they do. The beauty of Hive Guard is that with Relentless Flurry up they still have a reasonable chance of spiking some damage through anyway, so with the first turn the bugs can get some serious work done into Custodes best stuff.

Over in Mani’s list, we see Custodes reaching what seems like the logical conclusion of Goodstuff tools – three Bike Squads and three Achillus dreads. The Achillus are the particularly important thing here, as they’re a real answer to Crusher’s damage reduction up-close, making the game just that much harder for the Tyranids to play all-round. Also tough for them (but far from uncommon for Custodes lists) is how challenging it is to pick Secondaries in this game – Custodes don’t give up anything kill-wise, Grind is riskier than usual and a squad of Sisters plus an Inquisitor make anything Psychic pretty dicey.

That, in combination with the mission here, means that even with Crusher’s extra tools they’ve got their work cut out for them, especially if Mani wins the roll to move an objective first. Move the objective not in David’s deployment zone out a bit and this game becomes one that’s playing on more fronts than the Tyranids are happy with, allowing Custodes to isolate and neutralise them. There are still some options for the bugs to get a win – if the Hive Guard spike and pick up two units early that’s very good, while if the Custodes ever undercommit to a kill and get picked up in response they’re in trouble (or if they take disastrous damage from a Fight on Death), but here things add up to the Custodes having an edge on Secondaries (thanks to free real estate from Bring it Down) and an edge on the alternative primary, so the balance of probabilities is that they get the win, just with less confidence than normal. That does, in fact, seem to be how things played out – a good enough score from David that it clearly wasn’t a blowout, but a win for Mani in the end.

Result

Adeptus Custodes Victory – 85-65

Mani Cheema – Adeptus Custodes – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown.

Archetype

Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

As above, this seems to be one logical terminus for Emperor’s Chosen – the mix of Bikes and Achillus dreads gives you everything that you want, while an Inquisitor and Sisters makes your opponent’s life difficult for Psychic Actions while opening up your choices considerably. Expect to see plenty of imitators, and congratulations to Mani on another big win.

David Gaylard – Tyranids – 2nd ✪ Place

The List

See Showdown.

Archetype

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Again as above, David’s list does make some shakeups to the Crusher formula, most notably the removal of the dreaded Dimachaeron in favour of more durability. That’s helpful into both Custodes and Tau, both of which can comfortably put an errant Dimachaeron down (they’re also very hard to hide), but both of which will struggle much more to rack up damage into what this list is putting down. Tau opponents on the burst cannon plan are going to find that even re-rolls for days isn’t always enough once you’re down to wounding on 6s, and dropping SMS shots down to S4 via the Maleceptor is huge for the Hive Guard. The Hive Mind always adapts, and this list takes a very clear swing at what’s out there in the metagame, so a well deserved successful run for David.

Jim Bessey – Drukhari – 3rd ✪ Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Cronos Drukhari

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

More adaptation on show here, as Drukhari’s performance takes a hit from further nerfs and players scramble to reconfigure their lists. Jim’s list here is by far the most successful from the weekend, discarding the Artists of Flesh Talos in favour of the old standby of Technomancer Cronos (who have the appeal of being much stronger out of Strategic Reserves) and some more updates besides. Lots of Venoms helps the list go wide against Custodes, aiming to out-maneuvre them on objectives, saturates the Tau with lots of targets, and works OK to plink wounds off Crusher monsters/Shield Drones with lots of poison (they also work very well on UKTC terrain, as they can hide behind the small ruins). Over in the Wych Cult land, the Cursed Blade get a showing, which again makes some sense. It allows the Hellions to spike up to S6 (or even S7, with Hyperstimm), which makes them much more meaningful into Custodes without needing to rely on re-rolls, while a squad of Reavers with Adrenalight is perfect for zooming over into the face of any Tau opponent and tying up their models at the start of the game. Finally, concentrating firepower on a couple of Ravagers makes it very mobile, and also lets you protect one with Never Stationary very effectively, allowing some damage to be racked up without too much risk.

It’s suddenly a much tougher out there for the erstwhile meta champions, but this is a timely reminder of just how much depth and adaptability there is in their roster – big congratulations to Jim on an undefeated run with them.

Martyn Lakeland – Adeptus Custodes – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Emperor’s Chosen goodstuff.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

While I do basically think Achillus Dreads are the best way to go with Custodes, you absolutely don’t have to, and other options like going a bit heavier on Troops can be powerful. This list has a good plan for stripping the Shield Drones off a key Crisis team via the Sagittarum, and shores up its game plan against massed plasma rifles and ork rokkits with a Vexila Magnifica, important if you’re investing more heavily in 3W infantry. Good stuff from Martyn.

The Rest of the Best

With 98 players starting, and only five rounds prior to the top two cut, there were obviously quite a lot of additional 4-1 players, fourteen to be precise, so these are going to be a bit briefer than normal. They were:

• 5th – Ed Watts – Adeptus Custodes: Emperor’s Chosen goodstuff, very similar build to Mani’s, but with one unit of bikes flexed to hurricane bolters to add some anti-horde.
• 6th – James Parrett-Jung – Adeptus Custodes: Something a little different here – Solar Watch Custodes, with some slightly heavier bike units and an Allarus squad to hype into battle with Sally Forth.
• 7th – Oliver Misick – Salamanders: All sorts of flavours of punchbot, all in a row, with Bray’arth Ashmantle leading a bunch of different dreadnoughts into battle, backed up by some Eradicators.
• 8th – Will Whitaker – Tau: Top-heavy Tau Sept Goodstuff with Longstrike, Shadowsun and two further Commanders playing herohammer, and various smaller Crisis Teams with high rate-of-fire weapons to throw at targets with Exemplar of the Mont’ka up.
• 9th – Christopher Radford – Space Wolves Successors: The Minotaurs team up with Wulfen, Wolf Guard and Long Fangs here, layering the standard Whirlwind/Born Heroes trait on top of the Space Wolf Superdoctrine for double exploding sixes in the Assault Doctrine, and bringing Hekaton along as a durable troubleshooter.
• 10th – Edward Sandilands – Tau: Tau Sept Goodstuff with two big Crisis Teams, more in line with the lists we saw succeed last week.
• 11th – Peter Brown – Space Wolves: Actual wolves here leaning in on the named characters, with Njal and Bjorn leading a pair each of Redemptors and Wulfen Dreadnoughts to battle.
• 12th – Alun Perkins – Adeptus Custodes: Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff mixing in a squad of Venatari, a regular Contemptor with a multi-melta and a Silent Judge Knight Centura.
• 13th – Craig Douglas – Tau: Farsight Enclaves with three Commanders (including Farsight himself), two big Crisis bombs (and a large Stealth Team to Homing Beacon one in early) and a hefty Broadside unit.
• 14th – Brodie Middleton – Aeldari: Mixed Harlequins and a last ride for the old Craftworld rules, with MSUs of Reapers, some casters and a Lynx.
• 15th – Oliver Wheeler – Adeptus Custodes: Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff with some Caladius tanks.
• 16th – Thomas Hume – Tau: Farsight Enclaves running lots of Broadside Battlesuits, three units of two, providing truly spectacular firepower.
• 17th – Alex Petford – Tau: Farsight Enclaves with a heavy Crisis unit, airburst Bodyguards, Broadsides and a Tigershark.
• 18th – Mark Vickery – Craftworlds: A wide mixture of Aspects that looks designed  to keep the enemy flustered long enough to take a victory, with two Wraithseers providing a heftier central force.

G.I.M.P B.O.T

All the lists for this event can be found in Tourneykeeper.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Immanuel Wolf – Tau – Bor’kan big suits.

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vs.

Manuel Wieczorek – Adeptus Custodes – Shadowkeepers

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Death and Zeal

Thoughts

A matchup we’re going to be seeing a lot of here – Tau and Custodes are unarguable the meta hotness, and seeing them clash on top tables is going to be the norm. The Custodes list here goes for Shadowkeepers, which is something of a sidegrade here. Losing the Chosen re-rolls sucks, but it’s far from a total bust, as the Lockwarden  Bike Captain going through drones and Crisis suits like a hot knife at a key moment can be very valuable, and reducing the strength of incoming attacks can matter, though the loadouts on the Tau here aren’t super conduive to it – taking air frags to wounding on 6s against bikes is nice but not mandatory, and a lot of the rest of the guns are (or can be) S8. Still, Emperor’s Auspice is often even more of a huge pain for Tau than it is for everyone else, and essentially uncontested access to Psychic Secondaries from Greyfax is nice for the Golden boys, and current indications are that they can certainly hold their own into Tau.

This Tau list is very different from any others we’ve seen so far, however, and looks like an absolute screaming nightmare. There’s just so much of it and none of it dies easy, which is a big problem for the Adpetus Custodes. They’re usually entering a fight with less stuff than the opposition, and need to get some big kills to level that playing field, and landing a serious blow on this Borken list is going to be tough. Shield Drones are ruinous for the damage output of bike shooting, and this Custodes list is shorter on those than many with only six and a captain, so it’s going to struggle at range (and even up close, the Bor’kan strength reduction helps both Ghostkeels and Riptides ride out a bike charge). The Custodes can’t even attack quite a bit of what’s here – the Captains and Ghostkeels are protected until the Custodes are up close, especially with the number of Crisis Bodyguards around. There is, also, the Experimental Weaponry problem – at the right moment, the Riptide blowing 3CP to go ham into some bikes at AP-4 by adding Coordinated Engagement as well seems pretty real, and isn’t particularly reliant on re-rolls to land a punch.

The mission here is pretty helpful for the Tau too – they’ve got plenty of stuff to spread out with, while a coordinated strike on one Bike unit leaves the Custodes looking comparably thin on the ground. Secondaries look to be the one real chink in their armour, but even that they can mitigate quite a bit with Aerospace Relays with Bodyguards to escort Characters to the drop points, and maybe by gambling on To The Last – since it honestly looks like taking out the Riptide or big Crisis Team is a bit optimistic. Custodes are probably more confident on Stranglehold and a Psychic Secondary, but a third pick here is hard as the Tau are honestly pretty resilient to the normal standby of Grind. Taken all together there’s a real scent of death for the Custodes going into this – they desperately need a third unit of Bikes here to get a critical mass of shooting and enough forces to push hard on a flank. Without it, it feels like the Tau can confidently collapse one side of the table without taking too much damage on the way, and then have more than enough killing power to sweep the board in a few turns once they’re no longer under threat, something the scoreline suggests they did with merciless efficiency.

Result

Tau Victory 89-51

Immanuel Wolf – Tau – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown.

Archetype

Borkan Suits

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

The Custodes slayer triumphs, and while this list looks horrific to face down, I do love how different it is. Running Bor’kan really rewards building up the critical mass of bigger suits, and makes the many small units of Crisis Bodyguards doubly effective – harder to take out swiftly and with more reach on their many, many airbursts. Thanks to them, this list should be incredibly effective on good terrain thanks to how cagey it can be (and the TOs sent us a sample terrain map, which looked great), and if opponents start finding ways to push back against Tau lists relying on multiple big Crisis bombs, this looks like an interesting alternative route. Congratulations to Immanuel on the major win!

Jonas Trettin – Tau – 2nd ✪ Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Farsight Crisis Spam

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Speaking of big Crisis bombs – the other undefeated Tau list from this major is all about those – three brutally tooled up big teams, to be precise, gambling on their massive numbers of drones and massive damage output to just bowl opponents clean out of the game before they can muster the damage to fight back. My guess is that the list here starts one Crisis Team on the board and the other two in the sky, aims to use the Homing Beacon to bring one in with full re-rolls on each of the first and second turn while the Riptide and third team both zip in and out of cover with Nova Reactor and Strike and Fade, and then by around turn three hopes to be surveying a smoking crater where the enemy army once stood, maybe having lost some shield drones or one Crisis team if it’s unlucky. Honestly, I rate it’s chances of pulling that off, with the only mild concern being that it doesn’t have fantastic Secondary plans (beyond being very good at either To the Last or Grind) – it’s short on ObSec or Action units, so it’s often going to be relying on taking the best available kill secondary and maybe Engage to round things out. That does not seem to have stopped it rampaging through the event with Jonas in command (though did result in appreciably lower victory point totals than Immanuel, hence the second place), and big congratulations for racking up a success for the Enclaves.

Joscha Schmitz – Adeptus Custodes – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Where Custodes got the better of Tau in a lot of places this weekend, here they’re forced to lick their wounds in merely third and fourth place at a major, with Joscha leading the charge. The list here has plenty of the normal toys, but does include the more unusual elements of a Blade Champion and large unit of Wardens. In combination with the Praetorian Plate captain, this setup has the potential to dominate a huge amount of space on the board, making it quite difficult for enemy infantry to operate, and feels like it could have plenty of value in the mirror (where the Champion excels at decapitating rival Custodians). Like with the Bor’kan list, that setup feels like it would have excelled on good quality terrain, really making the opponent work for every inch of ground, and it looks like it was a great choice for the event – congratulations to Joscha on third place.

Manuel Wieczorek – Adeptus Custodes – 4th ✪ Place

The List

See Showdown.

The Standout Features/Archetype

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

The Rest of the Best

Eight more players finished on 4-1 records. They were:

• 5th – Jannek Lindemann – Tau: Farsight Enclaves with two big Crisis teams and lots of Commanders.
• 6th – Thorsten Martin – Necrons: Silent King Mephrit with lots of Wraiths to provide sticky brawlers.
• 7th – Kai Wirkus – Black Templars: Vicious melee Templars with a big squad each of Assault Terminators, Vanguard Veterans and Primaris Crusaders, and powerful characters leading the charge.
• 8th ✪ – Kayu Orellana – Tyranids: List missing.
• 9th – Fred Oho – Drukhari: Goodstuff shooting and melee tools with a contingent of Artists of Flesh Grotesques to anchor it.
• 10th – Jan H – Thousand Sons: List missing.
• 11th – Sebastian Müller – Tyranids: Crusher Stampede, but breaking from the norm by going in on a big squad of upgraded Tyranid Warriors.
• 12th – Marian Ritter – Tyranids: Another unusual crusher spin, going wide with smaller monsters and again packing a big Warrior squad.

Team Battle Brothers 40k

All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Michael Walsh – Adeptus Custodes – Extra shooty Emperor’s Chosen

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vs.

Andrew Vawter – Tau – Farsight Suits

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Secure Missing Artifacts

Thoughts

More Custodes, more Tau, though some variation on the builds at play here. On the Custodes side, this list is extremely ready to hunt big targets, with three blaze cannon Caladius tanks lining up alongside the bikers. These seem pretty reasonable into both the mirror and into Crusher Stampede, and can use their mobility and Vehicle status to help tick off multiple quarters for Engage in a game where, for whatever reason, Stranglehold feels dicey.

Over in the red corner, this Tau list looks a bit more conventional than the Bor’kan one, but is still hideously deadly, and still has the huge upside of Shield Drones to eat up early volleys from the far side of the table. There’s definitely a bit more for the Custodes to bite on than there was in the other match, but my initial impression on looking at how these lists compare is still that the Tau should be able to overwhelm the Custodes with the sheer violence they’re packing – more than enough nasty shooting with re-rolls to overwhelm Auspice, and even a squad of Markerlights to add +1 to hit, which the golden champions can’t do anything about.

Given all that, I do not have a good explanation for how Custodes ran away with this one, with a very high score to boot. Approaching this from their side of the table, my thinking would probably be to play very cautiously – the list has a unit of Wardens, so try and use the objective move on your side of the board to ensure that both home objectives can be held safely (maybe one from behind terrain, one using Bodyguard), pick To the Last, hope the opponent doesn’t do the same, then try and grind away their stuff that emerges to hold their priority objective till its safe to sweep out with the Bikes in the late game. That does not add up to a 97pt Victory, so I’d be fascinated to hear how it actually went down – the risk of just bouncing off the Tau’s defences from any sort of big play feels incredibly high, but clearly some sort of very proactive plan was sussed out to achieve such an impressive total. Congratulations to Michael for pulling that off.

Result

Adeptus Custodes Victory – 97-65

Michael Walsh – Adeptus Custodes – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown.

Archetype

Emperor’s Chosen goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

As covered, the big standout in Michael’s list is the Caladius tanks, which feel like they’re reasonably helpful in the mirror (oversaturating the opponent with salvo targets) and against Crusher Stampede, but very hit and miss into Tau thanks to shield drones. That challenge was thoroughly overcome in the final though!

Anthony Birdsong – Adeptus Custodes – 2nd ✪ Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Mostly business as usual but with one new flex – Hector Rex, back on tables after a long while on the bench. Honestly? If you don’t want to compromise on the general durability of Custodes while bringing your Psychic Interrogation guy, he seems like a decent enough choice – his defences are much more in line with a Custodian than your average guy, and with the risk of being left exposed to shooting when models drop from Custodian squads, that’s not half bad. I think I’d still give Kyria Draxus the nod as the best choice overall, but being able to take a 2+ save against a volley of smart missiles while standing in the open could prove valuable enough that I’d be willing to revisit that. A smart piece of tech from Anthony.

The Rest of the Best

Five players finished on 4-1 records. They were:

• 3rd – Jeremy Knox – Drukhari: A hybrid list that keeps some Artists of Flesh Talos and Grotesques, but surrounds them with more of the goodstuff tools.
• 4th ✪ – Andrew Vawter – Tau: See Showdown.
• 5th – Stephen Fore – Tyranids: Crusher Stampede with one each of the two Hierodule flavours and a Dima.
• 6th – JD Carter – Imperial Knights: House Raven Knights, featuring a tooled up Castellan and Magaera leading a bunch of Warglaives and Moiraxes to war.
• 7th – Michael Aigner – Tau: Tau Sept Goodstuff, with two Broadside units and Shadowsun overseeing them.

Melee At Shiloh

All the lists for this event can be found on Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Peyton Preece – Tau – Tau Sept Goodstuff with four Broadsides

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vs.

Nick Nanavati – Genestealer Cult – Industrial Weapon fun.

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Tide of Conviction

Thoughts

The Genestealer Cult Codex is awesomely good fun, but in terms of pure power level it’s clearly been somewhat eclipsed by Custodes and Tau in terms of competitive performance. Luckily it has some strong allies in its corner, with some 8th Edition GSC masterminds returning to the field this weekend. First up is Nick Nanavati, making use of one of the more powerful custom traits from the book in the form of Industrial Affinity. Allowing you to ignore hit penalties on Industrial weapons does two big things for you – lets you inexpensively seed some real bite into your Neophyte units with Seismic Cannons (particularly good at stripping out Shield Drones, no less) and sends the output of heavy rock cutters to the moon in melee. Both are on show here, and what you get when you add them on top of Agile Hunters and some of the key Genestealer Cult power pieces is something that gets back a lot of the old 8th Edition energy – a huge number of units on the table, and a huge number of threats waiting in the wings to punish an opponent who drops their guard for even a second.

The Tau look pretty formidible facing them down though. Airbursting frag are the bane of cultists everywhere, able to blast them off the table at speed, cover be damned, and a larger unit of these with Shadowsun’s re-rolls is of particular concern, threatening to just evaporate whole swathes of the cult if given a chance. Smart missiles from the Broadsides are also nasty, and the presence of two units of Kroot are at least a modest annoyance for the cult too, as some Tau lists have been skimping on screens, which would potentially provide an opening.

The good news for the Cult is that I think this is the mission you want for this matchup. The Genestealers have brought a whole bunch of stuff, including plenty with ObSec, and actually have enough small arms to very quickly clear the Tau’s screens even at range. With Dawn of War deployment and three units of Jackals plus some They Came From Below stealers, they can also threaten first turn interference on many fronts, potentially going wide enough to sneak a bully charge through, and forcing the Tau to prioritise those targets over juicier stuff early on. There’s certainly more than enough here to keep the Tau firmly on the back foot for at least a few turns, and in this mission that’s going to open up a wide scoring gap – I can easily believe that the Tau get zero on objective primary as deep as turn three, while the stealers will be scoring at least something on that via staging their characters forward, definitely picking up the alternative Primary, and probably racking up points on at least Psychic Interrogation and Stranglehold while doing so, with RND an easy lock for a third Secondary.

On this mission, it’s tough for Tau to formulate a plan that really, firmly pushes back against that other than trying to wipe the Cult off the table at warp speed. It does help that there’s some back-loading on the alternative Primary, so a late push can recoup some points, but Secondaries are going to be challenging – No Mercy, No Respite is wildly overstuffed for them, while everything else looks a bit mediocre. This might actually be a game where Decisive Action is genuinely great – being able to build up 12pts over three turns without having to set foot in the opponent’s half of the table is useful, because anything that goes over there is definitely getting eaten. In some ways that just emphasises the problems though – it isn’t going to become safe for Tau to really push for any sort of objective control until the late game (and maybe not even then, lose the airbursts to a well timed charge and this is done) and that should ensure that the cult have enough time to bring their diabolical machinations re: winning to fruition. With Nick at the helm it’s perhaps not a surprise that they managed to do just that!

Result

Genestealer Cult Victory – 86-57

Nick Nanavati – Genestealer Cult – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown.

Archetype

Industrial Weapons

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

This list plays some variation on the plan above very well in most games – it has enough stuff to keep the opponent on the back foot and bleeding through major parts of the game, and enough big hammer blows (from the Purestrain units and the rock cutter Acolytes) to discourage them from just trying to body you off the board. While attrition from artillery is definitely a problem, having the Iconward around can help with that quite a bit, as it forces the opponent to either overcommit or risk you respawning plenty of models, and opens up Command Phase objective jank when you’re adding stuff back to units to boot. After a quiet few weeks for the Cult this is one of two successful lists we’ve seen this week, and it’s great to see Nick pulling off big stuff with one of the factions he really mastered in 8th.

The Rest of the Best

Four players finished on 4-1 records. They were:

• 2nd – Jonathan Crafton – Orks: Evil Sunz Speed Mob with massive numbers of Warbikers.
• 3rd – Howard Watts – Ultramarines: Invictor and Redemptor heavy ultras with Tigurius.
• 4th ✪ – Peyton Preece – Tau: See showdown.
• 5th – Dan Lindley – Adeptus Custodes: Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff with Galatus Dreads.

Viking Games Winter Grand Tournament

All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings. Note that new Tau were not legal for this event.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Rickard Nilsson – Adeptus Mechanicus – Lucius Veteran Ruststalker Spam

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vs.

Jesper Unander-Scharin – Adeptus Custodes – Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff

Army List - Click to Expand

Data Scry Salvage

Thoughts

Faction-wise, this is very much a former heavyweight champion forced into the ring against the upstart challenger, and should definitely create a suitably cagey game. Both sides here can absolutely devastate their opponents key alpha units if given a window – Vertus Praetors or the Bike Captain will go through Ruststalkers like a hot knife, but Ruststalkers are no slouches into Bikes either, able to crank up to S6 with Machine Superiority and just bury them in volume power sword hits and mortal wounds. On a similar theme, the bikes have to be at least a little careful of the Vanguard squad, as Enriched Rounds with AP-1 from the Manipulus is worth a dead bike on average dice, and is always going to at least threaten to spike higher. The fact that the Custodes can’t really deal with the big infantry squads at range helps with Secondaries too – it makes To the Last suprisingly attractive for the Mechanicus, as they can keep two of their three units pretty comfortably safe, whereas if the Custodes pick it they have to be extremely careful with the bikes. In what’s potentially a slower game, that could be an advantage.

That said, Custodes have some assets of their own. Having Wardens and a Bike Captain makes it much more plausible for them to sustain at least moderate primary scoring safely, and the combination of the Caladius and salvo launchers forces the Skopii to stay hidden, only chipping away with their belaros cannons. Indirect fire is useful to the AdMech here, as it lets them chip away at the Custodes more expendable stuff if it emerges from cover, but that’s going to be slow. The other huge upside the Custodes have is that their threats don’t really need any help to counter the AdMech’s tools, whereas the AdMech very much want to dump a bunch of strats onto a unit to get it amped up enough to clear a squad. It means that a melee on multiple fronts favours the Custodes, but the AdMech are slightly favoured if the game stays cautious.

To try and twist that to their advantage, the Mechanicus need to use their Temporcopia Ruststalker unit. If they can get this hidden on a mid-field objective that makes things look a lot better for them, as the Custodes need to charge with multiple units to safely dispatch the unit. That leaves them potentially open for a mixed shooting/ranged counterattack with the Troops and the Omniscient Mask Ruststalker squad, the deadliest unit in the army. Combining that with access to a few more units that can be used as pure throwaways does help the AdMech out, but any path to victory here is definitely made fraught by how dangerous the Custodes are to their best stuff. It looks like both players recognised this from the scoreline and played with appropriate caution, as this one was close, but in the end Rickard was able to take it for the AdMech, seeing off the Custodes upstarts this time.

Result

Adeptus Mechanicus Victory – 66-59

Rickard Nilsson – Adeptus Mechanicus – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown.

Archetype

Lucius Veteran Cohort

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Rickard has been racking up success with AdMech for ages, but this build is distinctly new, and as seen in the finals it was able to go toe-to-toe with the hottest army around and emerge victorious. The sheer speed of Veteran Cohort Ruststalkers alongside Lucius’ powerful Solar Flare relic means this army will always be replete with tactical options, and it looks pretty well positioned to attack the top metagame as well – the Lucius dogma is excellent into Tau’s massed D1 firepower, while massive volleys of power swords and mortals is great into Crusher Stampede. Times sure have changed that we’re happy to see AdMech taking some victories, but this is a very cool combination of a couple of different plans from the before times, and earned a well-deserved victory here.

The Rest of the Best

Four players finished on 4-1 records. They were:

• 2nd – Tim Nordin – Thousand Sons: Cult of Duplicity with a big terminator block backed by a smaller unit of the same, two VolCons and a Mutalith Beast.
• 3rd ✪ – Jesper Unander-Scharin – Adeptus Custodes: See showdown.
• 4th – Axel Rydén – Aeldari: Soaring Spite Bikes and Boats with Craftworld artillery backup.
• 5th – David Klang – Necrons: Lots of angry Novokh Wraiths lead into battle by the Silent King, with a big squad of Lokhust Destroyers for shooting support.

Wrap Up

More tomorrow – a slightly more diverse set of top lists even. See you then! Comments, questions and suggestions to contact@goonhammer.com.