Welcome back to another Competitive Innovations in 9th, where each week we look at the top competitive lists at the big events of the prior weekend. This week James “One Wing” Grover is out, recuperating from the stress of having to put up with all your Drukhari bullshit. So this week Jon “JONK” Kilcullen is stepping in to cover this week and he’s already sick of reading Drukhari lists. Last weekend had two GT events to look at, the 65-person Rocky Top Rumble in Tennessee and the 30-player Copenhammer GT held in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Rocky Top Rumble

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

Steven Crawley – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Criminally under-costed transports
• Under-costed characters with very strong combat prowess
• Numerous Games Workshop balancing mistakes
• Dark lances, I guess

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

It’s not.

I get the Iron hands vibe from these Drukhari lists. They sat at a 75% win rate this weekend – clearly the meta has adapted! *barf* At this point you can just refer to any of the last several weeks of Competitive Innovations for a clue on how these lists work. They have been in every single write up. At some point it becomes like a broken record (Rob: I don’t know if I should be happy or somewhat sad that we weren’t doing this article series when every week would have shown a different Iron Hands list). Steven played this list better than every other DE player at the event and wining 6 games is by no means trivial – as his round 6 opponent has said, Steven played the list perfectly, made almost no mistakes, played the mission extremely well and punished any mistake made. That’s a sure sign of a good player who is also playing a next-level, top-tier list.

Jaime Paris – 2nd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• The big 3 characters which have every single ounce of efficiency squeezed out of them from the Frost weapon upgrade on dual claws with chapter master re-roll aura to the double fight last abilities the librarian is carrying around.
• Whirlwind of rage + Savage fury + chapter master rerolls.
• The cyberwolf that refused to die

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

This style of list has been showing up for months online and has been helping lift the overall win rate of the space wolves faction to around 50%. This list is so finely tuned that with the right player behind it, it can truly do unexpected things.  Jaime is a Wolf-main and has built a list to give him a shot in any game that he shows up to, no matter what the terrain is like. I like this list a lot. The more you look at it, the more small decisions you see in list design that definitely transitioned into how it played on the table.

The list gets full value from its MVP, the Librarian. He is the lynch-pin unit here; the list just does not function without him even though realistically he’s only needed for the first 2 turns, which helps a lot since he is sitting on 4 wounds and pretty easy to kill over two turns. Using Stormcaller to get all the vets up to a 1+ save as well as increasing the Dreadnoughts’ saves drastically increases the survivability early on. When you combo this with Cloaked by the storm to get a -1 to hit aura up around the librarian it becomes even more durable in a pinch (typically you don’t want to do this but if the shooting you are facing is on the extreme side, you will gladly spend the 2 CP). On the offensive side the librarian has Murderous Hurricane ready to go to help dictate where and when the wolf guard go in, making an enemy unit fight last and denying Overwatch. The final key here is which Space wolf unique relic Jaime decided to take, the Armour of Russ. If Murderous Hurricane fails you have the back up aura to come in and brute force something into fighting last or being able to combo two units to fight last. This can be a crippling blow to many armies when you have several units of wolf guard in combat and there’s no way to interrupt it. Typically once wolves are in at near full health, the game is pretty much over. Some of the scores Jaime was able to record tell this tale all too vividly. I personally would not have taken the Armour of Russ here as I have been putting higher value on the utility of the Wulfen Stone but the choice here makes sense, especially with Drukhari out there.

The choice to upgrade the captain to Chapter Master is an interesting one that I strongly agree with. When you look at how this list is designed you can see the value here when you are trying to combo double exploding 6s (via savage fury and whirlwind of rage) with chapter master re-rolls. This can get pretty out of hand especially considering you are re-rolling failed wound rolls with all those lightning claws as well. The Captain is not just there for aura buff, though – as Jaime has said, every character needs to be a serious threat as well. He is squeezing as much combat out of this army as he can. That means that the captain is running around with dual claws that are upgraded using the special issue wargear: Frost weapon;  This pumps the claws up to 2 damage.  I never personally thought of doing this but now seeing it and hearing about how it plays, I really want to try it.

The Final character in this big 3 is also kitted out for both damage and aura support. The primaris chaplain is an important part of increasing the reliability of the wolf guard, adding Canticle of Hate and Litany of Hate while also taking the warlord trait Wise Orator to nearly guarantee canticle will go off when he needs it to push the charge roll math in his favor. If Jaime absolutely needs to ensure a charge has the highest chance to succeed he spends 1 CP and uses Commanding Oratory to auto cast Canticle/Litany of hate. Taking Benediction of Fury now makes the chaplain a real threat in combat to continue the army’s theme.

Combine all of the above and you have a very dynamic threatening core that can respond to most threats in the current meta. This style of play rewards people who have extremely strong deployment and movement mechanics who can recognize mistakes and capitalize on them. It’s aggressive and uses multiple threats to entice opponents into making the kinds of target priority mistakes which you really can not afford to make. Opponents have exactly one turn before combat reaches them so there is a massive amount of pressure on them out of the gate. This list is designed to take Oaths of the moment, Engage on All Fronts and Raise the Banners (or mission-specific objective, if there’s an easy option). The list is focused on aggressively moving up the table, meaning that Oaths and Engage are basically a given that you will max these (the Cyberwolf helps immensely here for both engage and oaths. It scored Jaime 40+ points over the course of this event). There’s also a temptation to take the Space wolf secondary Warrior pride; however for the most part this Secondary is a trap and forces you to make decisions that benefit you in the short term but will often hurt you in the long run and cost you the game. Skip all of the Space Wolf secondaries. To take full advantage of the list’s most common secondary choices you need deploy the entire army on the table, then press forward and present as many threats as you can early on (going back to what I was talking about earlier with threat saturation). I would love to see this played or play against it – everything about it interests me. It’s different and dynamic. Mad respect, from one Wolf to another.

Seth Piper – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Big squad of Lychguard to roll with Szarekh
• Royal Warden with Veil of Darkness
• A Doomsday Ark and a Tesseract Ark for heavy firepower
• The Silent King

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Seth strikes again using a similar list to some of his other top finishes lately. His lists are often pretty wonky but it seems to work for him.

We talked about Seth’s Mephrit Necrons after the Spring Up GT, when his plan was to take lots of small squads of Mephrit Warriors with Szeras to back them up while Lychguard and Praetorian. Here he’s traded out half the warriors and his praetorians for some heavier firepower with the Doomsday and Tesseract Arks. He’s also gone back up to a squad of 20 flayer warriors backed up by a Technomancer, a Chronomancer, and a Res Orb Overlord. The core of the list is still Szarekh and his big unit of Lychguard, who can dominate the game if opponents let them roll into their proper position. Otherwise Mephrit helps power out better shooting from the Gauss Flayer unit who can move around and be effective up close and at range thanks to get AP-2 at half range. Combined with the Silent King re-rolls and Disintegration Capacitors this allows you to push through a decent amount of wounds on high toughness units while destroying lower toughness targets.

Tarzan, apparently? – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Deathskulls detachment for the buggies and dread.
• the buggies
• Ghaz

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

The first reason this list is interesting is simply that Orks appear to be a pretty poorly represented faction in 9th despite not being so bad so any time they show up and do well, it has to raise some eyebrows. This list makes use of the Deathskulls tactic which gives units a 6++ invulnerable save. Any time you can get an invuln on a vehicle right now is a good time and it matters especially with how many dark lances are floating around. It also gives you a re-roll to your hit or wound roll per weapon, which increases the efficiency of the pretty threatening weapons these vehicles are equipped with. This list has no issue killing raiders or marine equivalent vehicles.

After deployment the buggies and the Smasha guns split up, turning this list from a relatively low unit count to a very high count which again can be important into dark eldar and marines as there is no one unit to really drop the hammer on and nuke.  With this many units Engage on all Fronts just seems like a given, meanwhile the few troops he has are used to hold the back field objectives and do things like Raise the Banners. This list can also take advantage of the loophole in While We Stand, We Fight – the buggies are nominated as two of the three units for the secondary, but then after splitting each individual model must be destroyed in order to affect scoring on the objective. That’s something that’s being changed with the new secondary objectives in the 2021 GT Missions pack.

There has been a theme across all these lists even if they are vastly different: You have to be show up with a list that can compete in at least two phases of the game and more ideally, three. Having units that can threaten Raiders or other transports from long range while also having units that can get in on the troops and fight them off objectives is a must-have right now. It has been interesting reading these lists and understanding the problems they are trying to solve – Each one of these players went about solving this problem in the best way they could via their own factions.

The Rest of the Best

5th place: Daniel Hester’s Drukhari: shocking I know, Only 1 loss and it was to Jaime’s Space wolves after a couple critical errors.

6th place: Jimmy Davis’ Drukhari: Wow I am truly surprised, Only 1 loss and it was to Jaime’s Space wolves in a slightly closer game than the previously mentioned game.

7th place: David Fields Ultramarines: Finally something we can care about. Unlike the Ultramarines list from Denmark (see below), this list uses the founding chapter and runs Guilliman. It’s a very cool list using redemptors, inceptors, eradicators and a series of strong characters. It plays all 3 phases of the game well and takes full advantage of Defensive Focus. Went 5-1 with a somewhat tense round 3 loss to knights.

Copenhammer GT

The lists for this event can all be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Alexander Dzougov – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Very strong shooting units that are playing off of the successor traits to make them even more reliable at a greater range.
• Very good stratagems that allow Ultramarines to set-up extremely aggressively and buff up their already strong shooting while also keeping their shooting platforms safe.
• The Chief Librarian that does it all. The psychic abilities are great utility while also having seal of oaths to point at a single unit and make it go away.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

These days when something wins that isn’t Drukhari, It is both interesting and important (Rob: and also, sadly, cause for us to check the standings to make sure the list actually had to beat Drukhari opponents to win). We have seen a number of events over the last couple weeks that have been won by Ultramarines or Ultramarine successors which all seemed to be tracked back to John Lennon. I like the idea of the list, it is bringing together all of the strongest units in the marine codex while also bringing out some of the most important stratagems, relics, and warlord traits in order to try and compete with the likes of Dark Eldar.

Rapid Deployment allows ultramarines to either deploy extremely defensively or aggressively, getting your opponent to deploy to respect your ability to change your position and then taking advantage of the possible mistakes made.  Attack bikes, vanguard vets and redemptors all are great targets for this stratagem. Much like Dark Angels, when you give attack bikes extra movement via deployment stratagems, it really increases their treat and potential to trade up. Combined with Long Range Marksmen these bikes are great value here.

Having a hammer unit like vanguard vets with claws and shields is a great choice here as it is both hard to remove and extremely threatening to almost every unit currently showing up in the meta. With how this list is designed I would have to guess these start on the table and are 1 of the 3 targets for rapid deployment since there is no chaplain here to get you to a 7 inch charge off the drop. It’s far too risky to put these into Deep Strike and rely on a 9 inch re-rollable charge.  they are almost surely being used as a counter charge target and a unit to farm Oaths of the Moment points.

Ultramarines have a really strong Stratagem that these dreadnoughts take advantage of when enemies get up close: Defensive Focus acts a lot like for the greater good, in that it allows up to 3 other units to fire over watch as well. This really makes it hard to get in on the dread-castle that is absolutely capable of shooting you off the board with Seal of oaths and master artisans. I would have really liked to see how this list played into his final opponent, who was running a really interesting mixed chaos list – the final score of that game was 43-40, meaning the game was either extremely tactical to the point of no one being willing to move out and engage or it was played very very slowly and the players couldn’t not finish. Either way, I’d really like to see how the first turn movement and objective control was run with this list. It is exciting to see a list start to show up that appears to have a pretty high skill cap and rewards strong pre-game and first turn movement decisions.

Martin Buch – 2nd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• MSU style list that is filled with ObSec units that make it very annoying to play primary against.
• Relentlessly Expansionist gives this list even more board control and turn 1 threat
• a single buffed up unit of warriors is still a very strong anchor to hold part of the board

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Seems like every event there is a Necron list hitting the top 3 lately. This one makes a couple small changes by taking 1 less unit of scarabs, and adding 2 5 man lychguard units.  At first look this seems like an odd choice but it is leaning into the MSU style of play and making losing any 1 unit not very impactful while still requiring a lot of quality shooting or combat to remove. The army is filled with difficult to kill ObSec units that make trying to take or contest objectives against it really frustrating, especially considering they are starting with a pre-game move that allows them to get out on the table early.

The 20-man warrior squad is still here making it an ideal target to veil and buff up, it is both a dangerous threat while being extremely durable with support from the Chronomancer. They add that extra layer of board control and pressure early on. Again, this list is just filled with lots of durable units between the Wraiths, Lychguard, and Warrior blobs and there isn’t really a stand-out, lynchpin unit. The entire army just works together to play the primary very very hard.

Sune Krarup – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Word Bearers Terminator sorcerer With Malefic Tome and the Mark of Tzeentch
• Tallyman with the Ironclot furnace
• A trio of Myphitic Blight-haulers to get buffed by the Tallyman
• A pair of Baleflamer Heldrakes

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

This is a Daemon Engine spam list that drops the Death Guard monofaction bonuses of Don’s list in order to bring together the strongest units from both deathguard and the word bearers.  It is designed to be a very strong shooting list that can withstand a ton of fire before losing any 1 unit.  The daemon prince is a beat stick that ignores AP -1/2 and is T7, a very strong counter charge threat with the main stay power: Miasma of pestilence.  The Tallyman is there to both give a daemon engine unit a 4++ every turn (which is almost certainly going on the MBH unit) and farm CP.  If the Haulers or PBCs get stuck in combat they are able to use the Poxmongers’ stratagem Bilious blood rush to fire blast weapons in engagement range and also get +1 to hit against enemies in engagement range, letting them blast their way out.

The Word Bearers Terminator sorcerer is a really key part of this list as it brings in very strong, extremely reliable psychic powers via relics, stratagems and marks. The sorcerer knows 4 powers and can be bumped up to casting 3 of them, one of which can basically be auto-cast via Malevolent Covenant – very handy when you absolutely need Warptime to go off. The Tome also adds +1 to cast on top of adding another power (how you get to 4). The summoner can force through Warptime to get off a crucial long-distance charge or remove an enemy’s invulnerable save with Death Hex while buffing the Blight-Haulers or Entropy Cannon Plagueburst Crawler with Prescience. 

This list is made to summon Epidemius, who has to be a turn 1 play for the list, typically summoned with the Daemon Prince or Tallyman rolling 3D6. The WTC FAQ (and Sune confirmed this with his TO pre-event) allows Death Guard units with Inexorable Advance to move and summon in the same turn – something that isn’t normally legal under the rules as written so if you’re attempting this outside of a WTC game, check with your TO first. Once he’s on the table, Epidemius immediately begins improving the lives of every NURGLE DAEMON unit in the army, i.e. the prince and every daemon engine. After that the game becomes focus firing down enemy units quickly to stack buffs – just two unit kills every Nurgle Daemon unit re-rolls 1s to hit; everything past that is gravy but if you can get to 5 or 6 you can also get +1 Toughness and +1 Attacks, pushing the Daemon Prince into the T8 A7 stratosphere. After Epidemius is on the field, he can be used to summon either Beasts of Nurgle to clog up the middle of the table or Furies, which can move around and help score Engage on All Fronts and Deploy Scramblers alongside the Cultists. In a pinch the Sorcerer can also summon Horrors with models to split or Tzeentch Furies, using Dark Pact to push them out, though the list is made for Epidemius and the boosts he gives the Daemon Prince.

All of this combined gives you a durable, threatening gunline that plays the board well despite having almost no obsec units. As I look at this list I can hear Don Hooson saying ‘ObSec does not matter if you are dead’. It’s a different take on chaos and it stands up well to what is out there in the meta at the moment – it gives the player interesting options for summoning to tailor your list to your opponent and really puts pressure on your opponent to get out and try to play the mission vs this.

Juan Navarro – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Noise marines + Dark apostle
• 45 points for summoning
• Two different varieties of Terminator
• Syll’Esske

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

The list brings together several different factions together to form one of the strongest combinations of soup that you can muster. The Slaanesh detachment is great into Drukhari as it always fights first and locks you in combat with the Fiends. It’s fast and it is deadly with the ability to Advance and charge in the same turn; this speed is crucial for scoring secondaries like Engage on all Fronts and Raise the Banners High. It lets you play super cagey in deployment and turn one while not risking losing your engage points later on. The Emperor’s children detachment brings the pain using Honour the prince to basically ensure you are making the charge off the drop with either the drill or the Terminators. The Noise marines can be fully buffed up using Endless cacophony, Veterans of the Long War, and Excrutiating Frequencies will put out a massive amount of damage, making them even more annoying they do what noise marines naturally do which is shoot or fight on death. Then there’s the Death guard detachment which adds durability and while it doesn’t hit that hard it does swarm the board with moderately hard to remove bodies after several of the threats have been eliminated or tied up. Poxwalkers on their own are not that great but in a list like this you can get full value out of them.

While the list has speed it plays slow and looks to take advantage of mistakes your opponents make while mostly hiding early on and waiting for a place to drop the terms and drill. The summoning points are used for things like furies which are just annoying enough to make people move to try and gets angles on them so they stop you from scoring – but this is exactly what Juan wants. It allows him to dictate where units are being moved and when and then he has a space and target for his drill and terms. The furies are great for scoring Engage on All Fronts along with the units in the Slaanesh detachment and they can double up helping raise banners. Once the drill is down you activate the Remnant of the Maraviglia to re-roll all wounds for the terminators, drill and noise marines for a phase – A savage opening salvo! Once down and into combat it is safe for the poxwalkers to start advancing up the table with the DG units and the Slaanesh units can scream up the table to reach combat. The Emperor’s Children need to be focused and dealt with, which buys these other detachments time to get into position.

I really like this list. It’s flavorful, interesting, and has the tools to deal with any situation. Juan placed 4th but his only loss was on the top table round 5 in a 43-40 loss that did not go all 5 turns. The game was very slow and cagey for both players as they attempted to counter each other so the loser of this game was destined to fall down the rankings due to the low point score. These players were playing to win the event rather than worrying about their battle points. If you are struggling to make Chaos work at the moment, consider getting this list together and trying it on the table. I would love to see more of this archetype floating around in the wild.

The Rest of the Best

5th place Niclas Larsen’s Deathwatch: He used a couple kill teams with a brick of lightening claw vets and 2 relic contemptors to put the hurt out. The list did not score well but this is not the WTC all that matters is getting that win, his only loss was to the eventual winner in round 4.  He was the last 4-1 player in the event.

Wrapping Up

Thanks for reading this week’s re-cap of the weekend results! And if you didn’t enjoy it, fear not–next weekend One Wing will return and you will be back to having wonderfully detailed and well though-out details on how lists function and why they’re important, rather than my COVID-filled salt pillar recaps. Next week will be pretty exciting as it has one of the best MidWest events going on with the Bugeater GT, and on top of that there are two other GTs happening around the USA. This week saw Drukhari performing just as well as they have every other week but we did have some very interesting outliers pop up and take a shot at the top tables, I really look forward to seeing if AdMech will shift the landscape as dramatically as the internet tells me it will.

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