Competitive Innovations in 9th: Västerås Autumn Bash

It’s been a wild, wild weekend in many ways, with the updated Forge World Compendium and two new Marine Supplements previewed, guaranteeing we’ve got further metagame shakeups to come in the next few weeks. Some competitive Forge World staples are being shuffled off to the great display shelf in the sky (or at least, moved back from the front of the list-building queue) while a few lucky factions suddenly find themselves with some compelling new options. Meanwhile, over in Space Marine land both Space Wolves and Deathwatch get a whole bunch of new tricks to play with, and for the latter especially it should mean that they’re finally in the conversation when trying to put together a tournament-winning Marine list.

Mercifully for those of us who spent a substantial portion with our minds immersed in such things, on the competitive scene things were pretty quiet, with just one notable full-on GT for us to talk about it. The Swedish competitive scene has once again been putting in the hard hours to make sure we have events and armies to talk about, and the Västerås Autumn Bash gives us a 40-player 5-round event to dig into, featuring a first-time post-codex showing for one of the Marine supplements in the top spot. This week we’re going to focus-in just on this event, and will return to scouting a bit more widely next week. As ever, especially at the moment where there’s enough going on in the metagame that I’m looking at RTTs as well some weeks, if you have any events you’d like to let me know about hit us up at contact@goonhammer.com. With that out of the way, on to this week’s lists!

All of the lists from this week’s event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Jonathan Sleigh-Johnson’s Raven Guard Successors – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• The Raven Guard supplement brings us a different spin on some of the top early performers out of the Space Marine Codex.
• Successor chapter traits optimise the army for getting in the opponent’s face and kicking them in.
• Multiple terrifying options to ship up the board with Master of Ambush.
• A particularly nasty combination of abilities stacked on a Bike Chaplain to let the army maraud around the board.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Hitting fast and hard seems to be one of the ways to win with new Marines, and this list combines tools from the Raven Guard supplement with a Successor Tactic all about charging to do just that. Master of Ambush may no longer be able to teleport Centurions around the board, but a large squad of Bladeguard or the nightmare Vanguard Veteran bomb here isn’t going to be much less nasty to deal with right out of the gate, and both of them also provide some extreme counterpunch threat if this list parks them behind some mid-board Obscuring terrain going second. Similar to what we’ve seen out of some successful Wolf lists, this list gets pressure into the opponent’s face very effectively. The Chaplain can hand out both charge boosts and grants himself and nearby friends Advance and Charge, so can turbo-boost up the board right out of the gate and allow both the VanVets and a Master of Ambushed squad of Bladeguard to be active in close quarters straight away. With access to charge re-rolls from The Raven’s Blade, the second Bladeguard unit can potentially be stashed in Strike from the Shadows, ready to pop out into Canticle of Hate turn two for a re-rollable 7″ charge. Given that the army will already have some mid-board presence from the Incursors, that’s going to keep most opponent’s busy for a while.

During that time, the Plasma Inceptors start blasting. You’re probably already sick of hearing about these at this point but they’re real, real good, and I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s slightly alarming that out of the gate with the new book it’s not uncommon to see (as here) Marine players blowing a quarter of their points on just these. They’re great at killing almost everything, fast and durable, work extremely well with Chief Apothecaries and are competitively priced. They’re kind of at their best in lists like this that put something terrifying in the opponent’s face, as they can both reach out and neutralise whatever an opponent’s best counter is and rack up huge body counts while they’re distracted. If you are a Marine player right now, you kind of need to own these, so get on that!

Finishing things out, we have a single unit of Eradicators with a multi-melta. These are, of course, especially good in any list that can just stash them away in deep strike somewhere, as there’s plenty of stuff they have a good chance of popping in a single volley of fire. Nasty stuff.

We haven’t seen Raven Guard on top for a while, but this list definitely demonstrates that some of their unique tools can provide support to the new Marine playstyle, and looks very strong. As it stands, it does feel stronger as Successors rather than down-the-line RG, especially with the tougher conditions on their Chapter Tactic, and it will be interesting to see if anyone finds a way to make the latter work or if we’re looking at Successors continuing to be the main story for the bird bois. Still, it’s always great to see something out and about that’s been absent for a while, and congratulations to Jonathan on the win.

Rickard Nilsson’s AdMech – 2nd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• A first for Competitive Innovations – a player piloting the same list to a top four twice!
• The mix-and-match Yacht club shows it continues to have game in the post-codex world.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

This list probably looks familiar to regular readers and that’s because we’ve seen it before – Rickard took 3rd place at the Hanseatic Open a while back, packing (as far as I can see) exactly the same build. That is, obviously, an extremely powerful flex, and demonstrates the strength of what’s going on here. We explored the list in detail last time it came up, but the summary is that it uses a mixed detachment to dip into powerful abilities from Mars and Stygies, with a single unit of Graia infantry to throw around their strat too. The shooting elements get to use the Mars Canticle for extra strength (and Wrath of Mars is going to be at least sometimes relevant on the Ironstriders) while the Stygies pre-game move gets the Duneriders/Drill packed with Electropriests up the board to apply combat pressure. With two great finishes under its belt, it’s safe to say the list as it stands is very strong, and doesn’t appear to have needed any great changes for the post-codex world.

Since it features a drill it does, of course, need a bit of tinkering the next time it comes out. The good news is that the drill is heinously powerful and being able to push it up to firing range against stuff deployed on the line on turn one is horrific, but it does at least pay quite a few extra points for the privilege, which will either have to come from somewhere or see the drill shuffled out for an alternative. Further in the future, the 9th Edition codexes we’ve seen thus far have shut down the option of mixed detachments, but since that’ll come alongside a codex update it’s near certain the list would shuffle in other ways anyway. For now, I look forward to seeing whatever revised build Rickard lands on in a future top four.

Sebastian Larsson’s Slaanesh Daemons – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Oh lord.
• The Exalted Greater Daemons Are At It Again.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

In terms of outperforming expectations Daemons might be the very biggest breakout hit in 9th, with elements from three of the four gods being staples for this series at this point. Out of the successful builds, Slaanesh is taking an ever bigger slice of them and that’s not surprising given that our data suggests that armies heavy on it are among the best at adapting to going first or second in the 9th Edition missions. Filling out a full detachment so that the KoS get the Advance/Charge locus is key, and Daemonettes coming in at a bargain price lets you build a Battalion while saving plenty of points for more good stuff. Here that good stuff takes the unsurprising form of Big Bird and a clutch of Nurgling friends, but also goes in on yet another KoS by adding Shalaxi, and it’s worth noting that because Locus of Swiftness is an aura they can still Advance/Charge too as long as they stay close to another KoS. Because all four of these terrifying melee monsters can heroic and fight first they’re a complete nightmare for any melee list to plan against, and have the speed to put the opponent under pressure straight away. They’re also optimised for operation in mutliple phases by taking the Living Whip across the board.

Anchoring the rest of the forces, Big Bird continues to be borderline impervious to many forms of damage while also providing near complete psychic dominance, while Nurglings and Screamers provide powerful board control. The only somewhat unusual choice here is the Exalted Flamers, which I’m not totally certain of the role for. My best guess is they’re here to facilitate shooting for Engage on All Fronts, but they’re locked out of being able to Deploy Scramblers by being characters, so I do have to wonder if the role might be better served by Furies as we’ve seen in quite a few lists recently. Annoyingly, the list is just short of the points needed to swap the two out for a unit of five regular flamers and a squad of Furies, otherwise I’d be pretty comfortable that was the play – as it is, I can maybe see the argument that being able to either use them to lock in home quarters or chuck both into strat reserves for a single CP is worth it.

Ultimately, of course, that’s nit-picking – this list is clearly exceptionally strong and a particularly brutal and optimised example of its basic style, so well-played Sebastian.

Tim Nordin’s Harlequins – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Frozen Stars blast back after a few weeks overshadowed by Soaring Spite, reminding us that they are, in fact, also pretty good.
• Dials back the Starweavers a bit to get a big caress unit and characters in.
• Full 3×5 Zephyrglaives to lean on the Masque trait.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

At this point I can sometimes kind of just phone it in when talking about Harlequins lists, because by now you all know that the Soaring Spite bikes and boats list is extremely strong and in contention for one of the top builds of 9th. Given that, it’s nice to be reminded that there’s depth to Harlequins beyond just fusion drive-bys, and that going hard on Frozen Stars is also a very valid strategy in 9th. An extra attack for all units on the charge is a massive boost to their damage output, especially when you’re dealing with multi-damage weapons like zephyrglaives or caresses boosted with Dramatic Entrance. With the continued trend of Marine lists being very Gravis-heavy, I do think there’s a decent chance we’ll see a bit more of the Frozen Stars, as their stratagem (+1 to wound against INFANTRY, BEAST or BIKER units) is also extremely helpful for cutting lists based on elite Marine units right down to size. Combining with Dramatic Entrance for either damage three zephyrs or an absolute avalanche of damage 2 caress attacks and you have multiple ways to make Marine lives very difficult indeed (and it is notable to see a Great Harlequin running about, really hammering home the intent to kill whatever it touches).

With games quickly escalating to board control throw-downs, just the sheer threat of having access to things like Twilight Encore from the big foot squad and a murder-solitaire is a huge deal as well. While going shorter on transports does hurt a bit, it is appreciable that when the bodies start hitting the floor this variant has just that much more ability to brawl than the Soaring Spite builds do, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if metagame trends brought it back into more regular rotation. The only big challenge I see to that, tragically, is that several of its tricks don’t work against CAVALRY and as a consequence lightning claw/shield Thundercav are a pain for this list. The caress blob can deal with them, but the Skyweavers comically bounce off unbuffed, and are still looking at only a partial clear even with aura backup. Since they’re high on my list of things that look very strong out of the wolves book, and something that can play the mobility game effectively, that could prove a challenge. Having said that, I guess an alternative way of looking at it is that Fusion pistols are pretty bad at killing them too, so it’s possible having the hammerblow of the big foot unit to clear out one squad and put yourself into the driving seat might actually prove better, and see the Frozen Stars tick up a bit. That could prove even more true if being able to bury an entire unit of Necron Warriors in a single swing proves important, and the big foot unit here is absolutely a massive headache for any Necron player on that plan.

Honestly, if you pinned me down and made me choose a Harlequin list for an event tomorrow (or I guess once the new books come live) I’d probably go for something more like this or one of the Yncarne builds over the pure Soaring Spite options – I do think there’s something here in the meta to come, and in a few months Tim might look like he was ahead of the curve!

The Rest of the Best

As ever for an event this size, a few more players managed 4-1 records and narrowly missed a top 4 spot on VP, and we’ll round off the article by dashing through them.

In 5th place we have Robert Gustafsson’s White Scars. Nothing massively surprising in here – we’ve got multiple units each of the Primaris trifecta of Plasma Inceptors, Bladeguard and Eradicators, all backed up by a swanky new Bike Chaplain Master of Sanctity, a Chief Apothecary, the Khan and a few Troops squads and some Outriders to fill things out. White Scars remain extremely strong out of the Marine Codex, and lists like this will continue to be very effective.

Another enduringly powerful Marine offering in 6th place, with Christoffer Hellgren’s Iron Hands getting things done. This list goes hard on one of the other pieces of hotness from the Marine book, the newly great Redemptor Dreadnought, with three of them lumbering ominously up the board mowing stuff down with gatling cannons. They’re backed up by a Chapter Master, Chief Librarian and Chief Apothecary along with a few other usual suspects, though this list is going to need a bit of tinkering going forward since the last major element is a Whirlwind Scorpius, one of the Marine FW staples that got taken down quite a few pegs in the updated Compendium.

Finally, 7th place is taken by Jesper Unander-Scharin’s Custodes. Eschewing the Ares and tank spam that’s been more popular recently, this list is more of a mixed Shadowkeepers battalion, featuring multiple Bike Captains, Trajan, a unit each of Venetarii and Allarus Custodians, some basic Custodians and a Telemon Dreadnought to back it all up. Custodes combination of durability and relatively broad threat continues to keep them in the conversation, even if they perhaps aren’t performing quite as well as we might once have predicted, and unlike the previous list there’s considerable upside for this one out of the updated Forge World rules, with a buff and discount on the Venetarii and the option of swapping some of the Troops out to the buffed Sagittarum guard.

Wrap Up

That brings us to the end of this week’s roundup, and we’ll have another one for you after the coming weekend, the last we’ll see before the big Forge World shakeup starts going live. In addition, if you’re a $10 Goonhammer patron and enjoy our competitive content don’t forget to go and vote on which of our Start Competing guides you’d like to see updated for 9th Edition next – the candidates feature several of the armies we’ve seen a lot of in this series, and we’re looking forward to drawing all of that info together into the new guides. Otherwise, hit us up at contact@goonhammer.com with any comments, questions and suggestions and we’ll see you next time.