The Games Workshop US Roadshow Finale Preview

If you’ve been following along on some of our tournament reports this week – either James “Boon” Kelling’s wonderful take of tactics and strategy en route to a tough finish at GW’s Austin event or my own oustanding tale of getting demolished in my first game with Thousand Sons, you may have heard us mention the invitational event this weekend that serves as a finale to Games Workshop’s US tournament series.

The Finale, at the Grapevine Citadel & Cafe in Texas (read: Dallas) is the end cap on Games Workshop’s 2021 tournament series, a small Invitational event featuring some of the best players from around the world who participated in the Open series this year. While Richard Siegler and John Lennon each had prior engagements that prevented them from showing up and dumpstering everyone, the line-up is still absolutely stacked with great talent. In particular, Goonhammer’s own James “Boon” Kelling and Dan Boyd will be there, representing the competitive and best overall winner groups, respectively.

The Format

The first thing you need to know about this event is that it’s actually two events. There will be a two-round Championship event for the Best Overall and Best General invitees that sees them use their own submitted lists. Then the Invitational throws the players some real curve balls for two-rounds of exhibition matches with how lists are built and how the missions will be structured.

Exhibition List Building

In order to level the playing field and focus on play skill over say, list building, the tournament organizers had every player submit a list of fully-painted models and units they had access to, then built lists for them. Since most were flying in, most chose to use the faction they were using for competitive play. Once they had those collections, they put together lists for the players, with a focus on creating accessible, interesting, off-meta lists that changed units and upgrades to bring them into something resembling parity.

I’m generally a big fan of doing this for the exhibition matches – there’s been a long-running debate here in the Goonhammer offices about what percentage of a player’s success boils down to list-building vs. skill on the table. On the one hand, Scott Horras “Heresy” maintains that almost every game is won during list building, and in-game skill isn’t real. On the other hand, Greg Chiasson would remind him that building a list Greg won’t lose with requires a host of the smartest competitive minds on our site working in concert to build the worst lists possible.

The Missions

In addition to the new list building format, the games will use new missions from the upcoming GT Missions Pack 2022. Unlike the 2021 pack, the 2022 packs makes a number of major changes to the mission rules, changing how scoring works and how they’re played. We don’t have all the details yet, but here’s what we know:

• Primary objective scoring is now 4, 8, or 12 points for holding one/two/more or two/three/more objectives in a player’s Command Phase.
• Mission secondary objectives – such as Raze or Data Intercept – are gone. Instead missions now have new additional primary objectives that reward players for accomplishing certain actions, such as destroying three enemy units in a battle round or holding the priority target objective their opponent picks.
• At least two of the secondary objectives have undergone major changes and there are more major changes to secondary objectives in the works (but we don’t know any more about those “major” changes).

This is a massive change, and one that’s sure to keep the players on their toes (as if the list adjustments weren’t enough). The reduced scoring for primary objectives means that players have to be much more proactive about scoring – previously missions that might have scored you 40 “easy” points will now only score you 32, making it harder for some armies to just sit back and rack up points unless their opponents walk directly into their kill zones. It’s still technically possible to max primaries without scoring the bonuses, but much more difficult.

The Games

Of course the important thing is going to be seeing these missions in action. There are three days of games, with Games Workshop streaming games on all three: One exhibition match on Friday, another exhibition round on Saturday morning, followed by the first Championship round that afternoon. Finally on Sunday we’ll see a second exhibition round, and a the final Championship games that afternoon. 

Friday

The whole thing kicks off tomorrow with a streamed exhibition game between Mike Brandt and Nick Nanavati (who, we have been reliably informed, “likes to party”), to be streamed on Games Workshop’s Twitch channel starting at 2:30pm CST/3:30pm EST. I’ve been informed by reliable sources that Nick is somehow a combined 1-9 against Mike Brandt all time, so this game has some kind of redemptive/revenge clout thing going on where Nick will be trying to make up that ground. Mike’s playing Freebootaz Orks against Nanavati’s Thousand Sons, to feature a horde of Rubrics with Rhino and Scarab Terminator support.

Saturday

Exhibition matches start on Saturday morning at 10:00 AM CST, with players from the competitive crew matching up against players from the Best Overall category. The four matchups on Saturday morning are:

• Mani Cheema (Necrons) vs. Sascha Edelkraut (Imperial Fists)
• James “Boon” Kelling (Drukhari) vs. Dan Boyd (Raven Guard)
• Blake Law (AdMech + Knights) vs. Brad Chester (Craftworlds)
• Cannon Biggs (Genestealer Cults) vs. Jack Harpster (Blood Angels)

The first Championship Round will kick off at 3:00 PM CST with matchups TBD. The two Championship rounds will be seperated into two brackets of Best Overall and Best General as follows:

Sunday

The event will conclude on Sunday with a second exhibition round starting at 8:30 AM CST with matchups TBD. Then the final championship round will commence that afternoon at 12:30 PM CST before the final awards ceremony at 3:30.

The Goonhammer Exhibition Lists

Since we’ve got two players in the event, we made both of them pony up the lists that were written up for them for the Exhibition game.

Dan Boyd

I was told that GW needed a roster of my models so they could make me a list to play in this exhibition format. Dear reader, believe me when I say that it was very hard to not respond with a single word in all caps: “ASTRAEUS!”

The truth is that I’m terrified to fly with that thing, so I had to give over and tell them that I couldn’t bring it. So, I sent over my collection, and surprisingly, they didn’t do me dirty! Well, maybe a little dirty, but not that much.

The Pros: I’m a huge fan of everyone’s favorite emo Chapter Master, Kevin Shrike, so I was thrilled to see him in the list. My comp list’s Warlord makes it in, and so does my Bladeguard, Apothecary, and Impulsor combo, so I’m feeling pretty good. Throw in a couple of Redemptors and and some Eliminators, and hell yeah, I’ve got a little bit of a list, here! Infiltrators are a little pricey for what they do, especially when Eliminators are right there, but whatever, man. I like Troops.

The Cons: Those sumbitches gave me Flamestorm Aggressors. I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but hey, at least they aren’t Reivers. Maybe I can yeet them across the field for some sweet turn 1 flamestorm-ing or something. I dunno, we’ll see. Honestly, I’m kind of excited to use them, as it will be only the 2nd time they’ve seen the table. Who knows, maybe they’re great and we’re all idiots for not seeing it! In addition to my spicy failsons, I’m saddled with a Phobos Librarian who is apparently on acid. I legitimately had to look up what Hallucination and Mind Raid do, and y’all, I was not impressed. Especially with Hallucination. Maybe I can Jedi mind-trick my opponents into thinking it’s 8th edition so I can stack those -1s to hit.

Anyways, James thinks my list is better than his, so he’s 100% going to wipe the floor with me and I’m going to look like a huge idiot on stream. Again. And if I win, he can blame it on his list and all the regular competitive writers here at Goonhammer can continue laughing behind my back whenever I pop in the chat to ask how shield drones work.

Is there a Necromunda invitational? Can I do that instead?

Dan Boyd's Exhibition List - click to expand

James Kelling

My first thought upon seeing this list is that no one could reasonably say that Games Workshop does not understand their game. Because they have done the impossible and created a terrible list from the Drukhari book.

I love it.

In a straight fight against Dan’s Raven Guard I think this is a losing list, and since I can’t outpaint Dan’s beautiful bois, out-list-construct his emo bois, then I’ll have to body his bois on the mission. And body them I will – the gauntlet has been laid down, Dan.

James 'Boon' Kelling's Exhibition List - click to expand

The Other Exhibition Lists

Besides Dan and James, there’s 6 other entrants in the Exhibition games. You can check out their lists below:

Brad Chester's Exhibition List - click to expand

Jack Harpster's Exhibition List - click to expand

Mani Cheema's Exhibition List - click to expand

Blake Law's Exhibition List - click to expand

Sascha Edelkraut's Exhibition List - click to expand

Bigg's Exhibition List - click to expand

The Championship Lists – Best Overall Bracket

The Best Overall bracket sees a slough of interesting factions that includes Raven Guard Space Marines, Black Templar Space Marines, Genestealer Cults, and an Imperial list of Ad Mech and Knights. No matter who wins or loses here it’s going to be a very pretty fight.

Rob: Normally my money would be on Dan but I have no idea what to make of these. And don’t let the paint scores fool you – all four of these guys are very good players, capable of holding their own at a competitive event. The games are gonna be good.

Dan Boyd's Championship List - click to expand

Blake Law's Championship List - click to expand

Sascha Edelkraut's Championship List - click to expand

Bigg's Championship List - click to expand

The Championship Lists – Best General Bracket

The Best General bracket will be a sumo match upon meat mountain just outside of thicc city. Three of the competitors–Mani, Brad, and James–have leaned hard into Artists of Flesh Covens. Just a single hero stands among them, Jack Harpster, bringing his weird space vampires.

Rob: We can sit here and debate winners and do projections but the reality is that even if Drukhari weren’t the game’s strongest faction and the field were level, they’d still have a 75% chance of winning the Best General Bracket. As-is, I’m giving the Blood Angels 20-1 odds. As for the players? It’s a very, very good field and we think it’s anyone’s game at this point. Brad Chester’s the current ITC points leader, though part of that is just that everyone’s waiting for Siegler’s showing at LVO. Mani, Jack, and James are all in or around the top 10 at any given time, and everybody has won at least one GT this year.

Obviously, we’re pulling for James “Boon” Kelling to win this one and you should too. James may seem like a cornball goober from the Midwest in person, but he’s got the heart of a champion. Unless he loses, then he’s dead to me.

The lists can be found below:
James 'Boon' Kelling's Championship List - click to expand

There Can Be Only One, Probably.

Or eight, I guess. If there are no duels to the death. We haven’t checked the fine print on the event packet but we assume that somewhere in there it mentions that there will be blood. Either way, we’ll have boots on the ground at the event, and our own Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones will be live-blogging the festivities and posting updates in the Goonhammer Discord. So check back this weekend for more on the Invitational here at Goonhammer.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note into the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.