[Warhammer 40k] Ben Jurek’s Road to LVO 2025, Part 3: On to Tacoma

This year’s Road to LVO series is sponsored by Frontline Gaming.

I have returned from Tennessee with some fancy hardware! If you missed my prep last time around, you can find my previous article here. After a weekend of tough games, my Art of War teammates and I proved successful in our conquest of the North American Team Championship. I’ll have the full rundown of those games in the moment.

Despite the success, there’s little time for me to rest – this week marks the final leg of about a six week run of back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back 40k-related weekends, each featuring an event of varying size. And somewhat fittingly, I’m capping it all off with a 300+ person major hosted by Games Workshop in Tacoma, Washington – the GW US Open Tacoma. We’re now thoroughly in a new meta, and I’ve been having a pleasant time navigating it. If you’re at the event this weekend, be sure and stop by to say “hi.”

Robnote: Fun fact: I actually met Ben at the Tacoma event back in 2022 – you can find a recap of that event here.

The NATC Recap

Spoiler: We won the event. That aside, this was my second teams event and first 8-man event in this new meta and with the new mission pack. I was on the pairings team and our plan as we discussed in the last article was to be extremely hostile to other teams running knights. Which mostly proved effective. There’s a lot to cover – a little too much to do a deep dive on each game, but I’ll briefly cover my games that I played and thoughts here.

In case you missed it, you can find my list for the event here:

Ben Jurek's Imperial Knights - Click to Expand

Round 1: vs. Ryan Schwarz on Tunnel Nids

Layout 6, Search and Destroy, Take and Hold

Our first round opponents were the Wrong Way Kids. I was paired into Ryan Schwarz, who also happens to work for GW and has his hands in many of the goings-on in their North American operations (if you’re ever at a GW event, he’s likely to be running the store, among other things). Tactically speaking, this game was pretty straightforward: Outside the two Tyrannofex there wasn’t anything that could really handle a knight chassis well and he didn’t have OC packages to push me off objectives. So I proceeded to walk right through his army and into his DZ. The lack of knight-killing threats in melee meant he needed to kill by committee, and so my ability to interrupt and punt a Haruspex was a fatal flaw in his plans. He was able to flip my home objective at one point and I failed to flip it back due to a failed Battle-shock test after I walked through a wall. I also failed to hold him to a 0 after a clutch Overwatch killed Canis Rex walking onto his home.

Final result: 17-3

Round 2:  vs. Alexx Murphy on Gladius Ultramarines

Layout 6, Crucible of Battle, Terraform

Round two was against the United Midwest Project. They’re good – they usually compete at the top tables, making this a real test for us. I played Alexx, who was on standard Ultramarines build running three Ballistus dreads along with some vindicators. That sure is a lot of guns that can wound me on 2+ with Oath of moment. I had this in the matrix as a draw, more or less, and played a cautious game on what was a mission favorable to knights. I had a bounce turn early, leaving two of his Ballistus on three and four wounds, respectively. Fearing the worst with the Vindicators coming in out of reserves I prepped myself for a loss only for him to bounce off my 4++. I’d rip down all of those hulls the next turn and keep a conservative plan, staying away from Guilliman.

Final Result: 11-9

Round 3: vs. Matthew Bunting on Chaos Demons Shadow Legion

Layout 7 Hammer and Anvil, Take and Hold

Oh boy, this round had the wildest swings. I made some small errors and that combined with some bad dice to put me pretty deep in a hole against Matthew early, down two Atropos and an ingressed Bloodthirster headed for my third. Then it bounces off then and I had a clap back turn that was basically armageddon, killing the thirster, Be’lakor, and his Soul Grinder in a single go. My matrix quickly swung back and I ended up with a 20-0 here.    

Final Result: 20-0

Round 4: vs. Chris Adams on Chaos Knights Lords of Dread

With some masterful scrum pairings, both myself and Chris fall into the forgotten. I have my list tuned for the knight mirror and my output vs most Chaos Knights lists is very difficult to match. So I was feeling confident. Chris picked purge the foe and I won the go first roll. We both took fixed secondaries with Assassinate and Bring it Down. Which meant he could force me to stare at him and score near a draw. Going first meant I’d be the one who had to act to come out on top. So I initiate and wound 2 knights, killing none. He retaliated by killing some small knights, and then I was able to leverage his extension by picking up three big knights in a single turn, tilting the game in my favor. I chose not ot let him kill or score secondary after that and we ended the game 15-5.

Final Result: 15-5

Round 5: vs. Walter Langendorf on Awakened Legion Necrons

What a treat of a final round. I was paired into Walter, a team USA Academy teammate who I’ve only been able to play against digitally. He’s playing his special brew list, which is almost always 3x Skorpekhs and lords then the rest of the list. He definitely is one of the strongest players in the room and I need to be ready. Thanks to some teams practice I know the knights are favored in this matchup and Jack asks me to push as high as I can go. Walter picks Tactical and Hidden Supplies, which means that we can’t score on the home objective. I’m able to abuse just how fast a knight army can chew through wraith bricks and flatten Walter’s scoring potential, ending up with a 19-1 win.

Final Result: 19-1

Post-Event Thoughts on Imperial Knights

The army is frighteningly strong. It offers up a lot of stat check situations that most armies can’t answer and they walk away with a win even if the opponent has the tools to kill knights – those armies often only get to have those tools for one turn and if they can’t make it happen then, it’s not going to.

The army certainly has counters. I really do not want to play into any hordes with my lack of volume and if I played into Jack’s warhost we’d likely end up calling it for him after about a half an hour. Is the army worth taking in singles? Yes, I think so – you just need to make a small sacrifice to the pairings gods and go.

This army is going to continue to have a high win rate until it’s hit with nerfs. That, coupled with the recent time and energy I’ve put into them, has me sticking with them for Tacoma.

Why Not Chaos Knights?

It’s worth addressing this question – Chaos Knights are also cheap and have great options. Why not them?

Honestly, I just don’t have the army ready. Its play patterns are not too wildly different from Imperial Knights, and we saw a lot of great CK lists put up numbers. With the WTC list reveals it’s also more clear what the best list for them is.

I think in a take-all-comers sort of singles environment Chaos Knights is probably just better. Infernal Lance gives you a way to tackle the volume problem – if Tacoma had a character select screen and time was no issue, I’d probably be on an Infernal List with two Despoilers armed with battle cannons and gatling acting as my starts of the show. Moving faster, getting angles, shooting with sustained – there’s a plethora of plays to be made and this detachment does it.

I think Lords of dread is also great but I keep coming back to these Infernal Lance lists with jealousy in my heart. The Lords of dread OC 5 strat is bonkers, but I just like moving more or shooting more.

But what I have instead is Atropos-heavy Imperial Knights list that’s brilliant in the mirror. Chances are good I’ll get paired into knights late at Tacoma, so let’s hope my gamble pays off.

Plans and Expectations for Tacoma

It is now time for my annual pilgrimage to the northwest for this event. I have many friends in the area and always look forward to this trip. It’s an event I’ve consistently done well at and I’m hoping to continue in that regard.

That said, coming into this one, I had a critical choice to make: Thousand Sons or Imperial Knights?

The issue with knights is that if I get into a bad matchup there is not a lot of wiggle room to play out of it. The army is very face-up and relatively smooth brained. The Thousand Sons on the other hand are almost the exact opposite – there are a lot of tricks and nuance to them, but it’s also easy to make misplays that cost you big. It’s easy to struggle with a little bit of variance or piloting mistakes.

Ultimately I made the decision to go with the less stressful option and just run back my teams list. I could get cute and add immolators and sisters, or swap in a knight with more volume or try and hobby up a CK army in a week… but I chose inner peace and will live with that decision even if it may or may not lessen my chances of taking down an event.

Right now the meta is pretty defined: You either play knights, or you have to be able to kill knights. I am choosing to be the former here. I know I’ll be the target of many lists and here’s hoping my stat check survives.

My goal of course, is always to win an event. I usually go home with some hardware so let’s hope we can continue doing so. 

Teams vs Singles

I often get asked “What’s the difference between a teams list and a singles list?”

In the meta as we stand today. The answer is “not very much.” At least in most team compositions. Many of the lists revealed for WTC this year are just tuned, good singles lists with maybe 100-300 points of adjustment knowing they may not be pairing certain matchups or looking to pair into others. The ability to choose your matchups means that some lists don’t have to worry as much about versatility and can lean into what they do best. There are some exceptions, obviously – I’d recommend looking at France’s 80 zerker list here, which is far more of a teams skew than a singles list. You will often see a mix of just generally great lists with 1-2 skews in most 8-man team compositions – Team composition is just as important as the individual lists for so many teams. I know USA spent plenty of time just grinding through their super matrix to figure out their comp.

That said I am just running my teams list in singles. I believe the armies I am facing will be representative of the current meta and if I draw the bad matchup I’m probably cooked anyways so I just won’t change anything. I’m on three Atrapos to insure victory in the mirror, with the expectation of fighting many more knights.

If you haven’t had a chance to look at lists for the WTC. I’d highly encourage you to do so. It is a great breakdown of the meta today and what some of the best players in the world think is great. 

What’s Next: A Break, Then Off to Austria!

The last time I wrote an outro declaring hopeful conquest I came back with the gold. Let’s see if we can stay on a tear and take down another event. After Tacoma, I will be on a bit of a break from playing Warhammer events until the middle of August. I should have time to hammer out a recap of Tacoma, then I have next weekend off. After that I’ll be spending all of my time leading up to the WTC vacationing in Italy and celebrating my wedding anniversary.

There will likely be some practice games happening during that time but my weekends are clear until I travel to Leoben for the WTC. I will be assisting with logistics and coaching for Team USA in addition to doing War Games Live coverage with Joe. So tune in in just a few short weeks if you want to hear my lovely voice on stream. And I’ll be back with more articles soon as I shift gears to prep for LVO.

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