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[40k] Competitive Innovations in 10th: Warp Speed

By James "One_Wing" Grover

Welcome to Competitive Innovations, our weekly feature for a number of game lines across the tabletop wargame space. Each week our army list and tactics experts canvass the top tournaments for their game of specialty, looking at the week’s top match-ups and how they played out on the tabletop to let you know what’s hot, what’s not, and what might be coming next as the competitive meta evolves year-round.

It’s a little bit of a quiet one this week, presumably as the Americans recover from LVO, but Australia has boldly forged onwards into a new ITC season with a massive supermajor, and we’ve got a collection of GTs to look at as well.

A couple of notes up-top:

  1. If you haven’t already checked out our massive review of the Aeldari Codex, check it out here. As a known elf afficionado, I cannot wait for this thing to come into play.
  2. Tickets are still available for the Goonhammer Open UK in Leicester on March 22nd/23rd. Check out the details here.

And now, on to the events. This week it’s just me, and I’m covering:

  • Uprising Adelaide 2025
  • Rose City Rampage
  • Winchester 40K GT – January 2025
  • 2. Schwarzwald GT
  • Castle Con 40k Tournament

Our patrons have been provided with their weekly dose of delicious democracy, and have selected the following Showdown:

  • Scintillating Legion vs Black Spear Task Force at Uprising Adelaide

Uprising Adelaide 2025

179-player, 8-round Supermajor in Highbury, South Australia, AU on January 24 2025. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Take and Hold – Raise Banners – Tipping Point

Mission details right there in the BCP event, top marks.

Matt Morosoli – Chaos Daemons (Scintillating Legion)
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Callum German – Deathwatch (Black Spear Task Force)
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Thoughts

Oh no. The day has finally arrived, much sooner than I had hoped. I have to attempt to comprehend the Scintillating Legion. Happily this build is relatively easy to do that with – you get access to redeploys, some extra mobility tricks, a Lord of Change that can melt stuff from behind walls, and one turbo-nasty melee threat. Using the Neverblade on a Winged Daemon Prince is a neat choice, because it stacks with their built in Malefic Destruction ability to just absolutely dust something once-per-game, and this game is one in which it’s phenomenal, as it’ll go through Deathwatch stuff like a hot knife. Backing that with accumulated shooting that will cause some real damage, plus very sticky objective holders from the Horrors and great mobile scoring pieces creates a powerful, if mind-bending creation.

Up against it we have a particularly brutal Deathwatch list, eschewing some of the more go-wide options to go full chonk. Site-to-Site Teleportation lets you do Ultravanguard-style teleporting Centurions, and having a Spectrus team lets you maintain the option of having two bouncy threats if you need to target the Centurions on a given turn. Two Indomitor teams provide a powerful anvil to anchor that strategy around, and you’ve got some cheap stuff to go out and score, plus some backfield Infiltrators to go with it. This list is just vicious, and if you’re up against it you’re certainly very happy to have the option to blast it from behind walls or threaten to alpha off a whole unit. I was a little surprised to see boltstorm gauntlets rather than flamestorm gauntlets in the Indomitor teams though, as it feels like you’re sacrificing some Overwatch potential to add more volume, which the army can already handle.

So, two armies with good redeploys and shooting, Deathwatch with more durability,  and thus the option of going full send, Tzeentch with more options to make stuff happen without fully committing in a cagier game. No particular help from the mission. Tricky. I would probably end up handing this one to the Deathwatch on the basis that I think both armies want to go second here, but Deathwatch has more of a plan going first. If you’re playing a cautious game from either side here you’re looking for opportunities to pick off the opponent’s smaller units at a profit, and Tzeentch can definitely do that going second thanks to Puppeteer, and use the threat projection from the Daemon Prince to stop an Indomitor team being too bold. Going first, however, they’re going to be in a tough spot as committing enough stuff to score is going to risk them getting cleared out. The Deathwatch, on the other hand, have the option of going aggro on the play and potentially bowling the Daemons over. The forces of Chaos do have good tools into most of what’s here, but not so much into the Centurions, and absolutely not if the Deathwatch full send with multiple big tools at once.

It could still go wrong, but I think there’s a reasonable chance it works, and I’d tap them to win on that basis. Naturally, master of Chaos Matt has used the powers of Tzeentch to bamboozle me here, and took a narrow victory despite (I still think) the game slightly favouring the Deathwatch.

Result

Chaos Daemons (Scintillating Legion) Victory – 82 – 75

Matt Morosoli – Chaos Daemons (Scintillating Legion) – 1st Place

Credit: Liebot – https://instagram.com/liebot_pics

The List

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Archetype

Scintillating Legion

Thoughts

A big win for Tzeentch here in Matt’s hands, and it’s worth saying that I think the Deathwatch list from the final is one of the tougher things for this to face because it matches it in redeploys and has greater durability. Against armies that can’t just body you, the threat diversity (many units get real nasty when you pop Pyrogenesis), speed and attrition are going to create a steep uphill challenge, and I think this really showcases what the Tzeentch detachment can do. Great work from Matt!

Callum German – Deathwatch (Black Spear Task Force) – 2nd Place

Rainbow Warriors Combi-weapon Lieutenant by Craig “MasterSlowPoke” Sniffen

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Crunchy Deathwatch

Thoughts

Mostly covered in the Showdown – this is just an alarmingly daunting Infantry army to face off against, and will grind a lot of stuff cleanly into the dust. Deathwatch – no joke, and able to use diverse strategies to great effect as Callum demonstrated here.

Joshua Brodie – Raven Guard (Vanguard Spearhead) – 3rd Place

Kayvaan Shrike infiltrating as a Crimson Fist
Kayvaan Shrike infiltrating as a Crimson Fist. Credit: Corrode

The List

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Archetype

Ravanguard

Thoughts

A spin on the traditional Vanguard Centurion build here, sacrificing a little of the raw threat  and full Deep Strike from the Ultramarine version in favour of better Primary play, particularly from a points denial point of view. Shrike’s Lone Operative Jump squad has always been a great piece for both objective play and as a threat, but he’s also by far the biggest winner from the Balance Dataslate handing out boosted OC to some units. OC2 Jump Intercessors are even better value than normal, and a fantastic tool for reliably saying “no” to your opponent’s scoring plans for the turn, and Shrike’s own unit is even stronger. The list leans into this further with some cheap but lethal Assault Intercessor/Captain units that can be fired out one at a time to maul something, flip an objective, then demand an answer. It takes a lot to justify dropping Ultramarines, but the superior ability to bully an opponent’s scoring plans is a genuine draw to this variant, and could increase in value further if Aeldari are as good as they look. Congratulations to Joshua on the third-place finish and cool list design.

Lachlan Booth – Ultramarines (Gladius Task Force) – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Bobby G’s Flying Gun Club

Thoughts

Bobby G, Gladius, many guns, you know the deal by now. This version does mix up the normal formula, teching for the (accurate) assumption of many Space Marines in the meta by adding a big brick of plasmaceptors, and building on that for a full shooty gun club.

Ethan Armstrong – Grey Knights (Warpbane Task Force) – 5th Place

Grey Knights Paladins. Credit: Colin Ward

The List

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Archetype

Terminator Warpbane

Thoughts

“What the hell Wings?” you ask, “Why is there a fifth list?”. Well, it’s by far the biggest event of the week, Ethan sent me a full writeup of their list that goes above and beyond what’s needed for Best of the Rest, and it’s for a faction that’s still very much being tinkered and experimented with, so you get one more this week. Enjoy, and take it away Ethan!

Ethan: 30 Purifiers, 15 terminators and a dream. My list building here involved looking at a lot of the tech being taken with the new Grotmas detachment such as the servitor Techmarine block or the Purgation squad indirect skew and found it really unimpressive at playing into common meta threats. All of these units rely on being babysat by MSU purifier squads to turn on their output in the absence of durable units on objectives, resulting in a need to play very conservatively with up to 375 points of your list to use the army rule. The new detachment needs to be able to hold the midboard in order to gain re-rolls and the OC on Terminators/Paladins allow you to push this angle to maintain re-rolls into your opponents turns and away from purely relying on the purifiers.

The output available here is utterly disgusting, some turns you roll upwards of 100 dice with full hit re-rolls from an elite army. You don’t need 6 NDKS to kill vehicles anymore, you just reroll hits and wounds instead! Full hit re-rolls on both the Paladins (for sustained from the BroCap) and Terminators (Lethals on the charge) push their output to pretty absurd levels and a unit of 5 purifiers with a full melee loadout becomes a really powerful trading piece for 1cp to re-roll wounds. Often if units of purifiers get chipped to 2 models, the +1 to wound makes them monstrous trading pieces on relatively few dice which happened relatively often throughout the event.

In terms of piloting, the list absolutely sends it most games, I tabled or near tabled the majority of my opponents over the 8 games and reserved the 10 terminators for a RI+heroic threat far more often than I’d thought I would going in. Draigo minds not from where the charge comes. Hopefully other people give the power list version of this another look in, as I honestly believe it is the best way to play the new detachment and is a blast to play as a bonus!

The Best of the Rest

There were 2 more players on 7-1 records. They were:

  • 6th – Tyler Walsh – Necrons (Awakened Dynasty): A hilarious Protocol of the Eternal Revenant skew list with tonnes of Characters, including 3x Skorpekh Lords with Skorpekh MSUs. Tyler also sent me some notes, just in time to sneak them in pre-publication.

Army List - Click to Expand

Tyler: This character-heavy style of Awakened list leverages two unique strats: Protocol of the Eternal Revenant and Protocol of the Undying Legions. Being able to lean in on the resilience of the characters and Wraith brick is a strong gameplan against many armies, and the accumilated value of the resurrecting characters, both in terms of the VP they score and the output they do, is more than worth the CP.
This particular composition of units also has a lot of internal synergy, and is able to leverage all 5 good strats effectively without finding itself with too many targets for the same strat. It doesn’t look like it does much damage on paper, but lots of lethals and access to full rerolls also helps. You often have slightly more resources than your opponent expects by the end of turn 3, and they have slightly fewer (or they are tied up) and you can snowball that advantage in the later turns.

  • 7th – Stuart Trainer – Tyranids (Invasion Fleet): All-rounder Invasion Fleet with a mix of Exocrines, Maleceptors, one Norn, and a larger-than-normal Hormagaunt contingent.

Rose City Rampage

40-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Portland, OR, United States on January 25 2025. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Jonathan Sebert – Orks (War Horde) – 1st Place

Ork Beastboss by Crab-stuffed Mushrooms

The List

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Archetype

All-rounder War Horde

Thoughts

Honestly a bit of everything in our next winning build, taking advantage of Orks suddenly being very feature-complete Datasheet-wise. Improved Tankbustas with an Attack Gun Big Mek give you an anti-tank shooting threat that demands actual respect, while still being low commitment, and Breaka Boyz help with heavy infantry and crunchy builds up close, stopping your momentum getting spiked in crucial games, especially with Ghaz about as well. Running as War Horde further amps up the momentum, and the overall list feels very well suited to a metagame that seems to particularly reward being able to body an opponent when required. Excellent Orky work from Jonathan.

Tom Martin – Astra Militarum (Combined Regiment) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Hellhound. Credit: Rockfish
Hellhound. Credit: Rockfish

The List

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Archetype

Pressure Combined Regiment

Thoughts

Another build that’s well set up to pressure the foe here, using easy-to-hide Tauroxes and a big (respawnable) Scout Sentinel brick to get into the mid-board and start messing with scoring, and backing that up with an ultra-efficient tank suite to gun down anything that dares poke out of cover to try and deal with that. Nothing too out there, just effective use of the strong fundamentals that have carried guard all the way from the Index, tweaked slightly for additional Primary play, well done Tom.

The Best of the Rest

There were 5 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

  • 3rd – Lukas Troller – Orks (Taktikal Brigade): Extra mechanised Taktikal brigade with loads of Flash Gitz and melee infantry in a Trukk convoy.
  • 4th – Brennan Larson – Tyranids (Invasion Fleet): Shooty bug spectacular with two big Genestealer/Broodlord units to run interference. Also, early leader in the “best list name of the year” contest.
  • 5th – Ryan Cherewich – Death Guard (Plague Company): Max Deathshrouds and Brigands with nasty Characters and one big Plague Marine unit.
  • 6th – Alex Pina – Deathwatch (Black Spear Task Force): The Hertel Deathwatch build with one big Indomitor and Talonstrike team each and supporting Veterans plus Terminator MSUs.
  • 7th – Ty Skelton – Chaos Daemons (Blood Legion): Be’lakor, a Bloodthirster, and a fully tooled-up Bloodcrusher/Bloodmaster unit with two Rendmasters to amp it up. Lots of smaller stuff supporting to control the board and bully with the detachment rule.

Winchester 40K GT – January 2025

39-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in England, GB on January 25 2025. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Nicholas Willingale – Blood Angels (Liberator Assault Group) – 1st Place

Blood Ravens Ballistus Dreadnought. Credit – Soggy. Kicking myself for not figuring out that Blood Ravens were the perfect chapter to illustrate the non-Angel Liberator builds a few weeks ago.

The List

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Archetype

Jetpack

Shooty Oath Liberator

Thoughts

Liberator Assault Force is one of the best all-rounder Marine detachments, and this build puts a quite different spin on the option of running it without any actual Blood Angels units (so that you get Wound-boost Oaths) than we saw from Innes a few weeks back. The principle of using the combined power of Oaths and Liberator to go wider with true threats than anyone else can manage is the same, but here we’ve got a much more shooty setup, using the cheap and cheerful Ballistus Dreads and Destructors to provide great all-rounder shooting. Opponents are discouraged from closing in by cheap melee threats that hit absurdly harder than their price tag would suggest. There’s also just so much here, providing extreme redundancy and letting it trade very aggressively when the situation demands. Very powerful, all-told, and gives you some different options if you run up against foes who somehow can clear out four or five Marine units a turn. Well designed and played from Nicholas.

Brett Keable – Adeptus Mechanicus (Haloscreed Battle Clade) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Kataphron Destroyers. Credit: Rockfish
Kataphron Destroyers. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Shooty Haloscreed

Thoughts

An undefeated finish for the new AdMech hotness here, leaning into the toolbox style of play that the Halo Override detachment rule pushes by bringing guns for every occasion. The big innovation here is that Haloscreed makes Kataphron Destroyers an actual real unit, and while they’re still not as good as Breachers, they’re vastly cheaper, helping you get a critical mass of threats on the board while still packing enough Skitarii to score and sacrifice themselves for the Omnissiah. Destroyers do also help a bunch in a metagame with lots of Marine MSUs, as they will make multiple units fully disappear in a single volley, and threaten to comfortably lift a whole unit on overwatch, which can be a serious challenge to play around. This list feels like it succeeds because of how cheaply it manages to set up what can be overwhelming ranged firepower, giving it plenty of space to buy all the supporting toys you could possibly want, and it’s set up to really maximise the power of the new detachment. Great work from Brett.

The Best of the Rest

There were 4 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

  • 3rd – Joshua Cowlard – Orks (War Horde): Heavily mechanised melee-focused War Horde.
  • 4th – Stephen Carmichael-Wilson – Chaos Daemons (Daemonic Incursion): Nurgle Monster mash with Soul Grinders and Great Unclean Ones galore.
  • 5th – James “One_Wing” Grover – Necrons (Canoptek Court): It’s me! I never like playing armies once we’ve got a new set of rules for them being reviewed, as my head is in the future, so the elves are on the shelf for a few weeks. Instead, I got Canoptek Court out to see if it had a place in the current meta. It worked pretty well – I was on two Wraith bricks, a tooled-up Immortal unit, two Doomstalkers and the Void Dragon, and the sheer resilience of Wraith units is as awesome as ever – though I got thoroughly out-durabilitied by Stephen’s list above as my one loss! I’ll be tweaking the list a bit for Beachhead in a few weeks to cover some weaknesses. I had a Reaminator and Triarch Stalker which didn’t do anything, and want a Royal Warden instead of Imotekh in the Immortal unit, which frees up a few more points for some mobile scoring pieces and upgrading Voidy to the Nightbringer – with the amount of Daemons in the meta, you really want to get the latter in.
  • 6th – William Samms – Ultramarines (Vanguard Spearhead): Ultra shooty teleporting Centurions with supporting Ballistus Dreads and Bobby G.

2. Schwarzwald GT

38-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Titisee-Neustadt, BW, Deutschland on January 25 2025. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

William Fuhrimann – Chaos Space Marines (Renegade Raiders) – 1st Place

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Predator Spam

Thoughts

Why is 10th Edition the one where they finally pressed the “make Predators good” button? Experts (i.e. me) are still unclear, but you can’t argue with results. Much like some of the previous few lists, in Renegade Raiders they’re very cheap for how powerful of a threat they are, letting you pack in plenty of other juice (like a big Chosen brick) to unleash on the foe. That once again adds up to an army that’s just a lot, there’s so much here that needs actual attention to put down, and will do you tremendous violence if you leave it alone, and it was clearly a very effective setup – great work William.

Jan Reisenauer – Blood Angels (Liberator Assault Group) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Commander Dante by Craig "MasterSlowPoke" Sniffen
Commander Dante by Craig “MasterSlowPoke” Sniffen

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Also Predator Spam

Thoughts

Edition of the Predator intensifies. This is like a synthesis of some of the last few lists – Liberator so everything is a threat (albeit going with actual Blood Angels for Sanguinary Guard), massively go-wide, lots of Predators, plenty of redundancy, things of this nature. Looks like a recipe for success, congratulations to Jan for giving us yet another spin on it.

The Best of the Rest

There were 4 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

  • 3rd – Benjamin Rüegger – Leagues of Votann (Oathband): Full Sagitaur spam.
  • 4th – Sebastian Auwärter – Ynnari (Battle Host): Massively go-wide Ynnari with lots of small shooty units.
  • 5th – Florian DoltharSodjath Sauter – Astra Militarum (Combined Regiment): Double Dorn all-rounder regiment.
  • 6th – Nicolas Link – Genestealer Cult (Outlander Claw): Primary denial mech claw, leaning even harder on just putting endless bodies on objectives than normal.

Castle Con 40k Tournament

30-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Rochester, MN, United States on January 25 2025. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Nicholas Bialek – Adeptus Custodes (Talons of the Emperor) – 1st Place

Custodes Vertus Praetors
Custodes Vertus Praetors. Credit: Jack Hunter

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Gut-punch Talons

Thoughts

Finishing up the lists for this week, we’ve got Custodes taking full advantage of bikes being good again. Fair’s fair, they were at least in the wilderness for longer than Deathwing Knights. This takes the standard two Warden brick, two Caladius core and gives it much more aggressive reach with two Bike units, one of which is further augmented on all fronts with a Shield Captain. Getting to dip into the Talons stratagem toolbox for free on Bikes is really, really good, and this gives you a way of setting that up without having to use a less mobile Infantry unit, maximising pressure potential, and helping you adapt to skew in lots of directions. I’m honestly a little surprised we haven’t seen more use of larger bike units since the Dataslate, so it’s good to see their potential deployed to full effect, congratulations Nicholas.

The Best of the Rest

There were 5 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

  • 2nd – Zach LaFontaine – Death Guard (Plague Company): All-rounder Plague Company with Mortarion at the head.
  • 3rd – Milan Grubl – Grey Knights (Warpbane Task Force): Crunchy Warpbane with three Dreadknights and a Land Raider with lots of Purifiers in it.
  • 4th – Jack Patschull – Imperial Knights (Noble Lance): Canis and a Warden supported by Armigers and an Immolator with Sisters in it.
  • 5th – Isaac Nelson – Adeptus Mechanicus (Haloscreed Battle Clade): Charged up Kastelan robots with lots of Sydonian Dragoons and Ruststalkers to protect them.
  • 6th – Kristopher Pals – Chaos Space Marines (Veterans of the Long War): Mostly shooty Veterans with two big melee threats from some Chosen and a Warp Talon brick.

Wrap Up

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