Innes: James is still on a break this week so you have me, some Scottish guy who has strong opinions on how balanced things are and a strong bias towards Tyranids that couldn’t possibly be an issue when I look at this week’s results. Right?

This week’s Competitive Innovations will be split into two parts due to the Capital Crime of “Too Much Warhammer.” Today’s article will cover the Birmingham GT, the Alamo GT, The Alberta Classic, and the War Calls GT. I’ll also be covering the Prague Open, which had a rules cutoff that did not allow the “new” Tyranids Codex.

Tomorrow we’ll cover the Mayhem GT, Warhammer 40k Matched Play Event, The Warhound at Game Grid GT, and Warhammer Retreat 2022, I’ll also be briefly touching on the TNC 2022 Team Event in Italy if the results are on BCP by the time I get to it, so please stop by tomorrow for even more event coverage.

Rob: Just a quick note – you can view updated stats for this week’s games by heading over to the new 40kstats website, which includes top 4 lists.

The Birmingham GT

A 276 Player, 5-Round Super Major with a cut to Top 4 held in Birmingham, England. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – Death and Zeal

David Gaylard - Tyranids - Click to Expand

vs.

Danny Evison - Tyranids - Click to Expand

Thoughts

Here we see the natural climax of Tyranid Superiority, two fairly similar lists showing some opposite ends of the depth of options available even within subfactions. Danny has gone heavy on the monsters with double Maleceptor and double Exocrine, while David has a double brick of 9 Warriors with all of the tricks like only being wounded on 4s, Hive Nexus providing a 5+ Invulnerable Save and Venomthropes to provide -1 to hit, and 6x Heavy Weapons in each squad for powerful damage output that can last the game.

Going into this, David has much more scoring power from his objective secured Warriors, and a lot of capacity to hide everything besides the Harpies on the generally fairly dense UKTC boards, while Danny has the edge in raw firepower. One Harpy will be able to hide in the UKTC’s rear ruin, and the other can be both Transhuman and 4++ meaning it will be very difficult to shift even for an army like Tyranids, regardless of who’s Harpies they are.

Danny’s win condition here is forcing David to commit his powerful resources to objectives quickly and then having the damage to kill them before they can rack up the score. David is looking to mitigate that as much as possible and use his own not immodest firepower to stop Danny getting that early snowball. The question asked, are Tyranids survivable enough for Tyranids?

Result

Certainly it seemed to be so, with David taking the win 94-42. My guess is that David was just able to explode out onto the board and start chunking out Danny’s relevant units before he was able to get a grip on scoring, leading to a snowball in David’s favour as Danny could never get out under the weight of resilient Objective Secured.

David Gaylard – 1st Place

Tyranids – Leviathan Goodstuff

See Showdown

The Standout Features/Archetype – Leviathan Double Warriors

Two Big Bricks of Tyranid Warriors join all the usual synergy pieces and a disgusting amount of firepower condensed in two Harpies provides an incredibly resilient core that has enough damage output to solve its problems through sheer datasheet power.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

There isn’t much that’s bad in the Tyranid Book, and David is definitely out to prove it with a glut of all of the datasheets that is almost highlander, a consequence of the Tyranid Codex incentivising running many different synapse units for imperatives and also having lots of overlapping synergy units like Venomthropes. These back up highly pushed datasheets like Pyrovores, Warriors and Harpies.

This is interesting not for what it is, but what it isn’t. This isn’t a list abusing any one particularly broken combo or datasheet, it represents a grand undercosting of the Tyranid Faction as a whole, where there is no single obvious source of power to point at and say “this is broken”.

Danny Evison – 2nd Place

The List

See Showdown

The Standout Features/Archetype

Lots and lots of monsters abusing the Leviathan durability boost and loving the hit reroll in games where Danny doesn’t feel the need to swap it out.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

This list goes very heavy on the shooting output of Tyranids with just a few key combat elements like the ubiquitous Reaper of Obliterax Hive Tyrant. A grab bag of Exocrines, Harpies and Maleceptors, as well as a Tyrannocyte to provide immense forward pressure dropping one of these nasty bugs into a choice location provides opponents with an uncompromising wall of T7-8 and 12+W that cannot be ignored. The only notable thing here is the lack of dedicated scoring that certainly didn’t prove an issue against lesser biomass but clearly didn’t stand up to David’s specific strengths.

Nathan Whitbread – 3rd Place

The List

Nathan Whitbread - Tyranids - Click to Expand

Leviathan Goodstuff with a big brick of Warriors and Raveners

The Standout Features/Archetype

Two Patrols for Double Tyrant showing another variation of monsters available to the Tyranid Arsenal

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

It’s more Leviathan. Its got a bit less big stuff and a bit more scoring. It ran into David’s list and had many of the same issues as Danny’s list, though it held a much closer 86-74.

Giulio Cesare Ghermandi – 4th Place

The List

Giulio Cesare Ghermandi - Drukhari Goodstuff Click to Expand

A list that goes very heavy on the most efficient options available to Drukhari, we see 2×3 Grotesques, Drazhar, Incubi and a single Succubus backing up some of the more resilient scoring options like 6 Reaver Jetbikes, a miser’s Court of the Archon and a squad of Haemoxytes

The Standout Features/Archetype

A nice balance of offence and reasonably resilient scoring provide a solid base to do what Drukhari do best, smash out one big turn and have enough left in the tank to hold the objectives down vs the remnants of your army.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Obviously a lot has changed for Drukhari in the past 6 months or so, the things that once terrorised the meta seem almost quaint compared to what some factions (Looking at you Tyranids and Eldar) can do at range. This list really does try to thread the needle on the best of both, and unfortunately just didn’t have it in it to get over the line vs Danny’s Tyranid wall, though it sharpened its blades on Tau, Sisters, Marines and the mirror on its way to a top 4. Well done to Giulio showing that even post nerf, nerf, nerf, and nerf they can still take it to all of these upstarts.

The Rest of the Best

Three other players went 5-0 at the Birmingham GT:

5th – Euan Bedford-Cooper – Kraken Goodstuff with a modest lean on Raveners, Double Tyrant and a big (5) block of Carnifex
6th – Edward Fawcett – A Jormungandr list that runs a Brick of Carnifexen that can drop in from reserve with the Jormungandr stratagem, Double Tyrant and a Mawloc
7th – Konrad Bartkiewicz – Konrad continues his reign of terror with a Hail of Doom + Dark Harlequins list that combines the best of both factions into a scoring and shooting machine with a combat element that just can’t be ignored. A block of 30 Dire Avengers provides a terrifying answer on the heavy UKTC boards.
8th – Simon Edwards – Hail of Doom with Wave Serpents and an Avatar, 20 Dire Avengers and a terrifying answer unit in the form of 10 Fire Dragons

The Alamo GT

The Alamo GT was a 116 player, 6-round event held in All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – Secure Missing Artefacts

Bryce Chapman - Light Harlequins - Click to Expand

vs.

Colin McDade - Kraken Tyranids - Click to Expand

Thoughts

Harlequins in Secure Missing Artefacts can be an absolute nightmare. With all the tools to jump on objectives and score maximal primary without having to hold down too many objectives late into the game and some wonderful secondary options, they’re a force to be reckoned with.

Tyranids with 3 big bricks of raveners have lots of speed to match the Harlequins, also with Double Harpy to run forward and start putting damage on the elves early also affords some easy plays here, though the lack of survivability from the Encircle the Prey and not having Leviathan does mean that the Harlequins damage output gets to have full efficiency while the Kraken AP goes completely to waste.

For the Quins to win here, I’d expect to see a lot of jank combined with maximum violence from the 2 squads of Starweavers. Tyranids will want to have an overwhelming pressure wave that shuts down any ability for the Harlequins to start that jank.

Result

Bryce gets the win 89-86 in an absolute nailbiter of a high-scoring win. Secure Missing Artefacts is a high scoring mission and both players clearly did their best to maximise scores. The Harlequins pip it by less than the value of a primary, showing they have all the tools they need, but almost nothing more, to win this matchup.

Bryce Chapman – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

The Standout Features/Archetype

A grab bag of almost every datasheet available to the Harlequins subfaction

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

It’s fast, it’s hard to hit and it has very reasonable mortal wounds output, and multi-phasal damage. It doesn’t lean too hard on any one aspect of the book but definitely pulls out a little bit of everything that in the hands of the right player is clearly showing it has the potential to put the screws to anything.

The Rest of the Best

One more player went 6-0 and 9 players went 5-1 at the Alamo GT

2nd – Jason Manning (Undefeated) – Behemoth Tyranids – A double Tyrant list with a Tyrannocyte, Carnifexen and a brick of Warriors to make use of Monster Objective Secured from the Lurk table provides Behemoth a real competitive advantage over Leviathan and Kraken who lack this.
3rd – Colin McDade (*) – Kraken Tyranids – See Showdown
4th – Clifton Russell – Jormungandr Tyranids – Very monster heavy, relying on dense cover as an alternative to the survivability of Leviathan with a heavy bent on reserves with a few solid options such as Zoanthropes, Harpies, Pyrovores and Exocrines depending on the situation being able to take a safe turn 1 or lean in for a quick alpha strike.
5th – Matthew Allee – Thousand Sons Double Scarabs – A fairly standard Thousand Sons list with two 10 man Scarab Occult Squads, but wait! There’s also 3 War Dogs with Autocannons to provide a powerful backfield shooting option that extends the threat range of the usually fairly limited army while offering another resilient option that can combine with the Scarabs Shooting to close out those matchups like Tyranids where just 1 threat isn’t enough.
6th – Josiah Cook – Leviathan Goodstuff – Double Exocrine, Double Zoanthrope
7th – Jamus Thrayn – 9 Voidweavers Light – If I don’t talk about this it can’t hurt me.
8th – Nathaniel Bjorge – Leviathan Double Tyrant – A big 9 man of Warriors, 5 pyrovores and two Tyrants are the poison of choice for Nathaniel who also adds a Tyranid Prime for reroll 1s to wound and an exploding 6s in shooting option.
9th – Michael Dehoyos – Hail of Doom – Baharoth, plus a big squad of Swooping Hawks and Shadow Specters provide excellent To The Last options to this list which kicks out a disgusting amount of firepower from 3×10 Guardians and 18 Dire Avengers. The Mortal Wound Pistol Farseer as well as two others provide devastating punishment through Eldritch Storm to any who would try to castle up and hide.
10th – Jeff Ptak – Mixed Grey Knights – Prescient Brethren with 2×5 Paladins and 3 Nemesis Dreadknights
11th – Tyler Parker – Masterful Shots/Webway Warriors MSU – A Webway Gate provides the centrepiece to a wide variety of options for the best tools for the job, whether that’s Avengers, Fire Dragons or Windriders, Tyler can always choose the best tools for the job to be where they need to be. 3 squads of Fire Dragons make a showing here to provide an answer to the big things that Hail of Doom Shuriken would usually cover and show some of the depth available to the Eldar Codex.

Alberta Classic

The Alberta Classic was a 6 Round, 45 Player event held in Calgary Canada. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – Unknown Mission

Riley Tremblay - Ulthwe Goodstuff - Click to Expand

vs.

Gord Weppler - Genestealer Cults Bladed Cog - Click to Expand

Thoughts

Genestealer Cults are woefully outclassed here unfortunately; an army reliant on T4 bodies with paper saves to score against an army that puts out at range the same damage that Cults do in melee unfortunately just doesn’t line up well. Combine that with stratagems like Forewarned, and the Cult will be punching up to come close.

Gord has a good set of transports and lots of MSU options as well as 30 Abberants, that can definitely start putting the damage down if they get there, has to close on an army that teleports at will, has a dozen screening units like Vypers and rangers with Wiireweave nets to add -2 to charge, and plenty of shooting. The win condition for the Eldar here is to slowly choke out the Genestealer Cult, keep them down on primary just enough while playing keep away with the aberrants and running up the scoreboard.

The Genestealer Cults need to get a break through turn here, connect a big charge or collapse a flank unrecoverably, and it’s just incredibly hard for Gord to set that up.

Result

A 97-84 win for the Aeldari, a comfortable, almost maximum score for the Eldar here, which could well be down to taking a secondary they were unable to max, and a respectable score for the Cults here. The Abberants likely proved too high an investment to reliably commit on for Riley and were able to lock down a board area, but could never push aggressively on the tricksy and manoeuvrable eldar.

Riley Tremblay – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

The Standout Features/Archetype

Ulthwe running an absolute grab bag of tools, doubling up on almost nothing and relying on force multipliers such as Guide and Doom to really deliver the damage, as well as rock solid secondary plans with Hawks, Eldrad and likely one of Baharroth and the Nightspinner depending on the opponent

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Eldar continues to demonstrate that the book has a pile of viable builds with a super lean and low to the ground Ulthwe list that runs most of the best datasheets from the book, with good psychic, shooting and just enough combat to keep people honest. This list will reward anyone playing it well as long as they can leverage the tools for the situation and Riley clearly pulled that off with aplomb.

The Rest of the Best

Four other players went 5-1:

2nd – Ozzie Meloche – Dark Troupe Spam – 60 Harlequins on Foot come crashing up the board with -1 to wound, and -1 to hit in melee and say “can you deal with us?”. For 5 players, the answer may not surprise you. 4 Voidweavers keep people honest by providing a healthy shooting phase that can make the most use of Luck of the Laughing God as there’s such limited value in using in anywhere else with very few other relevant targets.
3rd – Cory Burns – Dark Troupe Spam – Calgary are you okay? Another Dark Troupe spam list that eschews voidweavers for 3 squads of Bikes and an additional 18 troupes (5 5 8) to go with the 6×10 that we saw in Ozzie’s list.
4th – Layne Strandquist – Dark Good Stuff – I swear this event is trying to kill me, a third Dark Harlequins list closes out the top 4 with 3 big squads of troops and 6 Voidweavers.
5th – Steve Carr – Sisters Melee Skew – Bloody Rose drops a 5-1 with a 20 of battle sisters, 2 squads of Novitiates, 10 Zephyrim, 30 Arco Flagellants and 2×10 Repentia. Celestine and Stern provide some back up heavy hitters and Vahl is notably riding the bench.

War Calls GT

The War Calls GT was a 5-Round, 32 Player event held in Perth, Australia. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – The Scouring

Lachlan Rigg - Bloody Rose Mixed Arms - Click to Expand

vs.

Luke Newell - Goffs Oops All Melee - Click to Expand

Thoughts

Lachlan is running a very reasonably balanced Sisters list with some solid shooting options that backs up all the Sisters combat punch you could desire from 20 Repentia and 24 Zephyrim, Morven Vahl and 20 Novitiates allow some spike damage options and give a lot of cheap bodies to chew through, and Paragon Warsuits give a mixed arms anchor.

Luke has combat. All the combat.

The Scouring is notoriously a mission where you are going to fight your opponent in the center. There isn’t really another option. Luke has lots of speed but also very little options but to try and close the gap as quickly as possible. If he can, he’d like the sisters to have to extend first, but with lots of little squads, the sisters have to expend much less to get on objectives here, and can pepper Luke with shooting on the way in. Repentia’s ability to fight on death also provides a heavy barrier to Luke’s ability to trade up, as long as Lachlan controls the rate at which he’s using those units

Result

Sororitas win 94-45.

I think this was always going to be an uphill struggle for the Orks – having to close the gap vs an army that outshoots you, out objective controls you and fights on death is never pleasant, and from the wide score margin, I doubt Lachlan ever left an opportunity for Luke to get out onto the board.

Lachlan Rigg – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

The Standout Features/Archetype

Bloody Rose Melee with a token shooting element from Paragon Warsuits and Retributors to keep people honest.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

In a game that is marching inexorably towards being about trading at the expense of all else, an army that can pump small units full of Vahl-based steroids and rip through most things in the game of a similar points cost is definitely positioned to do fairly well. Vahl and Paragons or Retributor provides a non zero answer to Tyranid Monsters and Imperial Knights while not detracting too much from the theme of the list, which is trading up with Objective Secured units to flip objectives, and having Fight on Death Repentia when you need a more definitive answer to a given problem (and sometimes they’re Objective Secured too, thanks Dogmata!)

The Rest of the Best

Four additional players placed 4-1:

2nd – Nathan Bailey – Ulthwe MSU – Farseers full of Phoneix Lords here with a 3-2 Split and Karandras showing up for his big weekend out, we have a huge variety of 40-160pt units here, a solid To The Last Plan and lots of options to boost output to make the most of these small units. A big 9 man Scatter Laser Bikes squad threatens 54 shots with potential for Guide, Doom and Jinx to make a smoking crater wherever stuff used to be. Eldritch Storm threatens a supercharged 3+D3 mortal wounds on anything that dares to exist within a Realm of Battle tile of the Farseers.
3rd – Vincent Mateljan – Leviathan Double Tyrant – It has Carnifexes! And a Tyrannocyte! And all the normal stuff! I guess Deathleaper is here too.
4th – Richard Owen – Imperial Knights – House Taranis makes its debut with a Mortal Wounds enabled Castellan with the new and terrifying Knight of Mars allowing that Volcano Lance to dump out a minimum of D6+8 mortal wounds before it starts rolling any more dice for the low low price of 4CP. An Errant affords advance and charge and some combat threat to 3 Warglaives, while 2 Moirax and a Helverin lock down the shooting phase while backing the Big Boy™. Expect to see a lot more Knights on your friendly local gaming table, though be sure to ask your TO about keywords on Forgeworld Knights as they’re a little up in the air before the FAQ.
5th – Luke Newell (*) – Goff Melee – See Showdown

The Prague Open

The Prague Open was a 40 Player event in Prague, Czech Republic which played 5 rounds and used the WTC Scoring system as a tiebreaker instead of Battle Points.

We aren’t providing a showdown for this event as the finals was between two Old Tyranid Codex Crusher Stampede lists which are no longer relevant to the competitive meta.

Marek Vlnka – 1st Place

Marek’s running a fairly different Crusher Stampede list with Venomthropes and Double Exocrine alongside the Standard Triple Tyrant that has us all saying “I sure am glad these rules are dead”

The Rest of the Best

While this event used WTC 20-0 Scoring, it still used wins as the first measure of placing, and 3 more players went 4-1 or better.

2nd – Matej Tkàč – Dark Troupes in Boats – 5 Squads of Troupes in Starweavers along with Triple Death Jester and a 6/2 Split of Skyweavers provides us a 22 Assassination points Harlequins list with all the tools to make your day miserable whether you’re shooting or fighting it.

3rd – Leoš Prokopec – Triple Tyrant Crusher Stampede – A grab back of other monsters backs up Swarmlord and 2 Flyrants

4th – Jens Gottfried – Genstealer Cults Mixed Arms – A very tall GSC List running 3 big (1 very big, 216 points, with the full 6 Drills) Acolyte Squads as well as a Seismic Cannon 20 man neophyte squad and 3 Ridgerunners has all the tools for any situation as long as it can deliver them. Jens never actually lost a game but ended 3-0-2.

Final Thoughts

The first half of this weekend’s events definitely showed us some interesting things. Tyranids definitely aren’t crushing it at all the events they’re attending, as we’ve seen some very competent players run up GT and Major wins with Sororitas and Harlequins just in this half of the results, but they’re definitely everywhere. The biggest evidence of this faction (and incidentally Eldar’s) unparalleled strength is the diversity in what you can run around your core without suffering any reduction in power level. Both factions are running fairly similar middle 8-1200 points, but throwing in almost anything else at random from the book and seeing success across a variety of subfaction traits.

I’m not the first and I won’t be the last to say it, but these armies seem to be problems and I look forward to seeing if they ever actually coalesce on a build, or just do almost anything from now until their points changes.

That’s it for today, but as a reminder, please check back in tomorrow for the second half of last weekend’s events.

Innes

Competitive Innovations in 9th – Part 1: Tyranids are Fine, Actually

The Birmingham GT

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – Death and Zeal

Thoughts

Result

David Gaylard – 1st Place

Tyranids – Leviathan Goodstuff

The Standout Features/Archetype – Leviathan Double Warriors

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Danny Evison – 2nd Place

The List

The Standout Features/Archetype

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Nathan Whitbread – 3rd Place

The List

The Standout Features/Archetype

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Giulio Cesare Ghermandi – 4th Place

The List

The Standout Features/Archetype

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

The Rest of the Best

The Alamo GT

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – Secure Missing Artefacts

Thoughts

Result

Bryce Chapman – 1st Place

The List

The Standout Features/Archetype

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

The Rest of the Best

Alberta Classic

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – Unknown Mission

Thoughts

Result

Riley Tremblay – 1st Place

The List

The Standout Features/Archetype

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

The Rest of the Best

War Calls GT

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – The Scouring

Thoughts

Result

Lachlan Rigg – 1st Place

The List

The Standout Features/Archetype

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

The Rest of the Best

The Prague Open

The Rest of the Best

Final Thoughts

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