There is no greater peak of 40k eurovibes than running the biggest singles event of the week, and the rest of the world only finding out about it because you casually mention it on a Facebook group on the following Tuesday. Along with all the exciting events we looked at on Wednesday, the Paris GT took place last weekend, bringing together over 150 players to throw down with the new mission pack. That’s pretty much all the lead in we need, so let’s dive into the top table showdown and the top four lists.

Paris GT

All the lists for this event can be found on MiniHeadQuarters.

This event was using placing based on wins with 20-0 scoring to determine game results and as a tiebreaker – something we’re seeing quite a bit of in Euro-events recently, and a system I think works pretty well!

Also, MiniHeadQuarters uses screen names for player names, so the winners get to enjoy being immortalised based on (if my experience is anything to go by) a reference to whatever media property they were way too into at age 12.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – Secure Missing Artefacts

Salysia – Harlequins: Boat heavy Harlequins with a second Shadowseer, two solo Voidweavers and some small Bike units.

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vs.

Mike_Hazelwood – Imperial Knights: Freeblade Lance with

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Thoughts

A glorious new challenger approaches – the first sight of the revamped Freeblade Lance on the top tables. Mercifully for your poor correspondant, the 9th Edition version of this is quite a lot less mind bending to assess than the old one was, especially  – rather than combinations of Traits and Burdens that needed a spreadsheet to work out, you now just get one Trait per set big Knight and set of Armigers, with the power coming from getting far more flexible access to the custom Traits list than is otherwise possible (plus a few exciting stratagems, most notably Deeds of Legend). The Army of Renown will thus live or die on whether you can use that flexibility to build something that’s as good as or better than a house, and my honest takeaway from this list is that the answer is yes – this army rules.

The key boost the Army of Renown is providing here is from the three traits that the Armiger trios are using. The Knight Paladin is a great brawler, and adding Protect Those in Need on a single model is definitely cool, but there are other ways to achieve that, whereas the Armiger setup is unique. Hunters of Beasts is extremely good on Helverins, but merely OK on everything else, so being able to only put it on just the Helverin unit is exactly what you want. With two of them also buffed via the Bastard’s Helm they become an exceptionally dangerous shooting unit, and pretty great in this matchup now that Light Saedath only applies outside 18″ – any boat that strays too close is going to have a bad time.

They’ll be chilling out at the back, but the other place the power will really show is with the two Warglaive units, equipped with two powerful traits that allows the army to ensure that their first wave is well suited to the battle at hand. Against armies that are either relying on precision killers like Incubi or volume AP-1 attacks Strike and Shield (especially in combination with the 4+ invulnerable save and damage reduction from the Herald Bondsman ability) is fantastic, letting that set of Armigers duke push into the enemy lines very aggressively, while if the priority is just putting damage on the opponent fast then Noble Combatants is useful. Here the latter is the real game changer – Combatants not technically being a re-roll means that Armigers with it are extremely deadly to Harlequin boats or bikes, making these three a real terror to the clowns, and the priority to keep buffed up via the Paladin. Strike and Shield does still have a role too, because it brutally blunts the killing power of any of the Harlequin Characters, so holding one of those Armigers in reserve behind terrain to counter-charge can be very strong.

This matchup is definitely daunting for the Aeldari, as the Knights can deal huge damage to them both at range and up close, and the ObSec on the Armigers can be pretty challenging to push through. The notable assets they do have are the second Shadowseer and the small Bike units. The former gives them both good Mortal output and a strong angle on a Psychic Secondary, helping them to rack up points and burst through defences, while the latter are ideal for shutting down the Helverins, which is going to be vital for any version of this game that the Harlequins win – the damage they deal once the game closes to mid range is just unsustainable. The Harlequins are still going to have a pretty uphill game in front of them even with that though, as they’re short on a way to reliably put down the Paladin fast (and trying with mass fusion pistols would be a huge gamble), meaning they’re likely going to end up surrendering a flank. If they absolutely crush the Knights on the other flank they might still be able to put up a decent score, but I think the plan from the Knight side here is just to rampage in force towards the Harlequin’s Primary objective and kick them off it, while rationing out Armigers to ensure that their own Primary objective is consistently controlled. At that point, it feels like this is the Knight’s game to lose, with the Harlequins needing a big upset, and from the scoreline it looks like they didn’t get one. This game definitely makes the case for why a lot of Harlequin players seem to be pivoting to haywire/bolas Skyweaver units – it gives you something that can push back against a threat like a tooled-up Knight now that Voidweavers aren’t as efficient.

Result

Imperial Knights Victory – 98-63

Mike_Hazelwood – Imperial Knights – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown.

Archetype

Freeblade Lance

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Pretty much all covered above – this list doesn’tbgo massively deep on any wild combos, it just users a very well seledcted set of Martial Traditions to build an extremely efficient army that can face down almost any opponent. Great to see the Knights performing, and well done to the pilot!

Requiem – Necrons – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

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Archetype

Silent King Eternal Expansionists

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

As we already saw on Wednesday, Destroyers and the Silent King are two great tastes that go great together, and three units of Skorpekh plus some Ophydians here are going to do very nasty things to any opponent that strays within charge range. This list also packs a solution for taking the fight to the enemy in the form of the Night Scythe – loading it up with Lychguard can allow the deployment of a very durable block in the enemy’s half of the table, buying time and denying Primary while the rest of the army gets in position. Hvaing lots of speedy (and now very cheap) Tomb Blade units as well means the list can continue playing a point denial strategy all through the game, while being very efficient at racking up both Primary and Secondary points itself, making it very challeging to outpace. Genuinely, honestly, 100% – if you want to win tournaments in Nephilim, you need to have a plan for how to beat this army, and the lists that Requiem went through on the way to their undefeated finished were pretty crunchy!

Sven – Astra Militarum – 3rd Place (Undefeated with a draw)

The List

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Archetype

Cadian Infantry and Tanks

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

I mean it’s an Astra Militarum list, and it didn’t lose any games (and the draw was 73-72 to the guard, so would have been a win in non 20-0 scoring), which is intrinsically pretty interesting! This army leans on pretty much all the powerups guard have received in successive balance dataslates, plus finally having access to a set of Secondaries of their own, to give them the oopmh to actually face down other armies. Leman Russes now having a 2+ and Armour of Contempt makes them fairly daunting to take down – the current metagame is relatively low on spammed AP-4 anti-tank, so these are likely to get a good few turns of shooting in, and are fairly nasty when they do. As Cadians, access to Never Give Up, Never Surrender as a way for one of these to reliably seize an objective at a key moment is also great, and further rewards the durability.

Over on the Troops side, chained Orders mean that a single Platoon Commander can hand out a whole bunch of buffs, while free upgrades means that the damage potential of the units isn’t totally unreasonable. There’s also just a lot of them – opponents are going to get bogged down for at least a bit, and during that time the Basilisks and Leman Russes are going to be pounding away. Seeing Basilisks over Manticores is interesting, but does sort of make sense – it frees up any CP spend on Tank Ace upgrades, and with Armour of Contempt everywhere, AP-3 is a relevant upgrade.

The army also ends up with very strong Secondary play. By Lasgun and Bayonet should be an essential freebie against many lists (and where it isn’t, Bring it Down will usually be live), and inclusion of a Regimental Standard and some Hades Breacher vets makes Boots on the Ground very practical. Good Officer Coverage (thanks to the Tank Commanders) also means that Special Orders and Inflexible Command are both in play too, and the Command Squad with the upgrades makes both of those even better as long as the terrain allows it to hide.

All taken together, this army takes some fairly serious killing, and will score points fast while the opponent is trying to do that. Finally a real game plan for the Astra Militarum – well done to Sven for showing it off.

Ptit-Nico – Adepta Sororitas – 4th Place

The List

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Archetype

Bloody Rose Goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

To round out our top four we have Bloody Rose Goodstuff, and mostly this is in line with what we’ve already seen succeeding, but I do think the choice of a second Dogmata is interesting, as multiple sources of applied ObSec can let the army play a very effective point denial game when it wants to, which is never a bad thing. Having Spiritual Fortitude in the back pocket to allow you to ram un-smiteable stuff down the throats of Thousand Sons or similar is also not a bad thing! Well done to Nico on fourth place.

The Rest of the Best

Perhaps unsurprisingly given that there were >150 players and only five rounds, a mighty 14 additional players on 4-1 records. This has provided me with an educational opportunity to learn which units sound coolest in French (the answer is Farseers). The other 4-1 players were:

• 5th – LamaR – Adepta Sororitas: Bloody Rose Goodstuff with a couple of Castigators for extra dakka.
• 6th – Bizuthor – Tau: Tau Sept Goodstuff with two massively loaded Crisis Teams and Longstrike.
• 7th – Salysie – Harlequins: See showdown.
• 8th – Tzartech – Tyranids: Leviathan Goodstuff with a couple of Stranglethorn Harpies.
• 9th – Arrethas – Harlequins: Light Saedath that’s essentially all-in on loaded boats and a few Characters.
• 10th – le_poete – Tyranids: Leviathan Warrior Spam.
• 11th – Aimée – Tyranids: Leviathan Goodstuff with lots of Warriors (but not quite enough for the Warrior Spam label). Played on the other undefeated table in the final round.
• 12th – Akabane – Drukhari: Transport-heavy Drukhari Goodstuff, with lots of Raiders packed with Kabalites, Incubi, Wyches and murder-characters.
• 13th – Ashord – Necrons: Eternal Expansionist Skorpekh/Ophydian Destroyer spam with the Silent King.
• 14th – Trippe – Adepta Sororitas: Bloody Rose goodstuff with lots of Zephyrim and Retributors.
• 15th – Zeg – Asuryani: Ulthwe with lots of different Aspect Warriors.
• 16th – Skilledou – Tyranids: Leviathan Goodstuff.
• 17th – Boneblade – Necrons: Eternal Expansionists with no Silent King, packing in a Transcendant C’tan and lots of Destroyers/Wraiths instead.
• 18th – lebull – Chaos Knights: House Korvax with a tanked up Abominant and lots of War Dogs.

Wrap Up

That is now actually it for this week, so I’ll see you all back on Wednesday for additional reports from the Nephilim front. As ever, we can be reached at contact@goonhammer.com for comments, questions or suggestions, and if you’re running an event that’s not in BCP that you want to make sure gets featured, it’s worth letting us know!