Ugh, there are still events happening? Five of them even? Don’t you people know I have Canoptek Doomstalkers to paint?

Speaking of, this week sees the arrival of the new Necron and AdMech codexes on the scene (mostly the former, if we’re honest) and as predicted the Canoptek Court has made the biggest splash. Wraiths, C’tan, Doomstalkers – the tombs have disgorged plenty of ferocious brawlers to shake up the metagame, with Hypercrypt also getting a look in, so if you need a refresher on just what these can do, check out our review of the Necron book here. Adeptus Mechanicus are quieter, but they did pick up a 4-1 with the revised Rad-Cohort, and if you need a reminder on what that does, take a look here.

This week’s events are:

Rise Of The Empire
WTC Navideño Individual Rankeado Kingdom
Grimdark 18: The Grand Tournament 4
The Fight Before Christmas 2023 Warhammer 40K Grand Tournament
Carnage – Season 1 – Round 10 – Open Slay (Yes, I checked, this wasn’t a league, despite what the name might suggest).

For our final Showdown of the year, the patrons have selected:

Adepta Sororitas vs Chaos Knights at Carnage

Next, I’d like to say a big thank you to my co-writer Lowest of Men, who has massively stepped up this year to keep the column manageable with the enormous number of events that are firing weekly. It’s been great to have someone to bounce ideas off and share the load of what this column has evolved into

Finally, just before the events, a couple quick followups from last week’s Editorial, broadly covering two things people were surprised to not see me talk about, and two things that I probably should have done an honourable mention on.

The two things that many were surprised to not see me mention were:

The removal of wargear costs.
The weakness of many melee units.

Wargear costs was easily the most contentious exclusion, and it’s clearly something a lot of people feel very passionate about. Honestly, the reason it wasn’t on the list? I don’t feel passionately about it either way. I think on balance, taking out wargear costs is a net good for the game (I outlined why in the discussion on Reddit), but also has some clear drawbacks in some specific cases, most notably Aeldari right now. It does not, however, particularly affect the way I engage with the game week-to-week, so didn’t feel like it belonged in either list. In addition, even if I did feel strongly about it I don’t think there’s much chance of it changing, which reduces the utility of including it in this kind of article.

Weakness of melee units is a place where my thinking has evolved a bit over time. If you’d asked me three months ago, I’d have said that melee in general needed an uplift across the board. Turns out no – 10-model Custodes units were just strangling melee out of the game, and there are enough powerful melee-focused armies now doing well that a “game-level” melee buff is clearly off the table. Plenty of melee units do feel like they’re short a point of AP in this Edition, and probably shouldn’t have lost any in the transition from 9th, but at this point that’s something that will need to be fixed in Codexes and (in the interim) with points tweaks rather than via some general rule that would shoot Orks, CSM and World Eaters into the stratosphere.

Moving on to the two honourable mentions, these are:

Bring back Actions.
Make it easier for really big models to move.

Bringing back Actions is kind of self-explanatory, because in many ways they never left. We have enough Action-style objectives in the mission pack that it would make sense to have them as a general rule, and it feels weird to lose the design space that having them as a general rule opens up without actually removing them from the game.

For large models…look I just want to be able to drive my Monolith around hoovering stuff up, is that so much to ask? Big models are really cool, but modern tournament tables that aren’t on the perspex standard can often make them nearly impossible to move, because the density of terrain needed to make 40K interesting is not conducive to driving around a big tank. Let them ram straight through the last 1″ of walls or something? I don’t have a perfect fix here, but I do very much want something to change.

That is now enough rambling – on to the events.

Rise Of The Empire

89-player, 6-round Grand Tournament in Houston, TX, US on December 16 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Colin McDade – Necrons (Awakened Dynasty) – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Wraiths and C’tan

Thoughts

My first thought is “damn, I started painting Doomstalkers before the Void Dragon”. My second thought is good grief that’s a durable army. It’s pretty common for early successes with a new Codex to focus on pushing the extremes of what they can do, and combining 18 Wraiths and 3 C’tan is very much that, providing a truly astronomical number of wounds with both a 4+ Invulnerable Save and a 5+ Feel No Pain. The Nightbringer and the Void Dragon also complement Wraiths pretty well – one of the only challenges the Canoptek beasties have is struggling to kill hefty targets, but the C’tan will have no such issue.

It’s also great threat saturation, which is a distinct problem for some of the top players in the current metagame. Aeldari might just not be able to kill this fast enough, especially given how durable it is, and there are more things that they want to slow with Spinner than many builds can take. It also feels decent into some CSM builds, notably the ones without Accursed Communes (which are the main thing that’ll detonate a Wraith unit), and competitive into plenty of other top builds. Crisis-heavy Tau, Ironstorm Spearhead and Votann are the main builds I’d wonder about hitting issues with, as they probably can just gradually murder this, though even there three C’tan might overwhelm Tau who’ve gone all in on only CIBs. Spearhead and Votann are left as the biggest question marks, and I’ll be fascinated to see if those do turn out to be the answer to this, or if Necrons are about to run a little rampant across the metagame. A little bit rampant, as a treat. Well done to Colin for leading the charge out of the tombs.

Justin Moore – Chaos Space Marines (Slaves to Darkness) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Triple Commune Brawler

Thoughts

Speaking of the tools to overwhelm Aeldari, Justin takes undefeated second here with the full-blown overwhelming flavour of Chaos Space Marines, featuring maximum Accursed Communes and lots of Rhino-riding Infantry missiles. I’d love to see this build face off against a list like Colin’s some time soon, because this army feels like it might be able to counterpunch pretty effectively into the Wraiths on multiple fronts, and maybe then take enough control of the table to make something happen, because if the Communes roll through the Wraiths they’re then great for trapping C’tan in a fight forever. Maybe we’ll get some of that in the new year – for most other matchups you know the drill here, overwhelming numbers and potent melee pressure for days. Great stuff from Justin.

Noah Pope – Aeldari (Battle Host) – 3rd Place

The List

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Archetype

Shadow Spectre Slam

Thoughts

Well the good news is that Chat GPT isn’t automating me out of a job just yet, as answering that question without mentioning Night Spinners is just negligent. Only one of those here, to be fair, supported by a big unit of Shadow Spectres and the Avatar, and I feel like both these choices have some promise with Necrons landing hot. Between their inbuilt Fire and Fade and Phantasm, Shadow Spectres can potentially avoid getting tagged even by Wraiths, and they do a healthy clip of damage into them. The Avatar, meanwhile, gives a counter-charge slam into Infiltrating Wraiths that the Yncarne just can’t quite equal. Noah did take down a Court build going the more expected route of Immortals/Wraiths/Doomstalkers, so it feels like there’s certainly some things to consider here.

Tuning for one matchup can sometimes affect others, of course, but Dark Reapers help shore up the lack of additional Spinners in the mirror match, and while Noah was taken down by Justin’s CSM horde, the game was pretty close (presumably another place where spectres really help). Big fan of this build, well done on the third place.

Carmine Battista – Aeldari (Battle Host) – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Wraithguard/Spinners/Yncarne

Thoughts

Carmine’s more classic Aeldari take fourth, a tried and true formula putting in another great performance. I do wonder if builds like this might have to tool in a few more hammer units if Necrons are as good as they look, but unless/until Aeldari get taken out from orbit, lists like this in the hands of people who know how to use them will perform very strongly. Well done Carmine!.

The Best of the Rest

There were 6 more players on 5-1 records. They were:

5th – Russell Tassin – Chaos Space Marines: Double Commune Brawler Goodstuff with a Vindicator and a Master of Possession to flex into one of the four Marine melee units.
6th – Michael Mann – Orks: Trukk Spam with some Flash Gitz alongside melee threats.
7th – Kit Smith – Dark Angels (Ironstorm Spearhead): The Ironstormraven tech reaches Dark Angels, fielding one alongside a Darkshroud, a bunch of Dreads and some Speeders.
8th – Erik Nelson – Aeldari: A pleasingly unique Aeldari build where someone has finally tried putting Harlequins into Asuryani Transports (which you can do now) to some significant success. Most notably, Yvraine and the Yncarne riding with a big unit in a Serpent creates massive melee hammer, and is another unit that’s got to be worth some consideration as a way to push back against Wraith pressure.
9th – Warren Lauderdale – Necrons (Canoptek Court): A second feature for the Court, going with two Wraith bricks, triple Doomstalker and two Immortal/Plasmancer units, very much in line with expectations. Glad to see it doing well, given I’m at now at 1.5/3 painted Doomstalkers.
10th – Robert Moreland – Astra Militarum: Big tank sighted! A Stormsword trundles to war, backed by artillery, a Russ Demolisher and the current Guard board control tech of MSU Bullgryn.

WTC Navideño Individual Rankeado Kingdom

75-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Madrid, MD, España on December 16 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

This event used 20-0 scoring. Players in 2nd through 4th all scored 4 wins and a draw.

Monedita Gonzales – Death Guard (Plague Company) – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Plague Marine Brawler

Thoughts

I’m starting to feel like the warped, twisted machine spirits entombed within the Rhinos of the Traitor legions have taken the advent of Impulsors personally, because they are really driving the success of all sorts of chaotic builds. The formula tends to be packing them with mid-high quality brawler units that can disembark and immediately make an impact on the board, and Plague Marines definitely fit that bill, dealing great melee damage, especially with the right Characters augmenting them. The traditional backing for the mechanised brawlers is a selection of self-sufficient ranged units, and both Plaguebursts and Brigands very much fit that bill. For Death Guard specifically, those supporting shooting units also have a pretty high combined OC, so if they need to try and cling (stickily) on to an objective in the late game after the brawlers get repulsed, they can.

I do wonder whether the advent of Wraiths as a serious metagame force might shake up this formula a bit, as they’re plausibly just a bit too crunchy for smaller brawler units to ever be able to trade into them. I definitely think that (as is present here) you’ll see at least one 10-model unit in a Rhino to provide that more solid hammer (and that’s been mirrored in plenty of CSM lists recently too) so that Wraiths can’t just slither around with impunity. Definitely trends to watch in the new year, but right now big props to Monedita for adding to Nurgle’s tally.

Manue – Aeldari (Battle Host) – 2nd Place

The List

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Archetype

Spinners/Yncarne/Wraithguard

Thoughts

The real triumverate of Ynnead, right here.

Well done Manue.

Alejandro Mancuso Serrano – Blood Angels (Gladius Task Force) – 3rd Place

Blood Angels Librarian Dreadnought. Credit: Jack Hunter

The List

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Archetype

Winged Centurion Bonanza

Thoughts

Recent Ultramarine exploits have keyed people in to the fact that Centurion Devastators are really good if you can teleport them around the table, and one of the unique selling points of Blood Angels at the moment is that you can pull this off without having to commit to picking the Vanguard detachment thanks to the Librarian Dreadnought. That frees you up to retain the powerhouse Aggressor unit with Fire Discipline and access to Advance/Charge for your big Death Company brick (a properly scary unit with Lemartes), giving you huge threat range. I think this build stands out as being very ready for a metagame with lots of Wraiths in it, as it has multiple ways to just drop an absolute hammer on them. Figuratively, anyway – this isn’t 8th Edition. Really love this, good work from Alejandro.

OuX ™ – Imperial Knights (Noble Lance) – 4th Place

Armiger Warglaives. Credit: Kevin Genson

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Aggro Armigers

Thoughts

A rare showing for Imperial Knights to round out our second top four, here using a Knight Warden and a bunch of squires to pressure the enemy. My assumption is that the Warden’s goal is to use their Bondsman ability to allow one Armiger to break away from the pack and tie something up for a turn, allowing the rest of the forces to concentrate their wrath and quickly sweep through a chunk of the opponent’s forces. Definitely not a bad plan, and another strategy that can aim to just blunt what some of the more brawler-style builds are planning on, as with T10 Armigers are just a little too tough for mid-tier threats to crack. Clearly worked well for OuX too, taking down a number of melee-focused builds, and holding Space Wolves with ThunderCav to a respectable draw. Good stuff all-round!

The Best of the Rest

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

5th – Eduardo Cuesta – Aeldari: Double Avatar and a five-model Wraithguard unit, plus of course some Spinners.
6th – Roger Boira – T’au Empire: Suits galore, packing 2×2 Broadsides and 6/3/3 Crisis, plus a Ghostkeel.
7th – Iñaki Arrieta – Necrons (Hypercrypt Legion): The teleporting C’tan dream, going for Voidy, Nighty and two Transcendants, and supporting them with MSU Lychguard (who I think are great in this detachment as utility pieces) and Lokhust Heavies.
8th – Francisco Pellon Lopez – Space Marines (Ironstorm Spearhead): Redemptors, RepExes and Whirlwinds.

Grimdark 18: The Grand Tournament 4

52-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Stockholms län, SE on December 16 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Sebastian Larsson – Chaos Knights (Traitoris Lance) – 1st Place

War Dog - Stalker. Credit: Rockfish — War Dog – Stalker. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Whoops all Dogs

Thoughts

Not to be outdone by their loyalist cousins, the Traitoris lances have also been on the march, here taking an event win via the tried and true combination of lots of Dogs with Nurglings. The almighty Brigand remains easily the best Armiger-sized Knight across both factions, doing fantastic damage with minimal support, and having Nurglings to push back enemy Scouts and Infiltrators gives the Dogs the space to launch engagements on their terms. Handling them in that situation is very much non-trivial, and seeing their consistent success despite their relatively weak army rule really attests to that. Great work from Sebastian.

The Best of the Rest

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

2nd (4.5-0.5) – Johan Norrman – Black Templars (Gladius Task Force): Infantry-focused Templars with loads of (regular) Crusaders in Rhinos and Sword Brethren in Impulsors.
3rd – Frank Kummel – Cult Mechanicus (Rad-Cohort): A look-in for new AdMech here, sticking with two big blocks of Breachers with the exciting buffs, but adding two units of Corpuscarii priests in Duneriders, definitely one of the bigger improved combinations in the book, plus lots of single Sydonians to control space.
4th – Juan Manuel Sánchez Molina – Orks (Waaagh! Tribe): Aggro-tastic Orks with Ghaz, lots of murder Characters and fast stuff.
5th – Jesper Unander-Scharin – Chaos Space Marines: Brawler Goodstuff with added Rubricae.
6th – Jonas Axelsson – Necrons (Hypercrypt Legion): A very shooty take on Hypercrypt, taking two big Lokhust Destroyer units and a tonne of Doomsdays, plus Wraiths for board control.

The Fight Before Christmas 2023 Warhammer 40K Grand Tournament

33-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Dickson City, Pennsylvania, US on December 16 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Derek Apsche – Night Lords (Slaves to Darkness) – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Commune Spam

Thoughts

Once again showing the versitility of Chaos, this build discards the Chosen in Rhinos entirely in favour of Commune hammers, Abaddon-powered shooting and a deeper Daemon roster than normal, adding some utility seekers alongside plenty of Nurglings and Syll’Esske. The resulting build is maybe gambling a little harder on not hitting many opponents that can trivially lift the Communes, though it does have the option of throwing Abaddon’s improved Invulnerable save on them to mitigate that.

Plenty of armies do struggle with communes even before that as well, so as long as you don’t run into double Hearthguard Votann or something you’re probably golden. I also think bringing multiple speedy objective units in the Seekers, Nurglings and Bikers is a good way to mitigate the threat as well, since if you can reliably score Secondaries and deny Primary till well into the mid game, it might not matter if the opponent then manages to punch through. Nice to see a bit of tinkering with top Chaos formulas, and congratulations to Derek on the win.

The Best of the Rest

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

2nd – Chris Martens – Aeldari (Battle Host): Double Avatar Wraithguard.
3rd – David Adelman – Ynnari (Battle Host): Speedy Ynnari shooting, spamming 30 Shadow Spectres of all things, alongside Ravagers and Scourges. Have to hand it to this army – definitely ready to kill some Wraiths and Accursed Cultists alike.
4th – Brian Zhu – T’au Empire (Kauyon): Combined arms Tau, sticking to one big Crisis unit then supporting it with Breacherfish and Sky Rays.
5th – David Anderson – Black Templars (Righteous Crusaders): Transport-riding Sword Brethren and the Templar classic of a full Terminator Assault Squad.

Carnage – Season 1 – Round 10 – Open Slay

31-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in England, United Kingdom on December 16 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Take and Hold – Chilling Rain – Search and Destroy

Scott Morris – Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs): Crunch-heavy Sororitas with tanks and a Warsuit unit.
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Matthew Duggan – Chaos Knights (Traitoris Lance): Dogs, Nurglings and the Changeling.
Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

Chaos Knights step up to the plate again, this time opposed by the devout forces of the Adepta Sororitas. My first thought here is that the mission (or specifically the deployment map) helps the Sisters a lot – they’ve got stuff that’s capable of bursting down a few dogs a turn, but not enough killing power to punish the Knights for going all-out aggro, so on Hammer and Anvil I’d worry about them just getting rolled over. That’s particularly true due to them having quite a lot of anti-infantry tools teched into their list, which just aren’t going to do that much here (though the Castigators being on battle cannons is nice).

On UKTC terrain and this map, however, those anti-infantry units can just hard pivot to being for objective play, and I think if the Sisters pick Bring It Down and Deploy Teleport Homers they’re comfortably going to score 38VP minimum on Secondaries, and can probably take a real swing at the full 40 using the Scout move on Dominions if they go first. That lets them focus on a fairly cautious plan of scoring 40 Primary on their home and the top objective, while ensuring that the Chaos Knights get held to the same by murdering whatever goes onto the centre objective. In theory the Chaos side can take Bring It Down too, but in practice it’s far easier for the Sisters to protect some of their Vehicles once they go on this plan, and crucially the stuff they need to throw forward for points (after the Rhino, anyway) doesn’t bleed Secondaries in turn. With the Triumph also throwing out unlimited miracle dice and the Knights having a limited number of relevant shots, it can also be really hard for them to reliably finish off a key target when the Sisters play defensively, further complicating things for the Knights.

As outlined up front, I think this is a game where the corner deployment ends up completely transforming it, making it something where the Knights end up having to engage the Sisters on their terms. That allows the reliable clip at which Sisters can chew through them extremely relevant, and if they just focus on ensuring that the Knights have a far rougher time on Secondaries than they do, they can reliably win – which they did.

Result

Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs) Victory – 90 – 72

Scott Morris – Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs) – 1st Place

Adepta Sororitas Castigator Battle Tank - Order of the Gilded Cilice - Credit: Colin Ward — Adepta Sororitas Castigator Battle Tank – Order of the Gilded Cilice – Credit: Colin Ward

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Crunchy Sisters

Thoughts

Most Sisters builds are some flavour of all-rounder, and this one is no different, but it’s definitely a bit more focused on the crunchy toys than most, packing Castigators and the Vahl/Paragon block. Supplementing that with lots of Flamers from the Dominions and Seraphim ensures that Infantry armies can’t just run this over, and as Scott has proven here, you definitely end up with a very good all-rounder list!

The Best of the Rest

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

2nd – Eddie Chater – Necrons (Awakened Dynasty): Two blocks each of Immortals and Wraiths, then three each of Tomb Sentinels and Doomstalkers, providing withering firepower.
3rd – Jacob Whitehouse – Aeldari (Battle Host): Double Avatar and extra Aspects.
4th – Kyle Grundy – T’au Empire (Kauyon): Broadsides, Breacherfish and Crisis, plus the less common choice of a Pathfinder squad with Darkstrider, providing some extra spotting and zapping.
5th – Charles Gould – Aeldari (Battle Host): Yncarne, Spinners, Wraithguard.
6th – Matthew Duggan – Chaos Knights (Traitoris Lance): See Showdown.

Wrap Up

Right – that’s actually it for the year this time. I hope all my beloved readers have a good Christmas, and I assume we’ll be back on either the 3rd or the 10th of January, depending on whether anyone is brave enough to run a tournament on NYE. Thanks to everyone who has read, liked or commented on these this year, here’s to many more.

Competitive Innovations in 10th: Merry Cryptmas

Rise Of The Empire

Colin McDade – Necrons (Awakened Dynasty) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Justin Moore – Chaos Space Marines (Slaves to Darkness) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Noah Pope – Aeldari (Battle Host) – 3rd Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Carmine Battista – Aeldari (Battle Host) – 4th Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

WTC Navideño Individual Rankeado Kingdom

Monedita Gonzales – Death Guard (Plague Company) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Manue – Aeldari (Battle Host) – 2nd Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Alejandro Mancuso Serrano – Blood Angels (Gladius Task Force) – 3rd Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

OuX ™ – Imperial Knights (Noble Lance) – 4th Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

Grimdark 18: The Grand Tournament 4

Sebastian Larsson – Chaos Knights (Traitoris Lance) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

The Fight Before Christmas 2023 Warhammer 40K Grand Tournament

Derek Apsche – Night Lords (Slaves to Darkness) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

Carnage – Season 1 – Round 10 – Open Slay

The Showdown

Take and Hold – Chilling Rain – Search and Destroy

Thoughts

Result

Scott Morris – Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

Wrap Up

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