After a few weeks to reflect and re-arm, the tournament scene came back with a bang this weekend past. We’ve got a whole host of majors and GTs to look at, and an extremely diverse looking metagame, with six different factions taking trophies out of eight events, multiple top four showings for the new Necron and AdMech books, and some dormant factions arising from their slumber to take some heads.

Will that hold as we start seeing supermajors kick off, between Nottingham this weekend and LVO at the end of the month? Only time will tell – but I don’t think you could have asked for a better start to the new year than this one.

Today I (Wings) will be covering:

Denver 40K Fight Club January Open
A Grimdark New Years 40k GT
Hammer In The New Year 2024
Warhound GT in January

On Friday, Lowest of Men will be looking at:

Glass City GT
EXTERMINATUS VIII – Rise of the Noodle
Defcon 2024 – Warhammer 40k
Warlords of Walsall GT 1 UKTC ITC

As a new year dawns, so does a new season of Patron democracy, and for our first two Showdowns of the year they’ve selected:

Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs) vs Dark Angels (Gladius Task Force) at Hammer in the New Year
Orks (Waaagh! Tribe) vs Necrons (Canoptek Court) at the Warlords of Walsall GT

Denver 40K Fight Club January Open

78-player, 6-round Grand Tournament in Denver, CO, US on January 06 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Colin Kay – Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs) – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Arco-flagellant spam + all-rounders

Thoughts

Sisters have absolutely stormed out of the gates in 2024 with a very strong week of performances, and Colin’s build here is a strong example of how to use the faction effectively. You’ve got an initial ablative layer of Arco-flagellants plus Rhinos to stage them in, providing an extremely cost-effective first wave, a trio of Exorcists buffed by the Triumph to chip away at opposing forces while they’re chewing through that, and the big hammer of Vahl and Paragons to troubleshoot anything bigger. Round out with some great utility and objective pieces across Assassins, Crusaders and the Palatine with the blade and you’ve got something that leans hard into Sisters’ ability to field an all-rounder build – there’s nothing that this doesn’t have some amount of play into, making it a good choice for longer events like this one. Great work from Colin.

Brett Perkins – Necrons (Canoptek Court) – 2nd Place

Immortals With Tesla Carbines. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Shooty Canoptek Court

Thoughts

People are trying out all sorts of builds with Necrons, and this one is an example of taking things to an extreme, going for one of the shootiest possible setups. Canoptek Court re-rolls turbo charge Doomstalkers, and the looming threat of the Cynosure of Eradication bomb off the Immortal brick with the Plasmancer forces opponents to be pretty cautious. This list goes further than most with Immortals, taking the full three units and supporting them with Szeras and a Reanimator, which definitely makes them pretty daunting to clear out, and gives some redundancy to keep Cynosure as a big damage dealer even if the first unit gets dropped. Like the Sisters, you also have a good tool to delay the opponent while all these nasty toys deal damage, with a full Infiltrating Wraith unit being a nasty early threat into a lot of armies, and pretty flexible thanks to Reactive Subroutines. Lots of cheap objective tools round things out again, giving this build very reliable scoring potential, and providing Brett with the tools to take the silver medal.

Brandon Roddy – Dark Angels (Vanguard Spearhead) – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Shooty Vanguard Dark Angels

Thoughts

Not to be outdone in the “guns for days” arena, this build uses some of the tricks from the popular Vanguard Deep Strike Ultramarines build, and adds a bit of the flavour of the infiltrating Deathwing Knights build. The calculation here is that a Deathwing Command Squad with an Ancient is enough of an Infiltrating hammer that you don’t need to spend the points to take the full Knight brick, and you get some extra fun jank from doubling up on +1OC in the unit and free Heroic Interventions, making them a huge pain when they’re dancing around with Calculated Feint. That also frees up the points to squeeze Whirlwinds into the build as well as some of the regular toys like Centurions zipping around via strat reserves, and also one of my favourite underutilised tech pieces in the Phobos Librarian, who has the flexibility to roll with either the Eliminators to durably hold an objective or the Infiltrators to provide an un-clearable backfield screen against armies with lots of indirect. I suspect that the down-the-line hammer blow of the Vanguard Ultramarines is still slightly better, but this column absolutely awards points for style, and this build definitely has it – great stuff from Brandon.

Ben Neal – Ultramarines (Vanguard Spearhead) – 4th Place

Special shout out to Ben, who was 5-0 after five rounds, but unfortunately couldn’t play the final.

The List

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Archetype

Hammer Vanguard Ultramarines

Thoughts

Hey speaking of the down-the-line hammer build – this is pretty much that, just flexing some of the normal infantry inclusions out in favour of some Gladiator Lancers, perhaps anticipating a vehicle-heavy metagame. This formula continues to be wildly successful – the combination of the Infiltrating Aggressor/Calgar/Apothecary brick with the weight of violence coming in from deep strike is extremely daunting to take on. I also think it’s reasonably well placed if Necrons go big in the metagame – Centurions with cover in the open stack up pretty well into most of their offence, -1 to hit in general is good against Doomstalkers even when they have re-rolls, and the Shadow War Veteran Librarian teaming up with the Callidus to double tax Cynosure of Eradication after the first use is going to be very painful for the robots. There also seem to be lots of Chaos Knights around at the moment, so I can certainly see the Lancers helping with the lift into those. A truly brutal list, and one that no player (including the eventual winner of the event) was able to take down in Ben’s hands.

The Best of the Rest

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

5th – Matthew Murrell – Death Guard: All-rounder Death Guard with a bit of everything – Daemon Engines, Mortarion, Plague Marines in Rhinos, Terminators (with some scary Characters), all Nurgle’s favourite toys.
6th – Chris Van Hoose – Chaos Knights: Dogs and a smattering of Daemons.
7th – Mike Pestilens – Chaos Daemons: Ultra chunky Daemons, combining Be’lakor, a GuO and an LoC with a trio of Tzeentch Soul Grinders, providing a daunting firebase that trumps pretty much any opposing ranged plan thanks to Be’lakor’s aura, and is still very durable up close.
8th – Kyle Colledge – Death Guard: Shootier Death Guard, going a bit harder on guns (including a Predator Destructor for a bit of reliable D3) and tooling up the contents of the Rhinos something fierce.

A Grimdark New Years 40k GT

65-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Valdosta, Georgia, US on January 06 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

John Lennon – Ultramarines (Vanguard Spearhead) – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Hammer Vanguard Ultramarines

Thoughts

The OG iteration of the Vanguard Ultramarines build strikes again, with John kicking off the year as he (presumably) means to go on and taking a major trophy. John’s version sticks to some Eradicators instead of Lancers for extra anti-tank heft (giving better synergy with the detachment at the cost of weaker long-ranged sniping), and tore through a tough gauntlet here to really hammer home that this is one of the armies to beat.

Charles Barber – Chaos Space Marines (Slaves to Darkness) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Accursed Cultist Spam

Thoughts

Another returning favourite here, a rapid onslaught from waves of Accursed Cultists can be very tough for some armies to deal with, and there are few builds better at just flattening unprepared opponents, especially with a second wave of Chosen staged in Rhinos. Add the one-two of the Nurgle and Undivided Forgefiends for ranged support, and you have another enduringly effective classic, which Charles piloted to an undefeated second place.

Z Martin – Aeldari (Battle Host) – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Mech Melta Aeldari

Thoughts

It would appear that Aeldari players are just as bored of playing the hits as the rest of us are of playing against them, as this completely left-field Aeldari build showcases. The focus here is damage – you’ve got multiple D-cannons, lots of Fire Dragons in Falcons, and an extremely nasty melee blender in the form of the Visarch and 11 Harlequins in a Serpent. I’m also a fan of Yvraine with Storm Guardians – while it’s clearly not the best thing Aeldari can be doing, the synergy between her Feel No Pain/model reviving and the Serpentscale Platform is very strong, creating a surprisingly durable unit that can also make objectives sticky. I think if Aeldari catch nerfs to some toys, both this and the Harlequin/Visarch setup are things you’ll see a lot more of, as both are good units, just currently outshined. Clearly Z has seen some portents of the things to come, and put in an impressive showing with the tech he borrowed from his future self, taking four wins and a draw in the fourth round.

Kyle Jackling – Cult Mechanicus (Skitarii Hunter Cohort) – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Sneaky Sterilyzor Spam

Thoughts

Rounding out the top four with have the other half of that round 4 draw, with Kyle putting in one of the strongest performances yet with the new Adeptus Mechanicus build. His list leans on a few things, most notably that Kataphron Breachers don’t need any help from a detachment to be outstanding, and Pteraxii Sterylizors work really well with a bunch of the Hunter Cohort stratagems. Thanks to their ability to re-roll wounds if they have a nearby Battleline unit, either Binharic Offensive or Isolate and Destroy make them exceedingly deadly, and they’re fast and relatively durable for the cost on top of that (even before you start putting Bionic Endurance or Shroud Protocols on them).

Breachers will gradually chew through anything if they’re allowed to, so buying time for that with a bunch of annoying winged warriors roasting stuff all over the place (especially with the premium after roll-off redeploy to help set up early) is really good, and obviously also combines with other stuff here to make this build strong at scoring. I also really like the use of Clandestine Infiltrator and Battle-Sphere Uplink – the list’s damage output is very dependent on buffs bequeathed by nearby Battleline units, so having the flexibility to set one up in the mid-board (with a Scout after Infiltrating) and a Fire and Fade on another helps ensure that this functions as a well-oiled machine. AdMech love those, so presumably commendations from the Omnissiah are on their way for Kyle.

The Best of the Rest

There were 6 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

5th – Noah Neundorfer – Death Guard: Heavy Infantry-skewed Death Guard, going for three full units of Plague Marines in Rhinos plus full blobs each of Deathshrouds and Blightlords with Typhus and a Lord of Virulence.
6th – Collin Cochran – Chaos Space Marines: Extreme Abaddon Gunline, going for three Forgefiends and multiple squads of Obliterators.
7th – Steven Tosky – Necrons (Hypercrypt Legion): A heroic sally out for an actual Monolith list as the Hypercrypt Legion, with loads of Flayed Ones to zap around in an annoying fashion, a big unit of Lychguard to fire through the portal at a key moment, and lots of Lokhust Heavies for blasting. If all else fails, just drop the Nightbringer amongst the enemy with Cosmic Precision.
8th – Brandon Lovato – Necrons (Canoptek Court): Triple C’tan and double Wraith block, plus the nightmare Immortal unit, which is definitely looking like a promising template for how to make Canoptek Court really sing.
9th – Cody Willis – Black Templars (Gladius Task Force): Lots of Sword Brethren in Impulsors and a Redeemer, ready to go Assault Doctrine on anyone who looks at them funny.
10th – Teddy Woody – Necrons (Canoptek Court): Double C’tan and double Wraiths, spending the extra points on lots of Scarab Swarms to gum up the board and/or chip through enemy chaff (their number of attacks with Lethal Hits will really add up with full re-rolls from the detachment).

Hammer In The New Year 2024

45-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Ashburn, VA, US on January 06 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Vital Ground – Chilling Rain – Crucible of Battle

James Culpepper – Dark Angels (Gladius Task Force): Heavy duty double Land Raider Dark Angels, with the Lion provding even more heft.
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Jeffrey Kolodner – Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs): Go-wide skirmishing sisters with lots of Transports and Battle Sisters.
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Thoughts

Very much a clash of opposites here. On one side of things we have an extremely heavy-hitting Dark Angels build, using a couple of Land Raiders and some scary close-range threats to bully the board. Facing them down, we have a return of Jeffrey’s US Open winning Sisters, using a go-wide plan with lots of smaller units and transports to lock in scoring, and relying on the reliability Sisters can draw from miracle dice and the Vahl hammer unit to provide a lift when something chunky needs to die.

The mission is an interesting one for these to face off on, because there’s some degree to which having fewer No-Man’s land objectives favours heavier hitters over go-wide builds. The flip side of that is that it forces the smaller, heftier Dark Angels force to split up, and Vital Ground also heavily penalises getting routed on any part of the table, or allowing the opponent to roll onto your home point (obviously always bad, but in this mission really bad).

I think that means that the Sisters can leverage their capabilities to turn this one to their advantage. There just aren’t that many Dark Angels units, and Miracle Dice make Sisters very good at reliably picking off a few key targets, with Land Raiders in particular being unusually vulnerable against Sororitas melta compared to most stuff that tries to kill them. The Dark Angels also don’t have much in the way of “spare” stuff to put out on objectives, and Vital Ground is extremely punishing on scoring if you can’t secure at least one of the no-man’s land objectives. Particulaly given that the Angels will struggle to prevent various fixed Secondary options here (Homers/Engage or Homers/Assassinate both seem plausible), I think if the Sisters just carefully ration out their resources and make sure to burst down whatever gets exposed to them, they should be able to either pull comfortably ahead on Primary if the Dark Angels don’t do enough to secure objectives, or wipe them from the table if they overextend. The Lion is maybe the only thing that gives them serious pause, but even he’s very vulnerable to getting Devastating Wounded to death by vahl on her Righteous Repugnance turn. Clearly the Sisters put these advantages to good use, as they won handily.

Result

Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs) Victory – 94 – 36

Jeffrey Kolodner – Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs) – 1st Place

Adepta Sororitas Sister Superior. Credit: Jack Hunter

The List

See showdown

Archetype

Go-wide Sisters

Thoughts

I continue to be really pleased to see this all-rounder, Battleline heavy spin on Sisters doing so well. The Showdown covers what it’s got going for it, a healthy mix of board presence, objective play and spike damage when needed, and I think it would be easy (and potentially fatal) to underestimate something that looks quite innocuous. Well done Jeffrey on another trophy!

Austin Wingfield – Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

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

Shooty Sisters

Thoughts

Another undefeated Sisters build in second place, going for a more direct plan of blasting heretics into oblivion with even more scary tanks, the Triumph as a buff engine, and a Dialogus in the Retributor squad and (presumably) the melta-armed half of the Battle Sisters squad, providing an eye-searing quanitity of miraculous melta fire. Junith with Sacresants also provides a hefty central tarpit and counter-charge threat if opponents try and overwhelm the army, all assembling to form another potent Sisters setup – congratulations to Austin on the undefeated finish.

The Best of the Rest

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

3rd – Charles Craig – World Eaters (Berzerker Warband): Two Land Raiders packed with Exalted Eightbound, which is a truly incredible energy (plus some of the regular hits like Angron and Invocatus).
4th – Matt Schuchman – Asuryani (Battle Host): Double Avatar and Prisms.
5th – Mark Hertel – Adeptus Astartes (Gladius Task Force): Let’s be honest, if you were smashing events left and right with actual honest to goodness Land Raider spam, you wouldn’t stop either.
6th – Andrew Gonyo – T’au Empire: Extra mechanised Tau, with three Breacherfish with Fireblades supporting the big Crisis Team.
7th – Steven Page – Necrons (Canoptek Court): I mean this list is even titled “Canoptek 2 wraith 3 ctan list”, so I invite you to guess at what could be in it. Also has some Doomstalkers with the flex points.

Warhound GT in January

30-player, 6-round Grand Tournament in Lehi, UT, US on January 06 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

This event played a final between the top two as a sixth round.

Chase Chappell – Grey Knights (Teleport Strike Force) – 1st Place

Grey Knights Stormraven Gunship. Credit: Colin Ward

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Silver Stormraven

Thoughts

Hell yeah, Stormraven meta!

OK realistically, I suspect the Stormraven’s current glorious rise may not survive if the Canoptek Court cements a place at the top, as the Immortal bomb is particularly good into stuff relying on -1D for defence, but I hope it does because it’s always hilarious to see one out and about doing well. Here, my guess is that it’s dropping off the Purifiers, which I think is a smart way to ensure they can get into position early on, as one of their only downsides is that Crowe being functionally mandatory means First to the Fray isn’t available to them. The Stormraven can let them unleash their firepower immediately, and if you drop them near the enemy lines turn 1 it’s very difficult for them not to trigger Mists of Deimos to whisk them to safety before reprisals, making it a pretty great way to kick off the game (and even if you go second it saves you 1CP on a turn 1 Prognosticated Arrival after pulling at the end of the opponent’s 1).

You also get the very hard to pin down Paladin/Sigil block in the Land Raider, able to smash into the opponent, bug out and repeat, and the ever-helpful Draigo/Terminator unit as a final hammer piece. This list uses the Grey Knights’ ability to launch swift strikes and avoid reprisal to the absolute max, and it’s great to see that rewarded with a trophy for Chase.

The Best of the Rest

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

2nd – Antonius Tolman – World Eaters (Berzerker Warband): The one true 1975pts World Eater list.
3rd – Ethan Pettibone – Cult Mechanicus (Data-psalm Conclave): Good to see another AdMech detachment making a bit of noise, here looking like melee crunch is the plan, with three full blocks of Breachers to roll into the enemy with Citation in Savagery up, plus lots of cheap screening Skitarii of various flavours (particularly 3×5 Infiltrators, who are back to just being a bargain unit).
4th – Jordan Gledhill – Chaos Daemons (Daemonic Incursion): Speed Daemons, going mostly Slaanesh with triple Keeper (one being Shalaxi) plus Hellflayers and a lone Tzeentch Soul Grinder to zap stuff.
5th – Kennith! Onyeabor – Tyranids (Invasion Fleet): Monster mash supreme, spamming Exocrines, Maleceptors and Haruspexes.

Wrap Up

A great start to the year all around, and plenty more to come – we’ve got more majors, another unusual faction winning an event and plenty of other fun stuff on Friday, and the Nottingham GT to give us our first supermajor of the year at the weekend. 2024 is looking pretty great – more of this sort of thing!

Competitive Innovations in 10th: New Year Retribution pt.1

Denver 40K Fight Club January Open

Colin Kay – Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Brett Perkins – Necrons (Canoptek Court) – 2nd Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Brandon Roddy – Dark Angels (Vanguard Spearhead) – 3rd Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Ben Neal – Ultramarines (Vanguard Spearhead) – 4th Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

A Grimdark New Years 40k GT

John Lennon – Ultramarines (Vanguard Spearhead) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Charles Barber – Chaos Space Marines (Slaves to Darkness) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Z Martin – Aeldari (Battle Host) – 3rd Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Kyle Jackling – Cult Mechanicus (Skitarii Hunter Cohort) – 4th Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

Hammer In The New Year 2024

The Showdown

Vital Ground – Chilling Rain – Crucible of Battle

Thoughts

Result

Jeffrey Kolodner – Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Austin Wingfield – Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

Warhound GT in January

Chase Chappell – Grey Knights (Teleport Strike Force) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

Wrap Up

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