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Competitive Innovations in 10th: Night of the Living Deathwing pt.1

Deathwing Knights. They’re pretty good again, it turns out. Dark Angels seem to have muscled on in and deposed Blood Angels as the Marines to beat, with their unique units now providing them with an ultra-potent all-rounder package. Other flexible builds like Bringers of Flame and Thousand Sons are also performing strongly, and Aeldari are creeping up in win rate once more, but the big breakout is actually from Drukhari, who’ve had another absolutely outstanding week, putting up the best win rate by a significant margin, and preying on the rest of the top factions with great enthusiam. A mixture of strong mission play, strong anti-Marine capabilities and enough redundancy to survive the onslaught of Tsons and Sisters seems to be a winning formula – will anyone be able to stop them?

If you want to try and hald the Drukhari menace yourself, there are still tickets available for the upcoming Goonhammer Open UK, taking place on 7th and 8th September in Leicester. Kill elves, win a Golden Ticket and a fancy belt, what’s not to love?

Josh Roberts, returning UK Goonhammer Open Championship Belt holder, Spring 2024

Check it our here.

Anyway, on to events that have already happened – today I’ll be starting with:

  • The North East Open 2024
  • Boise Cup 2024! (40k)
  • Winter Warfest
  • FactoruM Warhammer 40,000 GT July 2024
  • Free State MId Summer GT

On Friday we’ll have Lowest of Men covering:

  • Waterdeep GT 3ra Edición
  • Protect Ya Neck
  • Clowns Massacre
  • The Carolina Open Hosted by Away Games

We have, as ever, submitted the Showdowns for a Patron vote, and this week they’ve selected:

  • Outlander Claw GSC vs Imperial Knights at Winter Warfest
  • Realspace Raiders (yes, you read that right) Drukhari vs Chaos Knights at Clowns Massacre

The North East Open 2024

105-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in England, GB on July 27 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Innes Wilson – Dark Angels (Gladius Task Force) – 1st Place

Credit: Kevin Stillman

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Deathwing GTF

Thoughts

I present exhibit A. Or perhaps exhibit D. Killing Deathwing Knights is hard and killing three units of them is a total nightmare, giving this build a very strong bullying core, especially when you can Advance/Charge the whole lot on a go turn. They also provide great protection for the incredibly nasty Eradicator unit, which will cheerfully step out and blow multiple targets to bits at once, then skulk back into their Repulsor if anything tries to punish them. We’re in a melee-heavy metagame and this list is just a complete nightmare to handle with any sort of melee army, something that’s rounded out by the Inner Circle Companions/Judiciar squad, which basically no elite Infantry in the game can safely charge (except maybe full Primaris Crusader units). We would expect no less than an exceptionally strong build from Innes, and big congratulations on another major trophy.

Pearce Condren – Thousand Sons (Cult of Magic) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Rubricae/Character Tsons

Thoughts

There has been no point in 10th Edition where this has not been an extremely good army. I do not thing you need me to explain it to you any longer, and the fact it doesn’t massively rely on D2 weaponry to get stuff done can only help in a Deathwing Knight-heavy metagame. The Winged Daemon Prince is the only notable divergence from the norm, and I assume a nod to the Pariah missions generally demanding a bit more movement flexiblity from you. Seems to have worked out pretty well – congratulations to Pearce on undefeated second!

Will Whitaker – Adepta Sororitas (Penitent Host) – 3rd Place (Undefeated)

Credit: Evan “Felime” Siefring

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Combined Arms Penitent Host

Thoughts

Rounding out the undefeated podium players, Will breaks from the crowd on Sisters by running Penitent Host instead of Bringers, though keeps a fair amount of the Bringers energy in terms of the supporting cast. Castigators are just tremendously efficient with bascially no help, and the Dominion/Immolator setup provides a healthy mix of utility and anti-tank punch. In this build, your opponent is inevitably going to start out somewhat on the back foot, and that’s going to give you a good initial window to inflict heavy attrition damage, then mop up whatever is left. The key Penitent stratagems are great for keeping the foe tied up for that little bit longer, and you can also catch people out with the fact that Fall Back/Shoot does work on Castigators or Dominions here, which not everyone will see coming. Builds like this, mixing a moderate contingent of detachment-focused tools with quality all-rounders, tend to take a bit longer to emerge, but often end up amongst the strongest choices in the long term, so well done to Will on putting this recipe together and taking it through five rounds unscathed.

Dave Taylor – Black Templars (Righteous Crusaders) – 4th Place

Sword Brethren. Credit: Saint

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Combined Arms Templars

Thoughts

Dark Angels may be on top right now, but despite several rounds of nerfs Black Templars are still going pretty strong. Similar to the Penitent Host, the Templars detachment is great for putting your foe on the back foot and keeping them there, at which point the various shooty toys this list is packing can make themselves known. The single gigantic Primaris Crusader brick is also a uniquely durable melee unit, one of the few things that can wade into the really nasty Fights First units that are about the metagame and get away with it, or alternatively absorb a charge from ten re-rolling Incubi and live to tell the table. That’s a great enabler for playing a melee game, and the fact that you also have your own Fight First threat via the Judiciar/Brethren is gravy. When melee dominates the metagame, it becomes important that you can cross a certain bar of “good at melee” before it’s worth investing heavily into it, and this build makes very effective use of the Templars’ tools to pull that off, well done Dave.

The Best of the Rest

There were 14 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

  • 5th – James Greensmith – World Eaters: Eightbound-tastic World Eaters, going for the full six squads, most of them MSUs and one big Exalted brick for particularly crunchy targets.
  • 6th – Allan Davidson – Ynnari: MSU keep-away/scoring Ynnari with three D-cannons. Please, they can’t nerf them any more. How is this still happening. Also a big Troupe with the Visarch, increasingly excellent tech right now.
  • 7th – Tom Wright – Astra Militarum: Bullgryn, Russes and triple Basilisk. I mean at least with those they dropped the price back down I, guess.
  • 8th – Daniel Whitaker – Aeldari: Speedy MSU Aeldari with Aspects to score and apply mild pressure, then three units of shooty Skyweavers and three War Walkers for biggers guns.
  • 9th – Chris Cuerden – Space Wolves (Champions of Russ): Lots of melee Infantry, including Bladeguard, Assault Intercessors and Wulfen, plus a few shooty platforms in support. Also Bjorn. Love Bjorn.
  • 10th – Adam Gladders – Grey Knights: Triple MSU Terminators, triple Dreadknight.
  • 11th – Kyle Grundy – T’au Empire (Kauyon): Go-wide shooting with Sky Rays, Riptides and the surprising include of plasma Fireknife units – look, the Space Marines aren’t going to atomise themselves are they?.
  • 12th – Samuel Norton-Alexander – Adepta Sororitas (Bringers of Flame): Speedy flame Sisters, going to two big Seraphim units.
  • 13th – Nathan Whitbread – Black Templars (Ironstorm Spearhead): Gladiators for days plus a small counter-punch piece from the Emperor’s Champion and some Sword Brethren.
  • 14th – Mike Tangney – Drukhari (Skysplinter Assault): Extra shooty Skysplinter, adding a Voidraven (another great Marine killer) and some Ravagers, plus dipping into Harlequins for a couple of Lone Ops.
  • 15th – David Leniewski – Necrons (Hypercrypt Legion): C’tan spam with a Tesseract Vault adding even more heft.
  • 16th – Craig Bedford – Death Guard: Melee hull Death Guard with Bloat Drones and Karnivores led into battle by Mortarion.
  • 17th – Ben Nattrass – Blood Angels (Sons of Sanguinius): Plenty of the usual jump pack suspects, but also lots of foot melee threats from Assault intercessor/Captain units in Impulsors and a double Death Company Rhino.
  • 18th – Ratnu Vaidya – Chaos Knights: Dogs and a few Daemons.

Boise Cup 2024! (40k)

51-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Boise, ID, US on July 27 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Trenton Bates – Drukhari (Skysplinter Assault) – 1st Place

Venom. Credit: Corrode

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Tantalus Skysplinter

Thoughts

Hmm, this one should also be exhibit D. Awkward. Let’s go with exhibit T, because there’s a Tantalus afoot. It’s great at killing Marines, it’s very tricksy to deal with thanks to Skysplinter’s reactive move, and it gives you the unique capability of transporting a full-sized Kabalite unit with a Court attached, which creates an extremely adaptable unit that’s great for Secret Missions. That plus all the other Transports give you one of Drukhari’s classic upsides, which is that fast mechanised builds can be hard for melee lists to deal with. They get a few more options in 10th thanks to changed to pile-ins, but in general you still have a tonne of agency to control how trades happen, which can be exploited to confound the mon-keigh and achieve victory – exactly what Trenton did here.

Jeff Elston – Aeldari (Battle Host) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Wraithblades. Credit: Rockfish
Wraithblades. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Wraithblade Anvil Aeldari

Thoughts

Something deliciously different in the second undefeated slot here – a classic anvil plus mechanised/speedy hammer Aeldari list, but with Wraithblades in place of the Avatar. I think that’s a good shout – I’ve found there are a few too many things that can just take the Avatar clean out at the moment, but doubling the total wound count goes a long way to fixing that, and being 3W models means they’re still reasonably resilient against D2 stuff. Bouncing both Deathwing Knight builds when Fortune is up is not too shabby either. They’re also great for tying something up so Karandras and his squad can get involved out of the Falcon, and with wound re-rolls up they’ll do some great blending. Presumably that’ll distract foes enough for all the scoring and harrassment tools in the rest of the list to secure victory, and Jeff leveraged that capability to take undefeated second.

The Best of the Rest

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

  • 3rd (4.5-0.5) – Jacob Gold – Tyranids (Crusher Stampede): Monster mash, but as Crusher Stampede. Nature is healing. Or possibly mutating. Makes use of Haruspex as cheap, crunchy pressure.
  • 4th – Shaun Sharp – Dark Angels (Gladius Task Force): The Lion leads an all-rounder Dark Angels force, with other notable highlights being a super stacked Impulsor of ICCs, two Redemptors and a Repulsor full of Eradicators.
  • 5th – Tom Eldredge – Adeptus Mechanicus (Rad-Zone Corps): Two big Breacher units, Ironstriders adding even more shooting, and lots of Skitarii to gum up the table. Nice to see another detachment being tried!
  • 6th – Anthony Gilman – Dark Angels (Gladius Task Force): Another all-rounder Lion GTF build, this time doubling up on Deathwing Knights.
  • 7th – Ryan Brown – Chaos Space Marines (Renegade Raiders): Destructors and brawlers, the centrepiece being big units each of Terminators and Chosen, with Abaddon able to flex between them as needed.
  • 8th – Isaac Dale – Grey Knights: All-rounder Grey Knights with a bit of everything and a full Paladin/Grand Master block as a centrepiece.

Winter Warfest

39-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Ipswich, Queensland, AU on July 26 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Take and Hold – Inspired Leadership – Tipping Point

Dylon Hopkins – Imperial Knights (Noble Lance)
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Erik Lathouras – Genestealer Cult (Outlander Claw)
Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

The cult saddle up here, with long-time Genestealer fan Erik giving them Outlander Claw its first big runaround here. This build is super cool, able to take control of the table at speed, and ration threats out very effectively thanks to all the Transports, and playing a fantastic Primary denial game thanks to high OC speedy threats. It’s also got at least some big damage tools – the two big Ridgerunner units will put out some fairly serious pain, and being able to protect them very effectively with Rapid Feint or Deft Maneuvring helps them a bunch. I still don’t think this army wins a damage race against most foes, but it at least keeps them occupied for a prolonged period, and I also like the option of wound re-rolling Kelermorphs (via Fire Support) to potentially ruin someone’s day.

They’re up against fairly stern opposition though – Canis Rex and a teleport Crusader, plus a whole host of Armigers and some Assassins. Can you play Primary denial against Knights? Does that work?

Honestly it still kind of does, yeah, particularly as I think for the Cults two big Knights is probably the sweet spot for opposition – I think three bigs would potentially be able to just run them over, while one big and many Armigers would be too high a volume of units to play the denial game against. The map is also good news – it largely mitigates the impact of the teleporting Crusader, and lets the Cult fairly safely take 10VP turns while focusing on keeping the Knights on 5s. For that, this list is absolutely world class at depositing exactly 10OC worth of models onto an objective, which is enough to deny scoring for any flavour of Knight, plus use expendable hulls to block positions. It only takes a few Armigers getting picked up by mining lasers and/or tools to start making it tough for the Knights to contest space.

I think the fail case for the Cults is being forced into a situation where they try to kill a big Knight and fail, which is a realistic prospect with the numbers they’re packing. As the Knights, that means your goal is to force that situation – get Canis Rex onto the middle objective, body blocking it so stuff can’t trivially drop in and flip it, and demand that the Cults take their best shot. They might do so and kill you, but they probably won’t through Rotate (and trying to position the Crusader to Overwatch the first mining tool squad), and if you can take a 15VP turn in an aggressive position, you’re suddenly in teh driving seat in a way that will leave the Cult scrambling, especially as you’ll almost certainly be able to switch on Shoulder the Burden for the ensuing rampage.

Definitely a go big or go home sort of situation, all told. In the end, go home was the answer – either they went hard and got spiked down fast, or they underestimated the denial risk and got closed out of the game by a commanding margin.

Result

Genestealer Cult (Outlander Claw) Victory – 97 – 50

Erik Lathouras – Genestealer Cult (Outlander Claw) – 1st Place

Achilles Ridgerunner. Credit: Rockfish
Achilles Ridgerunner. Credit: Rockfish

The List

See showdown

Archetype

Mechanised Denial Claw

Thoughts

All covered in the Showdown – this build is world class at denying points, and has enough damage to neutralise key threats on the way to doing so, and that combination gave Erik a series of comfortable wins at very high margins. Great work from Erik.

The Best of the Rest

There were 7 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

  • 2nd – Joshua Woods – World Eaters (Berzerker Warband): A classic double Rhino/Berzerker setup.
  • 3rd – Dylon Hopkins – Imperial Knights (Noble Lance): Canis Rex, a teleporting Crusader and some Armigers, with two Assassins adding some extra flexibility.
  • 4th – Jacob Warn – Tyranids (Vanguard Onslaught): Mawlocs, a Flyrant, and two big melee Warrior bricks.
  • 5th – Jack Tinning – Tyranids (Synaptic Nexus): Monster mash and Zoanthrope MSUs as Synaptic Nexus.
  • 6th – Ben Williamson – World Eaters: Eightbound-heavy World Eaters (though still squeezing in one Berzerker squad.
  • 7th – Keith Birkett – Chaos Daemons: Be’lakor, Big Bird and the Gift GUO, adding double big Bloodcrusher units as hammer pieces.
  • 8th – Roger Birkett- Ultramarines (Gladius Task Force): All-rounder Gladius with a bit of everything, supported by Armigers and Assassins.

FactoruM Warhammer 40,000 GT July 2024

36-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Sutton Veny, England, United Kingdom on July 27 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Alex Fowler – Thousand Sons (Cult of Magic) – 1st Place

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Mutalith Tsons

Thoughts

Rubricae build – consistently good. Mutalith build? Also consistently good! Gives you more options to proactively pile on the pressure at a cost of slightly less redundancy on Rituals, which feels pretty valuable with Drukhari all over the place. No Drukhari were actually harmed in the making of this trophy finish, but plenty of Space Marines were – well done to Alex on the win.

Rob Elver – Astra Militarum (Combined Regiment) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Rogal Dorn. Credit: Rockfish
Rogal Dorn. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Dorn and Scion Deluxe

Thoughts

An innovative Guard build takes the second undefeated slot here. Because of the Dorn’s once-per game ablative ability, they’re pretty good tools to open hostilities with, and this build has a lot of its followup punch held in Reserves/Transports via the many, many Scions, which can be skewed between Deep Strike or on-board Chimeras as needed. If all else fails, the Bullgryn can pull their classic trick of standing on a point and absolutely refusing to die. I really like how all this comes together – the army ends up very flexible in how hard it swings out of the gate, able to tune between an alpha or beta strike plan as needed, something many won’t see coming from Guard. Great stuff from Rob.

The Best of the Rest

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

  • 3rd – Ethan Wright – Black Templars (Righteous Crusaders): Triple Land Raider, one packed with a full Sword Brethren brick of death.
  • 4th – Graham Howard – Chaos Space Marines (Pactbound Zealots): Destructor/Vindicator shooting with Abaddon.
  • 5th – Jack Chapman – Ynnari: Go-wide MSUs of all stripes.
  • 6th – Andy Taylor – Tyranids (Vanguard Onslaught): A terrifying one-two punch of maximum Genestealers (all with Broodlords) followed by two Norn Emissaries.

Free State MId Summer GT

32-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Holton, KS, US on July 27 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Cody Jiru – Drukhari (Skysplinter Assault) – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Tarpit Tantalus

Thoughts

Brat summer is over, now it’s big boat summer, apparently, as we’ve got another Tantalus here. Despite that similarity with the last Drukhari build we looked at, the rest of the list here is a fair bit different – it doubles down on big shooty hulls with a Voidraven (which is exquisitely good at murdering Marines), and packs a bunch of Beastmasters and Talos to gum things up while the wicked darklight work is done. Finish up with a Raider full of ultraviolence for counter-charge purposes and you have a very nasty build indeed, and one that plays really well into lots of the big threats. Great stuff from Cody.

The Best of the Rest

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

  • 2nd – Dan Sammons – Leagues of Votann (Oathband): Sagitaurs for days.
  • 3rd – Treynor Wolfe – Adepta Sororitas (Bringers of Flame): Speedy flame Sisters.
  • 4th – Clint Eubanks – Imperial Knights (Noble Lance): Canis and all of his squires.
  • 5th – Harout Baltayan – Chaos Space Marines (Chaos Cult): A horde of Accursed Communes backed by some Vindicators and Legionaries.
  • 6th – Marc Nuessen – Grey Knights: Four Dreadknights and a big Terminator brick with Draigo.
  • 7th – Matthew Doughman – Imperial Knights: The ultra-rare quadruple big Knight, packing two Lancers and two Atrapos.

Wrap Up

Part 1 complete, will part 2 bring more challenges, or just more Thousand Sons, Deathwing and Drukhari domination? Find out on Friday!

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