It’s a chaotic week in Pariah, both because the Dark Gods (and other villainous forces like the Drukhari) are having a great time of it, and because there’s a weirdly high number of draws on high tables. Lots of closely fought games is, of course, what we like to see, and everything continues to look pretty healthy and dynamic out there (though those tricksy Drukhari are on top for a second week running, so probably the ones to watch).

This week I’ll be looking at:

Palm Springs Open 40k GT III By Dicehammer
China Warhammer City Tournament 2024
Armed Forces Day 7 Warhammer 40,000 Grand Tournament
Gothic Games Canterbury: August 40k GT

On Friday Lowest of Men will take over to cover:

Salt Lake Open 2024 – Warhammer 40K Championships
ÖK-spelen GT
War In The Fort GT
Peterborough Slam GT 7!

Our showdowns this week, selected by our esteemed Patrons, will be:

Skysplinter Drukhari vs heavy-duty Thousand Sons at the Palm Springs Open
Invasion Fleet Tyranids vs Skysplinter Drukhari

Drukhari – even winning at democracy.

Palm Springs Open 40k GT III By Dicehammer

167-player, 6-round Grand Tournament in Palm Springs, CA, US on August 03 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Scorched Earth – Inspired Leadership – Crucible of Battle

Wyatt Harris – Drukhari (Skysplinter Assault)
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Nico Urrea – Thousand Sons (Cult of Magic)
Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

A clash of metagame titans here, with the speedy Skysplinter forces facing off against an unusually heavy-duty Thousand Sons build. The Drukhari build is broadly business as usual for Skysplinter, with the one notable addition being Urien Rakarth, who squeezes extra value out of the Wracks and helps eke out a bit more scoring in a pinch. That’s a very solid addition in this matchup, as both the extra durability of Wracks and the option of the Raider Mortal Wound double tap are both extremely relevant, as is Rakarth standing back up to potentially hold on to a point for an extra turn after being zapped/shot.

The Thousand Sons list, on the other hand, is very different from the norm, cutting massively back on Rubricae and expensive Characters to squeeze in three Mutaliths and some Forgefiends. That gives the list exceptional ranged killing power, and also makes it unusually effective in the Fight Phase for a Thousand Sons build, which is going to come in real handy here. Multi-phase offence is the key to carving through Transport-heavy builds like this Drukhari one, and the advantage this gives to the Sons is going to be particularly impactful on Scorched Earth, as the Drukhari are going to have a very tough time sticking on an objective to burn it. I guess the optimistic way you could look at this from the Drukhari side is that you’ve at least got plenty of targets for the Dark Lances, but even that’s cold comfort, especially as Scourges will be harder to use than normal with so much Torrent coverage in Overwatch from all the beasts.

So what’s an elf to do here, because I’m pretty convinced they don’t win anything like a straight fight. I suspect this is a game of taking Fixed and going for a denial/assassination plan, possibly with the looming threat of aiming for the Shatter Cohesion secret mission. The Drukhari are already going to want to pick off the Tzaangor Shamans and Rubricae, and they’ve got the speedy tools to do it, plus chaff that can be thrown out to flip objectives off of Magnus or Rubricae pretty effectively. They need to lock in and keep the Thousand Sons to 5VP turns, which is probably going to mean pressuring their home objective. Taking Fixed lets them fully focus on that rather than anything else, which is what they need here, as parcelling out resources is going to be vital. I think if you’re the Tsons and you see that the Drukhari have picked Fixed then there’s a reasonable galaxy brain justification for keeping one of the Mutaliths back on the home objective, just to make it super had to flip, then putting a bunch of the Tzaangor Shamans in Strategic Reserves. That both helps you lock in Secondary scoring and denies the enemy points until you’ve had a few turns to strip away their assets, both of which will be helpful.

This game ended up very close and very low scoring, which is usually indicative of both players playing a shrewd game, but the Drukhari narrowly overcame the damage disadvantage to take it!

Result

Drukhari (Skysplinter Assault) Victory – 59 – 56

Wyatt Harris – Drukhari (Skysplinter Assault) – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Rakarth Skysplinter

Thoughts

Note: This event got moved up in the Showdown voting after I’d written this, hence why it’s a bit repetitive!

Drukhari dominance continues at the top of the week’s biggest event. This build follows the standard 2/4 Raider/Venom split often seen in builds that aren’t sporting a Tantalus, and adds the extra tech piece of Urien Rakarth with some Wracks. Double tapping Tank Shock into Vicious Blades is a powerful source of Mortal Wounds, and particularly good into Dark Angels because it’s split out across two Phases, so the Watcher in the Dark isn’t as effective at shutting it down. Adding Rakarth to the mix helps enhance the “defence in depth” factor of a heavily mechanised build – if you dismount the Wracks and don’t wipe them, he starts healing them, and the first time you kill him whoops you (probably) didn’t. It’s a cool addition, and quite honestly Rakarth should probably see a bit more play in a pseudo Lone Operative style role anyway. Well done to Wyatt on this cool addition to secure the trophy.

Grant Kauffman – Death Guard (Plague Company) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Crunchy Death Guard

Thoughts

Death Guard in second place here, hot on the heels of the Drukhari thanks to this spicy build. Rotigus and a full Deathshroud unit provide two great centrepieces to tie up foes while the rest of the army gets things done, and like a lot of the crunchy DG builds this one presents a very challenging target profile for enemies. Even just going hard out the gate with the Bloat-Drones can be a huge problem for foes – they’ll die, but there’s plenty of attrition damage coming from the Brigands behind them. Finally, I’m always very amused by seeing the combo of two Plaguecasters in a Rhino used to create an incredibly punished version of a Land Raider Redeemer, top marks for Grant on that one!

Jason McKenzie – T’au Empire (Retaliation Cadre) – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Gundam Fun

Thoughts

Retaliation Cadre in third place here, using a mix of the standard go-wide tools like Riptides and Ghostkeels plus a slightly heftier investment in Crisis teams than the average. The setups selected here are both very reliable picks – the Internal Grenade Racks Coldstar threatens to unleash a frightening number of Mortal Wounds on a turn where it goes all-in (via Normal Moving over the foe twice and popping Grenades), while the Fireknife team can teleport around the table unleashing volleys or close in for an AP-boosted alpha strike as needed. Good stuff, and also probably a smart pick to bring an Ethereal to try and farm some extra CP, because this build is hungry. It also looks like a blast to play, and I hope Jason had a good time on his way to third!

Forrest Phanton – Space Wolves (Champions of Russ) – 4th Place

Logan Grimnar Santa Mode — Logan Grimnar as Santa Claus. Credit: Kevin Stillman

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Champion Wolf Jail

Thoughts

Wolf Jail, but it’s Champions of Russ now. As we’ll see shortly, jury is still out on whether this or the Stormlance version is better, but clearly Wolf Lords favouring both choices couldn’t stand seeing Dark Angels lauded as the best Marines, as the Chapter had a good week in general. Well done Forrest for taking them to a top four.

The Best of the Rest

There were 13 more players on 5-1 records. They were:

5th – Brandon Holm – Necrons (Hypercrypt Legion): Your standard Szarekh and Doomsday core, with the very non-standard choice of three Skorpekh MSUs with a Lord each. Skorpekh plus a Lord are a genuinely great package at 170pts, which this build really highlights!
6th – Nico Urrea – Thousand Sons: See Showdown.
7th – Jeff Jew – Dark Angels (Gladius Task Force): Lots of Deathwing Knights backed by some Vindicators, plus one big Inner Circle Companion unit with a Judiciar.
8th – Carlos Kaiser – World Eaters: A fairly standard World Eaters setup with one extra unit of Exalted Eightbound, swapping in some Cultists for Berzerkers to free up points.
9th – Luke Ehlert – Space Wolves (Stormlance Task Force): ThunderCav spam with triple MSU Wulfen.
10th – Timothy Travers – Chaos Daemons: Thicc Daemons with two GUOs and Rotigus, plus a Lord of Change and some Plaguebearers.
11th – Anthony Kucich – Thousand Sons: Another Triple Mutalith build, this one going for the standard Characters in smaller numbers.
12th – Kyle Parry – Ynnari: A go-wide build with lots of Kabalites in Venoms, War Walkers, and a big tooled-up melee Troupe as a hammer.
13th – Jay Jones – Aeldari: Avatar, some melee MSUs with Phoenix Lords and a big stack of Windriders.
14th – Tre O’Rourke – World Eaters: Lots of the standard choices, plus a couple of Maulerfiends.
15th – Wyatt Swift-Ramirez – Drukhari (Skysplinter Assault): All the fancy Skysplinter toys and a Tantalus.
16th – Arthur Tu – Chaos Space Marines (Renegade Raiders): Abaddon, Obliterators and a bunch of efficient hulls for dakka, plus a full Accursed Commune and a Warp Talon stack for pressure.
17th – Shane Marquez – Leagues of Votann: Four Sagitaurs, supporting bikes and Beserks, and 10/5 Hearthguard with one unit in a Land Fortress.

China Warhammer City Tournament 2024

76-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in 深圳市, 中国 on August 03 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Ranchen Li – World Eaters (Berzerker Warband) – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Super Heavy World Eaters

Thoughts

The World Eaters ride forth to conquer a whole new scene here, and to show they mean business they’ve brought a Lord of Skulls. Always a fan of seeing a breakout major as a community gathers pace, and that’s also what the LoS was presumably doing as foes fled in terror. Honestly, I think you can make a pretty good case for it with the proliferation of Dark Angels and Blood Angels right now, as Deathwing Knights can blank Eightbound fairly badly, and Blood Angels can sometimes just roll through the army. Both of these Marine threats will have a horrendous time trying to kill a LoS through Khorne Cares Not, its weaponry is pretty great in these matchups, and it’s cheap enough that in games where the opponent threatens to try and punk it, you can just stick it in Strategic Reserves (and maybe use Angron’s aura to help it make combat. You’re still going to get a few opponents like Aeldari who will be delighted to have a big target to pump lance fire into, but it’s a big shift in the dynamics of some crucial Marine contests. Great performance by Ranchen here, congratulations!

Mafi Chan – Chaos Space Marines (Renegade Raiders) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Lord of Skulls Raiders

Thoughts

OK, Khorne is clearly up to something in China, because it’s another Lord of Skulls in second. Honestly, while you don’t have -1D in Renegade Raiders, a lot of the threatening stuff you’re worried about is AP-2, so access to Armour of Contempt is also excellent, as is having Cypher skulking nearby to tax any Stratagem combos the enemy uses to try and take the big threat down. The Lord of Skulls broadly takes the place of a couple of Vindicators in a “standard” Raiders build, and the rest of what’s here is a bunch of the cool brawling threats like Chosen and AP-boosted Rubricae that this detachment excels at using, with Bile to amp up the durability of a key unit. Incredible style points for adding the LoS, well done to Mafi on undefeated second.

Jerry Zhang – Death Guard (Plague Company) – 3rd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Mechanised Death Guard

Thoughts

Rounding out a very chaotic undefeated top three, we’ve got an old school crunchy Death Guard build with lots of brawler Plague Marines in Rhinos, supporting Daemon Engines and Typhus as a lone Deep Strike threat. All great stuff that plays a very effective attrition game, keeping foes from breaking out from its clutches thanks to Contagions. Congratulations to Jerry.

白无常 – Imperial Knights (Noble Lance) – 4th Place

Loyalist Knight Atrapos. Credit: Jack Hunter

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Double Bigs

Thoughts

Rounding out the top four we have the Imperial Knights, frantically trying to keep up appearences as Chaos runs amok. Seeing Canis Rex at the helm isn’t a huge surprise, as he’s better than ever in Pariah and pretty much an auto-take as your first big, but the Atrapos is worth highlighting as the second choice. These are seeing an uptick in play, presumably thanks to being very flexible between killing enemy tanks or elite infantry, which is exactly what you need right now. Mysterious Guardian is also an especially solid choice in Pariah because Character Titanic units can Action/Shoot – meaning that a Knight with it can be both a scoring and killing machine. Definitely consider that angle if you haven’t already been using it, and well done to 白无常 for gloriously leading the charge.

The Best of the Rest

There were 10 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

5th – Erik 艾瑞克 – Black Templars (Gladius Task Force): Brethren in Impulsors, cheap dakka hulls, and a big Eradicator unit in a Repulsor.
6th – Qifan Zhu- Necrons (Awakened Dynasty): All-rounder Awakened Dynasty with a bit of everything and the Silent King as a centrepiece.
7th – jun hong- Adepta Sororitas (Bringers of Flame): Speedy flame Sisters.
8th – 阿伟 – Astra Militarum: A heavily board-presence focused Guard built with tonnes of Catachans, max Bullgryn and a Dorn behind the lot.
9th – Hsia Yinwu – Astra Militarum: Lots more Bullgryn, this time supported by Rough Riders, a Dorn and an Exterminator.
10th – 格里芬 – Grey Knights: Dreadnights galore.
11th – 斯万 Swan – Tyranids (Vanguard Onslaught): Two big Genestealer units for early pressure with triple Tyrannofex as a second wave.
12th – 泰僧 – Tyranids (Invasion Fleet): A go-wide Invasion Fleet build with some shooty monsters and lots of small infantry units/positional pieces.
13th – Yushun Xu – Ynnari: Extremely go-wide shooty/melee Ynnari, with a couple of Wraithlords as a sterner core.
14th – 老蒋 – Chaos Daemons: A trio of enhanced Greater Daemons (Bloodthirster, Great Unclean One, Lord of Change) and some Bloodcrushers and a Rendmaster for the Bloodthirster to fire into combat.

Armed Forces Day 7 Warhammer 40,000 Grand Tournament

64-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Lockport, IL, US on August 03 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Elliott Levy – Space Wolves (Stormlance Task Force) – 1st Place

Lieutenant with Combi-weapon (Credit: Musterkrux)

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Wolf Jail Classic

Thoughts

Scream awooo, go first, hit things, lean on the Lone Operative Librarian unit to hold the fort while you do it. Still works like a charm, it would appear. Great stuff from Elliott.

Kevin Leonard – Chaos Daemons (Daemonic Incursion) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Bloodcrusher Spam

Thoughts

Khorne’s excellent week continues here. Ignore that one unit of Nurglings, no one knows how they got there. Daemon players have very much embraced the Pariah option of a Bloodthirster that when it barks it shoots Bloodcrushers out of its mouth, and this list goes especially hard on that plan with two Bloodthirsters to set up guaranteed Shadow deployments, and all the Bloodcrushers it can fit in to overwhelm the foe. Skull Cannons and Flesh Hounds fill the list out with a mix of board presence and harrassment. Good, messy fun all round, well done Kevin.

Derek Glassman – Astra Militarum (Combined Regiment) – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Double Dorn

Thoughts

A very tank-heavy Astra Militarum build takes third here, eschewing the normal Bullgryn protection detail for more hulls and a counterattacking unit of Rough Riders. That gives the build tremendous killing power, and it’s very hard to fully take out, but it does introduce a small risk of getting rushed and overwhelmed, which may have been its undoing in the final against Elliott. Even in that game Derek put in a respectable score, which is impressive stuff against a list that’s pretty much the exact thing you don’t want to see when running this, so very well played in third!

Jordan Nach – Necrons (Awakened Dynasty) – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Top-heavy Awakened

Thoughts

I will admit a Necron list with two Wraith units at 335pts was not on my business card. GW look away, I can’t handle them being nerfed any more.

Anyway, they’re putting in work here via the classic skew strategy of essentially only packing ultra durable units, making it very hard for foes to reliably degrade the army’s capability. The advantage of Wraiths in Awakened is that they can operate very effectively without support or managing a Power Matrix, as Protocol of the Hungry Void is enough to push them to being a credible threat into most targets (except stuff with Damage Reduction, making me a little nervous about this in a Deathwing Knight-heavy metagame).

Where you can come unstuck with this plan is against opponents that can just reliably steamroller a key unit, because the second you start dropping activations it gets really hard to keep the scoring up, and that’s presumably what happened against Kevin’s Daemons in the final, as Bloodcrushers with a Rendmaster buff are pretty much the perfect counter to this list. Very cool to see something so out there make it to the top tables, however, so great stuff from Jordan.

The Best of the Rest

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

5th – Tyler White – Adepta Sororitas (Bringers of Flame): Flame Sisters with some extra crunch instead of the big Seraphim squad.
6th – Jeff Grogan – Leagues of Votann: Double big Hearthguard unit and max Pioneers.
7th – John Van Dusen – Tyranids (Invasion Fleet): Monster Mash with the Old One-Eye dakkafex unit.
8th – Kareem Abraham – Chaos Space Marines (Veterans of the Long War): Ultra-heavy hitting Chaos Marines with a Knight Despoiler and a Khorne Lord of Skulls plus Abaddon with a full unit of Chosen.
9th – Fred Fortman – Deathwatch (Gladius Task Force): Two massively tooled up Veteran units (one in a Crusader) with a Repulsor full of Eradicators as an additional murder threat. Deathwatch Bikes get an outing as a skirmishing tool.
10th – James R Fisher – Aeldari: A herohammer Aeldari build with the Avatar, lots of Lone Operatives, and a big Troupe as a centrepiece. MSU/go-wide stuff to finish.

Gothic Games Canterbury: August 40k GT

44-player, 6-round Grand Tournament in England, United Kingdom on August 03 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Note: Originally the two undefeated players were down to play a final after round 5, but neither could use the Golden Ticket, so they called it a draw and let the prize cascade down. I’ve featured both players, since at that point there’s nothing to separate them!

Ciaran Furlong – Thousand Sons (Cult of Magic) – =1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Double Mutalith Tsons

Thoughts

At this point I’m starting to draw the conclusion that Slaanesh is slacking off, because all the other Chaos Gods have been very busy this week. Presumably on a big divan eating grapes somewhere. Classic Slaanesh. This here and now is classic Mutalith Tsons – extra pressure from the big beasts, and inclusion of some cheap stuff like Spawn, Tzaangors and Cultists to keep the activation count up. This continues to be one of the most consistently effective builds in the game. Congratulations to Ciaran for piloting it to the top!

Steve Scott – Necrons (Hypercrypt Legion) – =1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Heavy Hypercrypt

Thoughts

Every time a Tesseract Vault makes it into this column, I have to do a round of edge highlighting on mine. One day it will be finished. One day.

Anyway, it’s a super cool gigantic box, bringing a diverse selection of vicious killing power to the table, and teaming it up with the Silent King and Doomsdays provides some serious threat. I do like the inclusion of one Wraith unit alongside that – sometimes you just need something that will stand in a place, perform an activity and not die, and now you can’t warp a C’tan in 3″ away, Wraiths give you the most flexible tool for doing that. Love seeing the big box do big work, great stuff from Steve.

The Best of the Rest

There were 3 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

3rd – Franco McDonnell – Chaos Daemons (Daemonic Incursion): A cavalry/beast heavy Daemons build with lots of Fiends and a Bloodcrusher stack, using Be’lakor and a Great Unclean One as defensive centrepieces.
4th – Matthew Stredwick – Ynnari (Battle Host): Lots of evasive Aeldari shooting and a few melee threats, with the interesting option of Drazhar and five Incubi in a Falcon for some of that 9th Edition re-roll energy.
5th – James Gostick- Adepta Sororitas (Bringers of Flame): Speedy flame Sisters.

Wrap Up

That’s it from me for this week – next week will be a big one because we’ll have the results of the WTC Warmaster GT to cover, probably with a side order of Teams Week as we look at the main event. See you then!

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Competitive Innovations in 10th: Quick on the Draw pt.1

Palm Springs Open 40k GT III By Dicehammer

The Showdown

Scorched Earth – Inspired Leadership – Crucible of Battle

Thoughts

Result

Wyatt Harris – Drukhari (Skysplinter Assault) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Grant Kauffman – Death Guard (Plague Company) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Jason McKenzie – T’au Empire (Retaliation Cadre) – 3rd Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Forrest Phanton – Space Wolves (Champions of Russ) – 4th Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

China Warhammer City Tournament 2024

Ranchen Li – World Eaters (Berzerker Warband) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Mafi Chan – Chaos Space Marines (Renegade Raiders) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Jerry Zhang – Death Guard (Plague Company) – 3rd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

白 无常 – Imperial Knights (Noble Lance) – 4th Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

Armed Forces Day 7 Warhammer 40,000 Grand Tournament

Elliott Levy – Space Wolves (Stormlance Task Force) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Kevin Leonard – Chaos Daemons (Daemonic Incursion) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Derek Glassman – Astra Militarum (Combined Regiment) – 3rd Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Jordan Nach – Necrons (Awakened Dynasty) – 4th Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

Gothic Games Canterbury: August 40k GT

Ciaran Furlong – Thousand Sons (Cult of Magic) – =1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Steve Scott – Necrons (Hypercrypt Legion) – =1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

Wrap Up

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白无常 – Imperial Knights (Noble Lance) – 4th Place