The twists and turns of the metagame continue, this week bringing the Thousand Sons and Adepta Sororitas to the forefront after a few weeks of Dark Angel domination. There’s still plenty of other stuff going on, but as you’ll quickly see these two factions stand out for the week both on top performances and win rates. At the other end of the spectrum, it’s looking like Orks, Genestealer Cults and Chaos Space Marines probably need the most help the next time that a balance update rolls around, something I’m going to try and dig into more in the next few weeks.

Today though, it’s part 1 of Competitive Innovations as usual, and I’ll be covering:

THE LEEDS 40K SUPER MAJOR
Warhammer 40,000 Throne of Skulls
BrewHammer GT 6
North and South GT 2024
Come the Apocalypse GT – 2024
The Saffron Slam IX

On Friday we’ll have Lowest of Men in charge looking at:

Krootcon 2024
Mountain View Mayhem 4th Annual 40k Charity Tournament
Medhammer GT 2024
Games and Stuff 40K Event Hosted by Away Games
Brighton 40k GT VIII
Hydra GT III 2024

THE LEEDS 40K SUPER MAJOR

219-player, 7-round Supermajor in England, United Kingdom on August 17 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Jack Tite – Adepta Sororitas (Bringers of Flame) – 1st Place

Canoness with chainsword. Credit: Corrode

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Speedy Flame Sisters

Thoughts

Jack was a rapid adopter of the Bringers of Flame when the Sororitas codex landed, and here he’s turned that preparation and practice into a supermajor trophy. Most of this is business as usual for Bringers, with one major exception – Vahl gets cut for an additional hull, though Paragon Warsuits are still here as a countercharge/position holder threat. I’m guessing that’s a mix of Castigators being really good on UKTC terrain, so you want all three, wanting to cut down on Characters for Fixes with that many hulls about, and maybe just that you can get what you need from the Warsuits without Vahl – they’re great at soaking up a bit of punishment with Shield of Aversion, and still discourage high value targets from getting too close, especially with the Manual of Saint Griselda to keep high-value Miracle dice flowing. Finally, it also reduces the number of eggs you have in any one basket, helping maintain the depth of threats that Sororitas could afford prior to their book cranking up both quality and price. It’s an unusual choice despite all that, but it was clearly the right one here – big congratulations to Jack!

Nathan Roberts – Tyranids (Crusher Stampede) – 2nd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Mega Monster Mash

Thoughts

Hell yeah, love to see that. Crusher Stampede emerges from the depths of 9th Edition with a build designed to be utterly overwhelming. Chewing through this many monster is always a challenge, but here it’s going to be a nightmare. You have a whole bunch of efficient and durable beasts, you can auto-explode them with Corrosive Viscera to both chip the enemy down and switch on hit boosts for the rest of your stuff, and you back it all up with the Swarmlord to tank enemy Stratagems. Many armies rely on Stratagems to punch up into this kind of thing, so taxing them can sometimes lock them out, and on UKTC terrain it’s especially good now that Untrammelled Ferocity lets you walk through walls – most maps have a good near-centre staging point where Swarmy can lurk, then when it’s murder time he can burst out and go wild. Triple Tyrannofex with access to Swarm Guided Salvos is also legitimately one of the nastiest ways to set up anti-tank in Tyranids, providing a unique angle against hull spam builds. Super cool, super deadly, congratulations to Nathan!

Stephen Box – Adepta Sororitas (Army of Faith) – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

All-rounder Brawler Sisters

Thoughts

In third place we’ve got another Sisters build, this time showing off the Army of Faith. The core principle of “take three Castigators on UKTC” remains very much in effect, but rather than Dominions that’s supplemented by some brawling squads of Sacresants with Hospitaliers. These are able to make great use of the UKTC-style ruins to stage and strike, and Army of Faith gives you access to Faith and Fury and Divine Guidance to push their damage over the top, really helping fend the foe away from your precious Castigators.

Putting the opponent on the back foot like that gives you time to do plenty of scoring with Jump Pack units leaping into and out of Deep Strike via Angelic Descent, and in a metagame with lots of Thousand Sons about it’s also really valuable to be able to drop Shield of Faith either as an AoE defensive buff or to stop Vahl’s Warsuit unit getting owned. Finally, you can use all those Miracle Dice you’ll rack up to do some horrendous Character hunting with the Blade Palatine, which can be crucial for tilting things in your favour against lists like Black Templars. Very cool to see a non-Bringers build podium, congratulations to Stephen!

Kyle Grundy – T’au Empire (Retaliation Cadre) – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Crisis Spam

Thoughts

Going full Gundam mode here, I see. This build leans on the extremely aggressive price of Fireknife and Starscythe teams to get a lot of Crisis suits onto the table, and also mixing and matching squads to provide a lot of flexibility in how they’re used. Farsight’s Stratagem discount working properly again is really good for Retaliation Cadre, as it lets you reliably slam Torchstar Gambit to keep the pressure up without sacrificing units. It’s also interesting to see an uptick in plasma rifles being used right now, presumably a result of them being less dead if you run into Deathwing Knights than more D2 missiles would be, and being pretty strong at clearing out Blood Angels units as well. It’s also pretty funny to be able to 3″ drop a plasma unit and utterly annihilate something at point-blank range with The Shortened Blade, especially good with the Prototype Weapon System Commander. All that is great backing for the strong mixture of scoring, screening and objective flipping that Tau get from Breacherfish, Stealths, Pathfinders and Vespid, ensuring that even if the enemy does manage to fight their way out from under the gun of the Crisis teams, they’ll probably be too far behind to stop the Greater Good taking a points victory. Big congratulations to Kyle for showing off that Crisis suits can get there in style!

The Best of the Rest

There were 3 more players on 5-0 records after the Swiss. They were:

5th – Rowan Hesse – Astra Militarum: Two big Krieg tarpits and a Bullgryn unit to hold the foe up, Rough Riders and Russes to hammer the foe while they deal with it.
6th – Lewis Smith – T’au Empire (Kauyon): A Tiger Shark and a bunch of Riptides and Breacherfish.
7th – James Webster – Thousand Sons: Double Mutalith Tsons.

Warhammer 40,000 Throne of Skulls

74-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in England, GB on August 17 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

This event was 1750pts and was running with highlander rules, so no duplicates other than Battleline and Dedicated Transports. It also had soft score elements, so it is possible that the final ranking at the tournament didn’t match the pure game scores in BCP.

Robert Percival – Death Guard (Plague Company) – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Melee Pressure Death Guard

Thoughts

Unlike many Death Guard builds that pack shooty hulls galore, this build just wants to wash over foes with a big tide of Plague Marines, Deathshrouds and Mortarion, and honestly more power to Robert for going with that plan. Mortarion brawls particularly well on GW terrain, which gives him some extra value, and plans that aim to overwhelm the foe tend to do a bit better in smaller game sizes as long as you can still pack a critical mass of the relevant stuff, as they’re more likely to struggle to clear you fast enough. This classic Nurgle plan was enough to take first place on generalship, great stuff!

Paul O’Boyle – Black Templars (Righteous Crusaders) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Black Templar Crusader squad equipped with two power fists — Black Templar Crusader Squad. Credit: Jack Hunter

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

All-Rounder Templars

Thoughts

Speaking of “harder to deal with in smaller game sizes”, I present a squad of 20 Primaris Crusaders with Grimaldus, If a unit is normally something that would take a whole army unleashing hell on it to clear, then deploying it in a setting where “a whole army” is only 7/8ths as big is a smart plan. That’s particularly true when you back it up with a list that’s all killer, no filler – the triple threat of the Redeemer, Eradicators and Sword Brethren gives you almost all of the punch you’d see with a normal Templars build, where other armies are going to find themselves missing some of the tools they’d get in a conventional setup. That seems to have gone well for the Templars, as Paul blasted his way to undefeated second place!

John Oates – Dark Angels (Gladius Task Force) – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Lion Goodstuff

Thoughts

In third place we’ve got a creative answer to the problem of not being able to take more than one unit of Deathwing Knights – add the Lion! As is the emerging theme, stuff that’s extra tough is extra good when foes have fewer and less focused resources to handle them, and this feels like the ideal format for him. Running as Dark Angels also gives a tonne of flexibility and unique add-ons, be it Azrael for extra CP or the Asmodai/Companions unit for extra murder. For the Companions, while in normal Strike Force I prefer the Judiciar to Asmodai, in this format I think the latter is a better choice – you have fewer units to play with, so squeezing consistent extra punch (plus breadth of targets) out of a squad is better than it being a counter-piece in some matchups. Good choice, and well rewarded with third.

Wayne Jimmison – Orks (Bully Boyz) – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Aggro Crunchy Orks

Thoughts

Concluding our theory of “just throw nasty stuff at them”, we’ve got double Waaagh Ghaz/Meganobz and an actual Gorkanaut getting stuck in, with regular Nobz and some utility tools as cleanup. Not particularly complex, but hilarious and highly effective, and part of the charm of restricted listbuilding events is they let stuff like Gorkanauts, which don’t normally quite get there, actually perform. Well done to Wayne for taking fourth place in style.

The Best of the Rest

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

5th – Richard Lloyd – Blood Angels (Sons of Sanguinius): Heavy duty Blood Angels that are mostly footslogging outside of one big Jump Intercessor unit. A teleporting Terminator unit is the centrepiece, bringing the joyful threat of S10 power fists to bear.
6th – Jack Masters – Chaos Knights: Triple bigs as Chaos gets to shine with fewer guns to worry about, leaning towards melee with a Lancer and Rampager at the fore.
7th – Willem te Slaa – Astra Militarum: A rainbow of armoured death, sporting various flavours of Russ, a Dorn, and a big Krieg unit to keep the foe occupied.
8th – Aidan McElroy – Iron Hands (Gladius Task Force): A grim, monochrome array of Iron Hands tanks with Feirros overseeing them.
9th – Ryan Elliott – Adeptus Custodes (Shield Host): All three Forge World Dreadnoughts and a Caladius, supporting three four-model Guard units as an Infantry core.
10th – Tom Gavaghan – Imperial Knights: High output brutality from a Castigator and teleporting Valiant, plus a full Rogue Trader/Voidsmen unit as an Infiltration threat.
11th – Louis Gouldsbrough – Ultramarines (Ironstorm Spearhead): Calgar with Company Heroes and a bunch of different tanks.
12th – Jack Painter – T’au Empire (Retaliation Cadre): Battlesuits on parade, one unit of every type except the Stormsurge.
13th – Alan Percival – Dark Angels (Gladius Task Force): Another Lion build, very similar to the third-place list but with the Judiciar instead of Asmodai.
14th – Kyle Naisbitt – Death Guard: No Mortarion, and it turns out that in singleton that means you need to take one of almost everything else to fill an army!

BrewHammer GT 6

46-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Scotland, GB on August 17 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Matthew Moran – Thousand Sons (Cult of Magic) – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Rubricae/Character Tsons

Thoughts

After the Mutalith madness that was the WTC, we’re back to the standard Rubricae/Character formula here, adding a bit of extra speedy scoring with Enlightened. This continues to be one of the most consistently effective Strategies in the entire of 10th Edition. Well done to Matthew for unleashing Tzeentch’s fury.

The Best of the Rest

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

2nd – Joe Robertson – Necrons (Hypercrypt Legion): All-rounder Hypercrypt with the Silent King, Void Dragon and Monolith on the heavy end, then lots of Immortals and scoring stuff to pull wild stunts with.
3rd – Matt Bell – Adeptus Custodes (Shield Host): Three Warden bricks (all with Blade Champions for max aggro), two Caladius Tanks, Venatari to fill.
4th – Ryan Cook – Astra Militarum (Combined Regiment): Max Bullgryn bonanza backed by Manticores, Russes and a Dorn.
5th – Gavin Heritage – Blood Angels (Sons of Sanguinius): Jump Pack onslaught with two Death Company units (one with Lemartes) and a VanVet/Priest squad.
6th – Brodie Atkinson – Adepta Sororitas (Bringers of Flame): Speedy Flame Sisters.
7th – Jan Tickell – Imperial Knights: Aggressive double bigs with Canis and a Lancer.
8th – Graeme Guyan – Chaos Knights: A Lancer and a whole lot of dogs.

North and South GT 2024

37-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Hobart, TAS, AU on August 16 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Ethan Armstrong – Grey Knights (Teleport Strike Force) – 1st Place

Grey Knights Paladins. Credit: Colin Ward

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Terminator Grey Knights

Thoughts

The Grand Master Paladin unit makes a return, which I always like to see because I think it’s been consistently undervalued. Damage Reduction is always highly prized, and a unit that throws out massed D2 offence both at range and up close is the perfect counter to it. Lemartes got you down? Psycannons. Deathwing Knights ruining your day? Simply chop them up with force weapons perfectly statted to send them skulking back to the rock. Supplement that with high quality units like the Dreadknights and one of the best options on forcing a Secret Mission in the game from the Brotherhood Terminators and you’ve got yourself a list. Well done to Ethan for taking a trophy with it.

The Best of the Rest

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

2nd – Tyler Walsh – Adepta Sororitas (Bringers of Flame): Heavier-duty Flame Sisters adding Celestine to one of the Seraphim squads and packing two units of non-Vahl Warsuits.
3rd – Lance Glover – Ultramarines (Vanguard Spearhead): Teleporting Centurions and infiltrating Calgar Aggressors return.
4th – Zachary Lennon – Dark Angels (Gladius Task Force): Mostly the standard Deathwing Knight GTF build, but swapping one unit out for the Lion.
5th – Andy T – Chaos Knights: Full send triple Rampagers and six Karnivores. King.
6th – Liam Hogwood – Chaos Space Marines (Chaos Cult): Would it shock you to learn that this army contains Cultists – perhaps even lots of Cultists? Well it does.

Come the Apocalypse GT – 2024

31-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Dothan, AL, US on August 17 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Cliff Nelson – Black Templars (Righteous Crusaders) – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Primaris Crusader Spam

Thoughts

As recently demonstrated at the WTC and Warmaster, rolling your opponent over with lots of Primaris Crusaders is very effective. This build diversifies a bit more than the pure spam variant, adding Lancers for ranged threat projection and some Infiltrators to hold the fort, but the core plan of overwhelming foes with dozens of angry superhumans riled up by the good word of the Emperor remains the same. Sure seems to have worked, great stuff from Cliff.

The Best of the Rest

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

2nd – Charles Barber – Drukhari (Skysplinter Assault): Extra go-wide Skysplinter with bonus Venoms.
3rd – Brandon Lovato – Necrons (Hypercrypt Legion): Heavy Hypercrypt with Szarekh, double C’tan and double Doomsday.
4th – Bjorn Cantrell – Astra Militarum (Combined Regiment): Catachan and Chimera screen, double Dorn and Triple Vanquishers at the back.
5th – William Blair – Imperial Knights: Triple bigs with Canis, an Atrapos and a Lancer, plus Coteaz to try and harvest CP.
6th – Mike Bridgmon – World Eaters: Extra Berzerker-heavy World Eaters, replacing a big Exalted brick with five Terminators to shave points.

The Saffron Slam IX

28-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in England, GB on August 17 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Burden of Trust – Raise Banners – Crucible of Battle

James Marsden – T’au Empire (Kroot Hunting Pack)
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Samuel Squires – Astra Militarum (Combined Regiment)
Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

The Kroot have been a bit formant since the initial flurry of experimentation post-Tau codex, but they’re back here, beligerent and numerous as ever. This is a classic horde build, using the speed, volume and relative durability of bodies (5+ Invulnerable into 5+ Feel No Pain is no joke on any sort of big unit) to lock the foe down, scoring massively on Primary. Hunting pack gives them some nice speed boosts on top of the durability, great screening from the Kroothawk Lone-spear, and a bit of chip damage threat via Stratagems. Also, you’re Tau so you can have Hammerheads, the perfect low-commitment tank because just by existing they force enemies to be more circumspect than they’d like.

They’re up against an extremely murderous Guard build here, mind, with a pretty good setup as far as Kroot killing goes. A good number of Catachans is the screen you want, while Dorns and regular Russes give you the mix of decent rate of fire and output you want, with the former also being good against Hammerheads thanks to their once-per-game damage prevention. The Kroot can definitely go swarm mode here, but they’re going to need to hit combat en-masse pretty sharpish. This feels like a turn where both sides really want first turn to carve out space, but I think the Kroot have better options to just sacrifice a few resources to try and lock that in – I would certainly be using Stealths and the Farstriders to box in Catachan scouts to make sure that the Kroot get the first crack at board control.

The mission also feels like it favours the Kroot thanks to their Lone Operatives and access to Hidden Hunters, which can be used to force some extra Primary. Banners is also probably a wash if the Guard go first, with both sides likely to put them up across the whole mid-board, but if the Kroot go first it’ll just be them raking in those points.

All together, I think the Guard do have a chance here if they go first – but they really need to go first, whereas the Kroot have a plan either way. Given that, they’re favoured, and they ended up taking a comfortable victory.

Result

T’au Empire (Kroot Hunting Pack) Victory – 99 – 56

James Marsden – T’au Empire (Kroot Hunting Pack) – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Hunting Pack Horde

Thoughts

One weird trick to drive your foes to despair as they try and remember all the tricks you can unleash, then realise they’ve been itterly crushed on Primary while not looking. The function’s all covered in the Showdown, but it’s worth highlighting that all of James’ wins were big, with the combination of pro-active scoring and points denial leaving the Kroot as commanding champions. Congratulations to him!

The Best of the Rest

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

2nd – David Jackson – Orks (Dread Mob): Double Gorkanaut? Wonders will never cease. Giant melee swings do, to be fair, get plenty of benefit from the Detachment rule at fairly minimal risk. Also features lots of Lootas.
3rd – Tom Russell – Leagues of Votann (Oathband): Go-wide Votann with lots of Sagitaurs and lots of Bike and Hearthguard MSUs.
4th – Samuel Squires – Astra Militarum (Combined Regiment): See Showdown.
5th – Josh Maltby – T’au Empire (Mont’ka): Go-wide hulls, Breacherfish, Riptides, things of this nature.

Wrap Up

Part 1 down, part 2 still to come – check back in on Friday to see what conquered the other six events from the week.

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Competitive Innovations in 10th: Twisted Firestarters pt.1

THE LEEDS 40K SUPER MAJOR

Jack Tite – Adepta Sororitas (Bringers of Flame) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Nathan Roberts – Tyranids (Crusher Stampede) – 2nd Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Stephen Box – Adepta Sororitas (Army of Faith) – 3rd Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Kyle Grundy – T’au Empire (Retaliation Cadre) – 4th Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

Warhammer 40,000 Throne of Skulls

Robert Percival – Death Guard (Plague Company) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Paul O’Boyle – Black Templars (Righteous Crusaders) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

John Oates – Dark Angels (Gladius Task Force) – 3rd Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Wayne Jimmison – Orks (Bully Boyz) – 4th Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

BrewHammer GT 6

Matthew Moran – Thousand Sons (Cult of Magic) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

North and South GT 2024

Ethan Armstrong – Grey Knights (Teleport Strike Force) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

Come the Apocalypse GT – 2024

Cliff Nelson – Black Templars (Righteous Crusaders) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

The Saffron Slam IX

The Showdown

Burden of Trust – Raise Banners – Crucible of Battle

Thoughts

Result

James Marsden – T’au Empire (Kroot Hunting Pack) – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

Wrap Up

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