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Competitive Innovations in 10th: Xenos Roulette pt.2

By James "One_Wing" Grover

Lots more Xenos fun today, including the Retaliation Cadre making a Showdown debut, and Orks still krumpin’ stuff left and right. We’ve also got some valiant imperium forced pushing back against aforesaid Xenos tide, with mixed success.

Today we’re looking at:

  • Wargames for Warriors 2024 – 40K Major
  • Dicehammer Open 40k GT VII
  • 90. Bedburger Scheunenkloppen
  • Hydra GT II 2024

Yesterday in part 1 I covered:

  • Bugeater GT
  • Southcon 2024 40K Tournament
  • PNW Warlords Clash Warhammer 40K GT
  • Broadside Bash Revived 2024
  • Wild Hunt GT: Summer

…and we’ll finish up tomorrow with Lowest of Men reviewing the following in part 3:

  • 2d6 Dawn of Vår
  • From Hell Open 2 – Back into the Trench!
  • Spring Assault at the Ironweld Open
  • Thylacine Cup GT
  • Viking Games – The Battle for Vanheim

Wargames for Warriors 2024 – 40K Major

61-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Bluffdale, UT, United States on June 01 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Evan Stump – Ultramarines (Ironstorm Spearhead) – 1st Place

Marneus Calgar Credit: Alfredo Ramirez
Marneus Calgar Credit: Alfredo Ramirez

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Ironstorm Calgar Gunline

Thoughts

Ironstorm is notoriously hungry for delicious Command Points, which many successful builds have used Azrael in Dark Angels to deliver, but in a melee-heavy metagame I can see the appeal of swapping for access to Calgar instead. Azrael tends to sit at the back with a unit as a pure CP farm, while Calgar and some Company Heroes gives you a unit that can actually roll around achieving stuff. They’re fast thanks to Advance/Charge, hit pretty hard in melee between Calgar and the Company Champion, and have a solid amount of OC for flipping objectives as long as their banner is alive. The higher price point means you end up on triple RepEx instead of being able to afford a Stormraven, but that doesn’t seem to have held Evan back – congratulations on the trophy.

Ben Jurek – Orks (Bully Boyz) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Sirrus Bizniz, Goff ork warlord in mega armour. Credit: Charlie Brassley.

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Mechanised Bully Boyz

Thoughts

Hot on their heels in undefeated second, Warboss Ben finally returns to the greenskin fold after a prolonged tour of other factions. His variant of Bully Boyz maximises flexibility – going wide with Nobz MSUs with a Warboss each provides lots of small units that can go off to solve a specific problem (a-la Chaos Space Marine brawler units), and including a squad of Flash Gitz to do some brutal drive-bys ensures your opponent can’t be quite as blasé about ignoring the potential of your shooting phase as they normally can against Bully Boyz. Having the tools to open up a Trukk in shooting at a key moment can be valuable in the mirror as well. Good mitigation of some of the normal Bully Boyz weaknesses, and an excellent finish as a result.

Marshall Peterson – Astra Militarum (Combined Regiment) – 3rd Place

Lord Solar. Credit: Scott Horras “Heresy”

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Cavalry Spam

Thoughts

My mind still rebels slightly at this being even vaguely good, but Marshall follows up last week’s appearance in the Best of the Rest with a top four placing for the pony club, improbably demonstrating that even Guard can play in melee meta. It certainly controls the board pretty well, especially once you add in some cheap Taurox Primes to go wide with, and some foes are going to find recycling Cavalry pretty overwhelming to deal with. Just hope you don’t run into the few people who’ve been sporting Hellblasters as a meta tool. Well done Marshall on the bronze medal.

Derek Holder – World Eaters (Berzerker Warband) – 4th Place

Credit: Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Classic World Eaters

Thoughts

It’s (mostly) the classic World Eaters list, tweaked slightly to bring in a tanky Daemon Prince as a roaming threat in place of Kharn and a second Rhino. I assume it’s aimed squarely at the Bully Boyz matchup – it provides a hefty improvement in the durability of your Berzerkers if they get charged with Killsaws, is highly resilient to D2 output when it gets stuck in, and is pretty well statted for murdering a broad range of Ork models. I’m sure the Orks as a whole are thrilled that other melee factions are tooling to give them an even better scrap. Congratulations to Derek on rounding out the top four.

The Best of the Rest

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

  • 5th – Gregory Hunter – T’au Empire (Mont’ka): Triple Breacherfish backed by Sky Rays and Riptides.
  • 6th – Rob Andersen – Chaos Knights: Lots of War Dogs and a Great Unclean One.
  • 7th – Chase Chappell – Chaos Daemons: The other side of the ally coin – three big Daemons, some skirmishing beasts and Infantry, then a trio of War Dogs.
  • 8th – McKay Griffin – Space Wolves (Stormlance Task Force): Max ThunderCav, 20 Wulfen, and Ragnar with some Assault Intercessors.
  • 9th – Alec Jones – Ultramarines (Vanguard Spearhead): The full teleporting Centurion Deep Strike gunline special.

Dicehammer Open 40k GT VII

43-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Irvine, CA, US on June 01 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Priority Targets – Chilling Rain – Crucible of Battle

Joshua Petty – Chaos Knights (Traitoris Lance)
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Jason McKenzie – T’au Empire (Retaliation Cadre)
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Thoughts

A first appearance for the Retaliation Cadre, ready to get involved in a robot-on-robot slugfest spectacular. Jason’s list fully leans into the Retaliation vibe, bringing a squad of each flavour of Crisis, a Commander tuned for each one, and lots of Ghostkeels, Stealths and Riptides in support. Slightly awkwardly, in this matchup, the Retaliation detachment trait doesn’t do that much – a lot of the weapons jump from S8 to S9, which isn’t relevant against the War Dogs at T10, and bigger guns were going to hit their invulnerable saves anyway, so the impact of AP improvement is limited. It does mean you might get a bit of chip damage from the various burst cannons, and where it is a slam dunk is for the fusion blasters, pushing them to a key breakpoint.

That’s actually a good point to highlight one of the more subtle things this list does. While each of the three Commanders is equipped pretty similarly to one of the Crisis flavours, you don’t have to put them with the same ones, and in this matchup I think there would be a decent-ish argument for putting the melta Commander with the Starscythes and vice-versa, as it increases the number of units that the War Dogs really need to worry about. In other matchups, you might get value from putting the missile Commander with the Starscythes, as the extra AP into elite Infantry can make a big difference. Definitely bear this in mind when building or playing against a Tau list. Other tools from the Cadre also help out here – a double dose of Mortals from the Grenade Rack commander can help take out two Dogs at once, while being able to Torchstar Gambit to keep the Sunforges operational longer is vital, as every list unit hurts here. Just body blocking multiple War Dogs with a Riptide then auto-exploding it is pretty funny too.

What do the War Dog hordes have to work with here? A decent amount, so this is far from a foregone conclusion. They have a very easy line on Bring it Down/Deploy for a reliable high Secondary score, and the low Leadership of the Tau’s best units can genuinely count against them in this matchup – unpredictably losing objectives would be a problem on some missions. The impact of this is mitigated a bit by the mission that’s in play though – the Tau can afford to drop the odd few points as long as they can grind the dogs down and score at the end fo the game, and they probably should win an attrition war, as long as they don’t lose key units to Karnivores, especially as Ghostkeels are a huge pain for the Knights to kill. The Tau can also do BID/Deploy super well, meaning that Secondary scores are likely to either be even or mildly favour the Empire.

From the Chaos Knights point of view, the potential weakness is that the Tau units all fold to a Karnivore, and they only have a limited number of units that aren’t relying on 5s to wound chipping through stuff. Push the Karnivores forward in groups to places that aim to put the Tau on 5VP Primary turns on multiple occasions, and try and push to victory through that route. The Tau, on the flip side, want to focus on taking out a clean two Knights a turn to leave nothing left, preserving their melta Crisis at all costs (sacrificing Riptides to body block if needed). This game ended up close, suggesting good plans from both players, but in the end the Tau squeaked it by a single point, earning a trophy for the newest spin on the Greater Good.

Result

T’au Empire (Retaliation Cadre) Victory – 85 – 84

Jason McKenzie – T’au Empire (Retaliation Cadre) – 1st Place

XV104 Riptide Battlesuit. Credit: Rockfish
XV104 Riptide Battlesuit. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Retaliation Toolbox

Thoughts

All covered in the Showdown, and I’m an absolute sucker for toolbox lists so I love the mix of options having all those Commanders and Crisis units that you can theoretically chop and change. Mobile gunplay is also very appealing, and I’m a fan of this list overall – great work from Jason.

The Best of the Rest

There were 8 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

  • 2nd – Joshua Petty – Chaos Knights (Traitoris Lance): See Showdown.
  • 3rd – Kyle Parry – Ynnari (Battle Host): Very go-wide Aeldari, adding Venoms full of Kabalites to the Craftworld tools.
  • 4th – Matthew Green – Thousand Sons (Cult of Magic): Lots of Characters, lots of extra board control via three units each of Cultists and Enlightened.
  • 5th – Michael Georges – Drukhari (Skysplinter Assault): All-Venom go-wide Skysplinter.
  • 6th – Alex Spathopoulos – Space Wolves (Gladius Task Force): Max Wulfen as a spearhead for an all-rounder Marine core with Wolf Characters mixed in.
  • 7th – Stephen Corrales – Dark Angels (Ironstorm Spearhead): Stormraven and double RepEx, plus some extra board presence from some Deathwing Knights.
  • 8th – Luke Ehlert – Space Wolves (Stormlance Task Force): Max ThunderCav, max Wulfen.
  • 9th – RJ Abad – T’au Empire (Retaliation Cadre): Two Fireknife units and one Sunforge squad, supported by two each of Ghostkeels and Riptides.

90. Bedburger Scheunenkloppen

37-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Bedburg, Nordrhein-Westfalen, DE on June 01 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Florian Pal – Orks (Green Tide) – 1st Place

Shoota Boyz. Credit: Rockfish
Shoota Boyz. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Green Tide

Thoughts

A finely honed engine of destruction here, feeling like it’s pretty close to dead-on the optimal configuration of pure horde Green Tide. 60 max durability Boyz in Warboss/Painboy setups, backed by one big Weirdboy unit to farm CP early and warp in for a Tide of Muscle charge late, then a smaller Weirdboy unit to lock in objectives as the horde rolls forward. Complete the recipe with some utility units and the indestructible Meganob brick, and you have green tide perfection that will wash most foes clean off the table. It did just that under Florian’s command, congratulations!

Tim Schneider – Orks (Bully Boyz) – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Meganobz. Credit: Rockfish
Meganobz. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Bully Boyz

Thoughts

Bully Boyz make it a double header in the undefeated slots at this event, with Tim’s version of it skewing slightly towards durability via Big Meks instead of Warbosses for a couple of the Meganobz units. It also adds a bit of go-wide and utility power from small Nobz units and Flash Gitz, similar to Ben’s list from Wargames for Warriors. Clearly a bit of flexibility is the way to go when the metagame is gunning for you, well done to Tim!

The Best of the Rest

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

  • 3rd – Dennis Gottschalk – Grey Knights (Teleport Strike Force): Five Dreadknights and two Redeemers.
  • 4th – Kai Simonsen – Adeptus Mechanicus (Skitarii Hunter Cohort): A robot rampage with max Dragoons and Canis Rex.
  • 5th – Nils Gottschalk – Leagues of Votann: Heathguard/Land Fortress-heavy Votann.
  • 6th – Christophe Hardenne – Necrons (Hypercrypt Legion): Double C’tan, double Doomsday and a Warrior/Monolith combo.

Hydra GT II 2024

30-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Roskilde, DK on June 01 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Martin Bræmer Nielsen – Grey Knights (Teleport Strike Force) – 1st Place

Grey Knight Paladins. Credit: Colin Ward

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Terminators and Dreadknights

Thoughts

Grey Knights round out our roster of winners for the day, here going for a mere four Dreadknights so that it can include the full Grand Master Paladin unit and Draigo Brotherhood squad. I will continue to be on record as a huge fan of Grand Master Paladins with the Sigil, as it opens up so many matchups, and the pressure headache that Draigo represents is very helpful in a lot of games. Big fan of this, especially as it makes a change from “whoops all Dreadknights”, well done Martin.

The Best of the Rest

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

  • 2nd – Bo Moerck Penstoft – Blood Angels (Sons of Sanguinius): Heavy-duty as Sons of Sanguinius go, opting for full-sized Jump Intercessor units with Sanguinary Priests, plus the mandatory big Death Company and VanVet units.
  • 3rd – Peter Herbild – Thousand Sons (Cult of Magic): Standard-issue five Rubricae unit Tsons.
  • 4th – Morten Wedel – Chaos Daemons (Daemonic Incursion): A proper captain anti-Planet build with a Greater Daemon of each god (Skarbrand and regulars for the rest) and a bunch of Flamers and Flesh Hounds to provide speedy support.

Wrap Up

That’s it for part two, check out the finale for the week tomorrow as we continue to countdown to the end of the Leviathan season.

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