As seems to be something of a pattern, we’ve had a few wild, blowout weeks, we’ve got another exciting one coming up with the UKTC Leicester supermajor and US Roadshow finale, but this weekend past was reasonably quiet on the singles front, with just four GTs to cover. Serendipitously, however, there were also a couple of respectably sized team events over the weekend, so it’s once again time for a Teams Week as we see how the Balance Dataslate has impacted army building in that world. Let’s get the singles out of the way first, then cast our eyes over to Italy and the Netherlands for all the 20-0 hotness.

As ever, in singles events where it makes sense for the scoring, any list that entered the final round undefeated but didn’t win the event is marked with a ✪.

Lists of the Week

This section highlights two lists from Best of the Rest sections that are particularly unusual or innovative.

Michael Costello – Deathwatch – 2nd Place – FactoruM November GT

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Hyper aggressive melee Kill Teams get straight into the opponent’s face with the White Scars Chapter Tactic enabled army-wide.
• Storm bolter Aquila team in a Drop Pod provides a cheap and effective way to maximise the value of Specialism Extremis.
• Judiciar and Speed of the Primarch provide ways to manipulate combat timing without needing a Librarian, keeping Abhor the Witch open.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Vanguard Tactics coach Michael has already featured in this column for winning an event with a hyper-aggressive Kill Team-focused build, so it’s not surprising to see him trying out the new hotness. The brutal initial punch of this army is provided by the three big Proteus teams, who thanks to Veterans of the Long Vigil can now all switch to the White Scars Chapter Tactic for an early rush when appropriate, using the speed and large base of the Biker models to reach out and maximise the chances of an early charge. If the opponent is cautious enough to avoid that, then any of Iron Hands, Raven Guard or Salamanders might provide a spicy defensive boost while closing, or even Black Templars when facing off against Thousand Sons. Once they hit combat, these squads were already murder machines, but having them as a mix of Malleus and Dominatus means that Specialism Extremis can shoot their damage output to the moon into either Talos or opposing Dreadnoughts/Dreadknights as needed.

The main event for that stratagem is definitely the drop pod storm bolter unit however, which really highlights how much automatic wounds turns any semblance of normal damage maths on its head. It doesn’t matter what you’re shooting, all that matters is that you have a lot of it, and with Deathwatch’s ability to ensure Tactical Doctrine is lined up for the appropriate turn, this squad can check in and  evaporate a wide variety of targets, and using storm bolters for this keeps them at a more comfortable price tag than some alternatives. The assault plasma Hellblasters bring up the rear as another way of getting value from this, and again being Aquila means they can zap in with the Beacon Angelis to smoke pretty much anything in a pinch (and are easier to pre-load with the Watch Master re-rolls).

That’s some strong stuff and looks very potent, but there’s one more neat trick from the AoR, which is the use of Honoured Veteran of the Watch to apply Speed of the Primarch to a sergeant via Paragon of their Chapter. I imagine there will be an FAQ at some point clarifying exactly what happens here, but since there’s not really a concept of a unit “partially” fighting outside of legacy 8th Edition rules the most obvious ruling (and the one the event went with) is that the whole unit gets to fight first, and that makes this squad a particularly commanding threat, especially as there’s a Judiciar bouncing around as well. Deathwatch make frequent use of Premorphic Resonance to help their melee units out, but right now you desperately want to avoid bringing a Psyker unless you have to, and these inclusions help provide the same utility without making that compromise.

What true Deathwatch veteran would compromise, after all? Specialism Extremis continues to stand out as one of the most buck wild stratagems ever printed, and while it’s healthily gated behind real constraints, I don’t think this is the last we’ll see of it out in the metagame (especially if Michael has anything to do with it).

David Fields – Chaos Knights – 5th Place – Return of the Leftovers

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• All pressure, all exploding hits.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

The Balance Dataslate absolutely turbocharged the ability of Knights to play the objective game, and that rewards players who are willing to get in the opponent’s face and start swinging. We’ve seen people trying Krast and Freeblade Lance builds already, but this week it’s the turn of the ruinous powers to try out the new goodness, building on a particularly nasty bit of three-way synergy.

The Frenzied Attackers custom trait gives you extra hits on 6s in melee, but is explicitly prevented from comboing with Titanic Feet, making it of limited utility on most normal Knights as you can’t combine it with the tripled hit rolls for massive explosive dice pools. No such limitation, however, is applied to either the sweep mode of reaper chain cleavers or (crucially) the hit roll multiplying weaponry of big Forge World Knights. This list goes in hard on that, stacking a bonus attack from Iconoclasts onto a Castigator and Atropos and going even further on the latter with Knight Diabolus, creating two monstrosities that can punt the vast majority of targets directly into the sun on demand (especially if you stick Trail of Destruction on top of the Atropos’ 18 exploding 6s hit rolls).

Also pretty comfortable doing that is the Knight Rampager – who doesn’t get a multiplying weapon to explode, but is rolling seven (or sometimes eight) attacks with the Teeth that Hunger that double explode on 6s (the relic chainsword explicitly does work with the Rampager’s ability per the FAQ), and Vow of Dominance on the defence makes them especially proficient at duelling enemy Dreadknights, and great at carving up Talos like it ain’t no thing. These three brutal killers are backed up by a pair of War Dogs with the cleavers, and the whole lot are extra hard to suppress thanks to Pride-fuelled Fury, ensuring that only a clean kill is ever really good enough.

Round out with two autocannon War Dogs that the opponent is taking a big risk by diverting firepower to and you’ve got a spicy Knight list that really leans into the aggression the new rules reward. Very cool from David.

Reading Warfare 2021

All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings. This event was running at 1750pts rather than the usual 2000. In addition, there was an extra event stratagem allowing you to clear space for a Fortification in your deployment zone if you wanted to bring one.

Doug Tabor – Drukhari – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Talos Drukhari

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

When you cut armies down to 1750 you tend to need to make a few sacrifices, with many lists having to either sacrifice a bit of raw killing power or cut back on their utility units to fit. That tends to result in an environment where the average threat level is a little lower, which can sometimes let unusual builds shine, but also means that armies whose gimmick is “being hard to kill” tend to perform even more strongly, and it looks like Talos are no exception. Doug’s list here does have to sacrifice the Grotesques you might normally see in the Covens builds, but because Talos and Cronos are such versatile killers the fact that they’ll stick around longer more than makes up for it, and between them dominating the table and the Wracks, Mandrakes and Blackstone Ur-Ghuls providing excellent value utility pieces, this list is still very capable of contesting both a straight fight and a more objective-focused game. Add in Drazhar’s trade potential being even more valuable in small games (because when he trades up that’s a bigger chunk of the opposing force) and you’ve got an extremely spicy build that was able to narrowly pip Necrons on table one for the win. Congratulations to Doug, a longtime Drukhari fan and occasional playtest partner (so I can assure you he was playing them way before they were cool).

The Rest of the Best

Seven players finished on 4-1 or better (the second place player was on 4.5-0.5). They were:

• 2nd – Martyn Cooper – Drukhari: Another dedicated Drukhari player in second, mixing up a smaller number of Talos with quite a bit of shooting, including a Ravager, in a Realspace Raid.
• 3rd ✪ – Joe Maylam – Necrons: Necrons are definite winners from 1750, as the reduction in opposing threat helps them stay on the board to benefit from Reanimation and Eternal Expansionists more reliably. Joe’s build leans into that, featuring the return (after a long absence) of Canoptek Spyders alongside a Warrior unit, Canoptek Doomstalkers and a carpet of Scarabs.
• 4th – Sid Sidhu – Grey Knights: Similar to Talos, if you thought five Dreadknights were a pain to deal with at 2000pts, wait till you see them at 1750 (though they do end up hurting quite a bit for utility support, giving opponents an angle to aim at).
• 5th – Thomas Douch – Adepta Sororitas: Martyred Lady board control, another definite winner from the smaller games as they’ll be better able to stay on the table, and the stratagems to shoot as they die become relatively more valuable.
• 6th – Stewart Bull – Grey Knights: The other route for Grey Knights in this format, which is cutting down to only three Dreadknights but keeping the Interceptor contingent to bully the opponent with mobility.
• 7th ✪ – Mark Vickery – Craftworlds: Good vibes here, as it’s just lots of Aspect Warriors and Wraiths with Transport backup but still managed a fantastic run to get to the last round undefeated (though was then mercilessly eliminated by Martyn’s Drukhari as the laws of the metagame re-asserted themselves).
• 8th – Tony Sutton – Craftworlds: More Asuryani fun, still sporting some unusual tricks but also packing the more reliable tools of Shining Spears and a large Reaper unit.

Into The Hellstorm GLADIUS

All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Josh Roberts – Iron Hands Successors – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Iron Hands Successors

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Iron Hands continue to make a real play to reclaim their old crown in the new metagame thanks to the exceptional power of these Dreads/Devs/VanVets builds. The (now firmly established) addition of Hekaton Aiakos to provide a second bodyguardable Dreadnought, plus the extreme potency of the Dreadnought Chainfist in a world full of Dreadknights and buggies that are now forced to travel in units only makes an already excellent archetype even stronger, and you should expect to see builds like this continue to win events for the foreseeable.

Josh’s build stands out for being particularly flexible, with all of its Dreadnoughts sporting mixed loadouts, a grav cannon in each Dev squad and a thunder hammer in each VanVet unit, all of which just really hammers home the message – this list is ready to fight anything at any range, and can adapt to pretty much any situation the game throws at it. Sterling stuff, congratulations Josh.

The Rest of the Best

Four players finished on 5-1. They were:

• 2nd – Courtney Rhodes – Orks: A strong showing for mechanised Orks here, with Ghaz, Kill Rigs and Trukk boyz galore.
• 3rd – Henry Bearne – Thousand Sons: The full on Time/Duplicity double Scarab gut punch and a massive number of casters behind them.
• 4th – John Swallow – Drukhari: Newfangled shooty Drukhari here, featuring Voidravens, Ravagers and Trueborn alongside two large units of Blaster-toting T5 Reavers, all backed by Succubi and Incubi in transports. Looks pretty vicious, and with many players tuning their list on the assumption that there are fewer 3+d3 damage guns about, potentially poised to catch people by surprise.
• 5th – Mark Pilkington – Thousand Sons: Another double Terminator TimeDuplicity build, this time with VolCons instead of as many characters.

FactoruM November GT

All the lists for this event can be found on Best Coast Pairings.

Ben Jones – Drukhari – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Talos Drukhari

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Please continue welcoming your new Covens overlords. This build does stand out a bit from the others we’ve seen since the update in that it mostly eschews Cronos, just packing a single one to provide Spirit Probe re-rolls and the option to spike Pain Syphon with early shooting. Instead, it invests in extra Grotesques alongside the commonly seen tough Court (here with a Lhamean for good Ld) and Haemoxcyte unit, plus utility and trade characters in support. Congratulations to Ben, and for everyone else, if you weren’t already, make sure you’re packing big, big guns in the new world.

The Rest of the Best

Five players finished on 4-1. They were:

• 2nd – Michael Costello – Deathwatch: See lists of the week.
• 3rd – Liam Callebout – Chaos: Extreme monster mash, with Be’lakor, Mortarion and three Keepers (including Shalaxi), this list can absolutely rampage around the table and is a big winner from AdMech shooting in particular going away.
• 4th ✪ – Maxine Blythin – Dark Angels: Maxine packs a Dark Angels list that sports many fo the Deathwing hits in one detachment, but goes in hard on the plasma death in the other by packing a five-model Inceptor squad. With Azrael providing full re-rolls and an invuln they definitely look spicy in the metagame, as they’re operating in a target-rich environment that promises huge value when they go all-out with Weapons from the Dark Age.
• 5th – Paul Bridge – Death Guard: Shooty Mortarion’s Anvil with Bloat-drones to spread the Gloaming Bloat love.
• 6th – Chris Anderson – Grey Knights: Dreadknights and Interceptors.

Return of the Leftovers

All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Sean Rice – Grey Knights – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Dreadknights and Interceptors

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

You know the deal folks. Extra psychic damage output from the Purifiers and the super Librarian can help a bit into Covens, as it breaks the army’s general reliance on D2 weaponry, and it’s cool to see First to the Fray on the Prescient Dreadknight pop up again, but otherwise this is business as usual, and very effective business at that. Congratulations to Sean.

The Rest of the Best

Five players achieved 4-1 finishes. They were:

• 2nd – Tarzan – Orks: Another clear sign that Freebooterz are going nowhere, this build joins several others in packing lots of Deffkoptas and some Boosta Blastas to plug the gaps left by the third and fourth plane, and opts for Dakkajets rather than Wazboms in the flyer slot to shore up the anti-infantry game and free points for a Squigosaur.
• 3rd – Matthew Rogers – Grey Knights: Dreadknights and Interceptors, but does add some unique tech in the form of multi-melta Vendreads, which I have to imagine are pretty decent into the Talos matchup.
• 4th ✪ – Joseph Gillespie – Thousand Sons: Joseph puts up another strong result with his Sicarian-toting Cult of Time build.
• 5th – David Fields – Chaos Knights: See lists of the week.
• 6th – Nathaniel Williams – Aeldari: An outing for the Skyrunner Conclave with Drukhari trade pieces in support, ready to pounce on anything that either gets tangled up with the bikes or tries to work around them.

Team Events – How They Work

Gonna go ahead and add this to my ever-growing list of “things that should be on a permanent page”, but as a reminder for those not familiar with them Team Events tend differ from singles in the following ways:

• Teams match up against teams, and each game is scored on a differential 20-0 system, awarding more points to the winner and fewer to the loser depending on the margin of victory, splitting a total of 20. A close game might give 11pts to the winner and 9pts to the loser, while a complete stomping will give the coveted “20-0” score to the winner.
• Within each team match, players get matched up in a pairing process where each team has some ways to try and maneuvre lists into favourable matchups (and sometimes onto favourable terrain, as there are often different levels of density on different tables). Details of the pairing process for WTC, which many events base theirs on, can be found here. That assumes 8 player teams, but the process is iterative so can be cut down to smaller numbers (both of today’s events used four player teams).
• In each match, the winning team is the one that gets the highest total score out of the games played – so just because you lose your game, doesn’t mean your team can’t be victorious.
• Each team can only use each Codex once – so no showing up with four of the same busted list!

This tends to mean:

• Winning big is important, so you often see lists included that are all-in on absolutely smashing the opponent off the table, often sacrificing some of the flexibility you’ll see in singles lists to do so.
• Conversely, fighting a hard game to a narrow loss is also very valuable, so you’ll often see so-called “defender” lists included that are designed to have a reliable plan to score at least decently in most games.
• Bringing armies that are designed to counter key matchups, or that rely on certain terrain styles, can be powerful.
• Sometimes skewing a whole team’s composition to include lots of lists that share characteristics (e.g. running a whole team of vehicle-heavy lists) can be strong if it has the potential to overwhelm opposing counters.

Early in 9th we often saw Teams leaning into this heavily, but in more recent team events the compositions have frequently been dominated by the best builds from standout singles factions, as all of Drukhari, Orks and the Adeptus Mechanicus could comfortably offer massive blowouts. Has the balance dataslate changed things? Let’s take a look at the top two team compositions from each of our two events and find out.

Modena WTC Team Tournament

All the lists for this event can be found in Tourneykeeper. This event featured four-player teams.

1st Place – Blacklist 2

Team Composition

• Eugenio Leonardi – Adeptus Mechanicus: AdMech have dropped off sharply in singles play since the arrival of the Balance Dataslate, but it looks like over in teams they’ve still got plenty to offer – specifically plenty of massive d3+3 damage shots. Sporting lots of of Ironstriders, three Onager Dunecrawlers with the laser and a Stratoraptor on top as Mars, backed up by a small Lucius detachment providing access to Solar Flared rangers. Even with the power level reduced, if the opposing team is bringing any lists featuring lots of vehicles or monsters (which is hardly going to be uncommon with Talos being so string) having access to this style of build is still valuable in a format where having to bring a bit less support than AdMech are used to is still great.
• Riccardo Ghio – Grey Knights: lots of the expected tools here (Dreadknights, Interceptors) but one very unusual choice in the form of a small squad of Paladins. These are sporting Armoured Resilience and Ethereal Castigation, so my guess is that they’re tech to try and help out if the army is forced to play on heavier terrain than it wants, plus providing a potential third To the Last choice alongside the two juiced up GMDKs for matching up into less murderous lists.
• Marco Franza – Tyranids: Oh lord. You know how last week we saw Leviathan Harridans start popping up? Well good news – here’s a Hierophant getting in on the action too. Like most of the big Tyranid FW monsters, this is actually costed pretty competitively for what it does (certainly if you compare it to titans in almost any other faction), and being able to stack all the fancy new Leviathan buffs on it (in particular being able to give it ObSec with Hive Mind Imperative) makes it genuinely playable. That’s particularly true in teams, because lists built around this and the Harridan are very binary, asking the simple question of whether the opponent has the guns to shoot them off the table quickly or not. If they don’t, they’re going to have an extremely bad time, and in teams you can swing for matchups where that’s true. Beyond that, you’ve got the standard full Hive Guard unit, a big squad of Genestealers (here planning to ride around on the Hierophant rather than get Swarmlorded) and plenty of objective support from Lictors. I probably should point out, in fairness, that this build did perform a little weaker than some of the other lists on the team, but that looks to be because a.) it jumped on several grenades in the form of Grey Knight builds and b.) it hit an effective mirror in a Harridan build, which is going to end with a 20-0 in one direction pretty much every time as one side finds itself without any Hive Guard or bio-titans at the end of turn 1.
• Gianluca Legumi – Aeldari: Craftworlds and Harlequins to round out, going much heavier on the Craftworlds side then normal with plenty of Shining Spears as well as tempest launcher Reapers. This build is very mobile, and should be able to counter any opponents planning on hunkering down on heavier tables thanks to the nippy bikers supported by artillery fire, and has individual bright lance War Walkers to provide a limited number of bigger shots if it gets forced into the wrong matchup.

Thoughts

The big metagame standouts from looking at this setup are that AdMech are still around, despite the point hikes and Tyranids are a definite new darling for team events (as they provide you with multiple angles to go for big blowouts). On a team level, this setup goes especially hard on tough stuff, looking to overwhelm the enemy’s anti-tank, with even the Craftworld build investing in a Wave Serpent to protect the 3×3 Dark Reapers in deployment (also potentially a response to Hive Guard being a big deal, as a single round of shooting from them will almost never crack a Serpent open). Since three of the four lists are also capable of throwing out massive early damage in the shooting phase, the team has a pretty good chance of lining up multiple games where it can just overwhelm the opponent, and that seems to have largely been what happened based on the scores – the Aeldari and Tyranid lists stepped on whatever nasty grenades the opposing composition had, both usually walking away with at least respectable scores, while the AdMech and Grey knights racked up huge wins to carry the team.

2nd Place – Io sto con gli Ippopotami

Team Composition

• Pietro Riccio – Thousand Sons: Hardcore Cult of Time here, with two full Terminator blobs and loads of Rubricae, all units sporting soulreapers. We’ve seen decent singles performances from builds of this nature, and being very polarised makes them a great choice for teams, as if the opponent is bad at dealing with the grinding nonsense on show here they’re just going to lose. It’s also a decent defender pick, as it’s extremely tricky to take off the table fast in most cases, with the only caveat being that you can’t safely do that if the opponent has Grey Knights, who will ship this army directly into the trash (as happened when the top two teams faced off).
• Francesco Gozzi – Grey Knights: Down the line Dreadknights and Interceptors, pretty much just a straight import of the Prescient/Swordbearers five Dreadknight list, plus the psychic murder Librarian. As ever, the very best singles lists will do just fine in teams.
• Daniele De Gemini – Drukhari: For teams we’ve generally seen that transport-focused Drukhari builds do best, as the combination of mobility and layered objective control that provides is the biggest unique draw Drukahri can provide in this format. That’s really hammered home here, because despite singles play pivoting at speed to Covens after their buffs, this list is still very much the Raider-bound goodstuff of old, with six transports packed with a wide variety of nasty infantry units.
• Francesco Di Bonaventura – Necrons: Army-wide ObSec via Eternal Conquerors is Necrons big asset for teams, and that’s on show here. Rather than take Relentlessly Expansionist with it, this build opts for Interplanetary Invaders to amp up the capabilities of Doomsday Arks and Annihilation Barges, then backs them up with some spicy, newly CORE-ified toys. These comprise two big units of Wraiths and a fully loaded brick of Lokhust Destroyers, with a CCB and Technomancer playing support. Destroyers have some very polarised matchups, but if you can navigate them into games where they’re hard to deal with their damage output is now pretty spectacular, and this build looks fantastic for teams, combining the hard-to-stop linear scoring plan that Necrons favour with the damage to body some opponents. That was reflected by this being the most successful list in this team comp.

Thoughts

This is another team where none of the builds expose that much in the way of easy targets, with the initial attack surface of all the armies comprising durable stuff. While it isn’t as wildly out-and-out deadly as the first place team, all of the armies in it have a plan for grindier gameplay, and what seems to have happened in most of their games is that the majority of tables ended up pretty close, and then the Necrons ran absolutely hog wild over whichever poor soul they faced down, either catapulting the team to a win or salvaging a draw from a match where the rest of the lists had a rough time of it. OVERLORD WINGS does, of course, approve of this tactic, and I think it’s genuinely possible that there may have been an element of opponents underestimating the power of Lokhust Destroyers at play here!

Alliance Open Team Championship

All the lists for this event can be found on the Alliance Open’s pairings site, sporting some fancy new upgrades by the looks of things. This event featured four-player teams.

1st Place – Fallen Angels

Team Composition

• Pim Roeske – Adepta Sororitas: An Ebon Chalice/Bloody Rose build that wouldn’t especially look out of place in singles play, with the exception that it goes in for two big units of halberd Sacresants in place of some trade pieces in the BR detachment. That makes this well suited for dealing with opponents heavy on damage reduction like Talos or Iron Hands Dreadnoughts, as its damage output is made up ofvolume high-quality D1 stuff, mortal wounds and big melta hits, all of which is impacted far less than D2 or D3 firepower.
• Ruud Steenbakkers – Drukhari: Score another one for speedy, shootier Drukhari here, with Raiders, Ravagers and lots of Hellions in support, plus two eight-model Courts for objective play out of the Raiders. Hilariously, it looks like a lot of people teched for Talos at these events and then the Drukhari lists the top teams bought along went in very different directions.
• Justin Jansen – Grey Knights: Dreadknights and Interceptors, plumping for Prescient Brethren and Blades of Victory for the extra early pressure – definitely a strong choice if you’re fishing for big wins.
• Mani Cheema – Tyranids: International Mani of mystery season continues, apparently, with the Hive Guard spam build he took to Texas coming out to play once more. Given it is a build designed to eradicate opponents from the board with impunity in a couple of shooting phases, it is obviously highly suited to teams play.

Thoughts

With the exception of the Drukhari build sticking to the shooty Goodstuff style, this team is much more an example of stacking up lots of top singles builds, lightly tune them for teams, and going wild. The Hive Guard list is just filthy in any matchup that doesn’t hard counter it (of which there are very few), adding Blades of Victory pressure to the Grey Knights increases their shot at 20-0s, and the tools chosen for the other two builds ensure they have broad damage dealing capability and a reasonable amount of stickiness on the table, helping them reliably take points from every game. All of that added up to some eye-watering scorelines in this team’s favour, including going 79-1 in the final round. I assume whoever dropped that single point will be fired forthwith.

2nd Place – A giant, an ork, and 5 dreadknights walk into a bar….

Team Composition

• Tom Adriany – Imperial Knights: The Freeblade Lance gets a team event debut here, packing two ObSec big Knights and loads of Armigers. Going a bit wider reduces the vulnerability to high shooting matchups (at least letting the list hide enough to salvage some points), while new and improved objective play capabilities augment the already very real blowout capabilities that Knights bring to the table.
• Pierre-Yves Desplancques – Grey Knights: Standard Prescient/Swordbearer Dreadknights and Interceptors.
• Liam Vsl – Thousand Sons: the Duplicity/Time double Terminator ultra pressure build, easily the Tsons list with the biggest blowout potential so an easy choice for the format.
• Guillaume Dusaussois – Adepta Sororitas: A high damage build at both mid and close range, combinging Argent Shroud for reliable melta and Blessed Bolts Dominions with the Bloody Rose.

Thoughts

A definite skew towards durability here, with three of the four lists needing serious weaponry to make any dent in, and the final build being ideally suited to exploiting heavier terrain for protection and lashing out to delete key targets. Having the Grey Knight/Thousand Sons double team is also always handy, because it means that as long as you have those armies in-hand in the pairings process the opponent can’t really put up any list that loses a psychic duel as a defender. Finally, it’s cool to see Imperial Knights getting to flourish with their new upgrades, especially the Freeblade Lance, objectively the coolest Knight list. Sorry, that’s just the way it is, I don’t make the rules.

Wrap Up

Not too sad to have a slightly quieter week, especially as it’s given us a chance to glance over at team event happenings, but it’s straight back to the supermajor spectaculars next week and special showcases next week, so tune in to find out all that plays out and whether taking Necrons out to a supermajor as my first games with them for nine months turns out to be a spectacularly bad idea. See you then! Comments, questions and suggestions to contact@goonhammer.com.