The 2022 season is officially underway, and while we’ve still got a little bit of lag thanks to rules cutoffs, this week saw the first GT played with the new missions and points in play at CaptainCon, plus a couple of events giving 2021’s missions a final sendoff. Next weekend is when the season really starts to motor, as in the UK we’ve got both a supermajor (Beachhead Brawl) and a major (run by Team Stonehammer) firing with the new missions, balance dataslate and Tau all in play, so we should get a good initial look at the metagame. I’ll be at Beachhead, so as ever do come and say hi as I work through the process of discovering whether my Genius Metagame Tech actually works, and for now let’s turn to this weeks events to whet our appetite.

CaptainCon GT

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

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Brady Tatro – Adeptus Custodes – extra shooty Emperor’s Chosen with an Inquisitor for Psychic Actions.
vs.
Ramses Alcaide – Drukhari – Talos/Wrack heavy Covens with a minimal Black Heart Detachment

Data Scry Salvage – GW Open Terrain Map 2 (thanks to the TOs for passing that last bit on!)

Thoughts

The new hotness throws down against the old here, on one of the more demanding of the new missions to boot. Right out of the gate, Data Scry Salvage looks reasonably promising for the Drukhari here, as they’ve just got a lot more stuff, which is especially relevant on this mission because having a “spare” unit to sit at home and crank out the Action is highly relevant. If the Custodes want to bring their Inquisitor out for Mental Interogation (and in this matchup I think they definitely do) then they’re going to have to leave at minimum a 150pt unit sitting at home slamming the button, which stings a bit. The Drukhari also have plenty of Artists of Flesh Wracks in tow, which could prove a challenge for Custodes to chew through fast enough to start scoring Primary in this Domination mission. Finally, having a Black Heart detachment around against Custodes is extremely good, as adding a CP to either Arcane Genetic Alchemy or Emperor’s Auspice can be super good (the former is probably preferable here, as the Drukhari list is light on re-rolls until melee is joined).

Some good stuff for the Drukhari then, so let’s spin over to the Custodes and consider their assets. First up, they are going to win a gunfight, and win it hard. The Drukhari may have more big shots, but they’re firing BS4+ heat lances with no re-rolls into 4+ invulns and Arcane, while the Custodes are going to be able to rack up 7-8 wounding hits with their salvo launchers a turn (remembering that the Captain has one), the Caladius gets to play as well with its blaze cannon, and all of this is very likely to get first-strike advantage – Talos need to be within 26″ of the Custodes at the start of their turn to get their shots off at all, while Custodes have the speed and a redeploy from the Castellan’s Mark to ensure they’re lined up to blast most of a unit of Talos clean off the table straight away and start rolling from there, aiming to atomise as many Wracks as possible with melee and backup shooting. While there are a not inconsiderable number of models on the Drukhari side of the table, only the Talos are super good at killing Custodes, so if the Custodes can get some momentum going on killing them, this game is going to go south.

That feels like where the inflection point in this game sits – from the Custodes side of the table, barring a very unlucky set of saves against heat lances, you can plan around gradually taking most of list off the table, but this is a Domination mission where the alternative primary favours the Drukhari, so by itself that doesn’t give you the win. With that in mind, your priority becomes establishing a scoring foothold as quickly as possible, and doing anything possible to deny the Drukhari points, as they’re likely to have them rolling in early-to-mid game. That feels like it means the bikes focusing on absolutely trashing one flank with Trajann and one unit of Sagittarum in support so that there are ObSec models to toe onto objectives and allow the bikes to outnumber stuff, as getting a foothold on two of the no-man’s land objectives allows a comfortable 10pts per turn clip (8 from objectives, two from the Action). At the same time, the Wardens and other Sagittarum unit should probably be staging for a push onto the more central of the objective on the other side of the table, ready to push on and deny a big scoring turn as soon as the Drukhari are sufficiently weakened.

The super bike captain is also a huge asset in this came, as he does a whole lot. While the Drukhari do have more “spare” units to keep on a home objective, to stand up to the Bike Captain going full murder mode (and he’s gonna) will need them to hold back at least the Haemoxcytes or one of the big Wrack units, which diminishes their model count advantage they have mid field. The Captain can trivially stage for a strike thanks to the Wardens, and his existence makes Herd the Prey look incredibly dicey, as he can and will switch off a quarter for this by himself.

Looking at Secondaries more generally, Custodes feel like they’re on Mental Interrogation for sure and probably Grind, probably rounding out with just Bring it Down or Assassinate for some comfortable points while they execute their plan. Drukhari’s options look much shakier – RND is a gimmee for them, but the rest are pretty spooky into such a brutal list. Stranglehold probably ends up the pick over Herd simply on the basis that your model for winning this game involves you successfully preventing the Custodes from quickly sweeping you off two objectives, preventing them moving on and rolling you over, and Strangle is what you’ll score while doing that. Alternatively, you can turn the Custodes plan back on them and go all out to try and just crush whatever initial foray they make with overwhelming Talos force, and use Wracks to push and contest objectives from there, at which point either Herd or Strangle plays nice – though if you end up going first that’s probably harder, because you have to commit somewhere then the bikes get a tasty first strike on you. The third choice is also rough – No Prisoners is going to be low scoring but may genuinely be your safest bet, as Assassinate isn’t much safer or better.

The other curveball option comes from throwing this one out to our team to discussion, which is going for To the Last and playing more cautiously. This event was using GW open layouts, which are great for hiding Talos, and the Custodes list doesn’t have much in the way of “spare” stuff to cheaply contest objectives with. Hide the Talos early, draw the opponent out by sparingly committing with Wracks (it helps that one of the bigger units can contest both objectives on a flank) and then use an Advance/Charge steamroller from Talos to knock out as many bikes as possible, then roll from there. You’re bound to lose one unit, but it’s probably ten points still if this plan goes off, and this feels like the best strategy to try and address this challenging game – especially because it feels like every turn spent on early, inconclusive skirmishes favours the Drukhari here, as does forcing the Custodes to spread out.

That does feel like a real route for Drukhari to win here, though shakier than the Custodes one, and the golden boys were able to take this game down (though not by a massive margin). However, this is a matchup that the Balance Dataslate swings substantially towards the Custodes, because thanks to their Rendax Katah speciality, Emperor’s Chosen lists now get two turns of Bikes being able to bypass Artists of the Flesh on the charge, massively increasing their ability to scythe through them and letting them play far more aggressively here. It also suddenly makes the bike captain an even bigger threat, as Auric Exemplar will kick in much harder. Expect to see Drukhari players retooling a lot to address this matchup!

Result

Custodes Victory 75-59

Brady Tatro – Adeptus Custodes – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Shooty Emperor’s Chosen

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

So, the winning build of the first Nachmund GT, what does it tell us? Mostly that Vertus Praetors are really, really good. That shouldn’t be a huge surprise to anyone who was watching the LVO, and it’s not even the last time you’re going to hear it in this article, but these absolutely ruled in the new Custodes book, got even better with free Misericordia, and are shortly going to be able to roll up Talos even more effectively thanks to being able to hit S8 with Katahs. Being able to drop defensive strats on MSUs for 1CP is exceptional, getting a fifth wound means that they take one additional D2 shot to die compared to the old book, and their salvo launchers are some of the most reliable D3+d3 shots out there, rivalled only by Mars Ironstriders. Their only downside is that they’re no longer ObSec, and I think that’s probably a factor pushing people towards using more of them – it means that when you need to ensure they fully clear an objective, you’ve got the numbers to do so. Here, the Bike Captain also helps out with that, the extra attacks from the Auric Exemplar trait pitching in if he’s ripping through enemy infantry. Bikes good, is what we’re saying.

Sagittarum are also, unsurprisingly, still very good, and while there are legitimate arguments between them, shield guard or just vanilla Custodians in the troops slot, if you want to take the shooting capabilities of the army to the max they’re the choice. One of the challenges Custodes do legitimately have is that they’re relatively short of disposable units to commit with, so being able to take out the enemy’s initial probes without getting within range for a counter charge can be very valuable, and lots and lots of reliable heavy bolter shots is never exactly a bad thing to have around for later on in the game. Joining them, and a fixture in a lot of builds, are some Custodian Wardens, because it turns out that being able to Bodyguard characters as nasty as the Bike Captain and Trajann is really, really good. On the bike in particular, the size of his base gives you lots of reach to hold an objective with impunity while keeping these out of the way – and they’re also just good killers in their own right.

Trajann doesn’t need any explanation – if you’re looking at a Custodes list and not seeing Trajann, you should be asking “where’s Trajann?”. The Inquisitor is new, however, and something I speculated we might see in Nachmund Custodes lists when covering the LVO results. Covering two Secondaries is generally pretty easy for this army, but they definitely can find themselves short of a third, especially as many lists will have Bikes as their To the Last options so having the ability to go in on Mental Interrogation when needed is good. The only thing to be careful with is that Custodes counting as extra models only works for protecting SHIELD HOST characters, so in MSU heavy lists like this you need to be a little cautious or…

Bring a tank. The Caladius Grav Tank is just a perfectly good all-rounder backfield unit, and providing LoSir for an Inqusitor is a strong additional bonus on top of that. A Telemon would, of course, also do the trick, but given their point cost is roughly Caladius + Inquisitor, you can see why this option ended up chosen!

Get ready to see lots of this sort of build, and get ready to start planning out ways to target it. I do think the lack of cheap units to commit with is a genuine weakness that can be targeted, as if you can bleed a few units away then the force with which Custodes can hit you is substantially diminished, but the army is so durable and deadly (and when bike-heavy, fast) that you’re going to be operating on a real knife edge. Luckily, we’re all going to get lots of practice, and big congratulations to Brady, the first of our new glorious golden overlords.

The Rest of the Best

Five players finished on 4-1 records. They were:

• 2nd – Tyler Russo – Orks: Frequently successful Warboss Tyler is back for the new season with a pure Evil Sunz Speed Mob packing eye-watering amounts of Dakka. Two big units of Deffkoptas and some Megatrakk Scrapjets bubbled around a Speed King provide some eye-watering Dakka and a great suite of To The Last targets, while Blastajets and Warbikers provide early reach and ObSec missiles respectively. Worth noting that Tyler got matched up against three Adeptus Custodes players and took all of them out, which makes sense as the sheer amount of great guns at AP-2 in this list can comfortably overwhelm them, which suggests this could be a promising place to look for a counter, or that Custodes might need to start bringing the Vexilla Magnifica to shore up the matchup. Tyler’s units are, as ever, named as well (presumably having nicked them from the Custodes, who have too many), which remains a very powerful flex when reaching the top four.
• 3rd – Lucas Patruno – Chaos Daemons: As much of a monster mash as you can muster in pure Slaanesh – all three regular Keepers, Shalxi and Be’lakor all zooming around the board punting people, with Fiends providing some melee trappers and Daemonettes and Furies covering objective play. Daemonettes seem like neat value on the new missions, and Fiends feel very promising if Tau come out swinging, though how well this build can stand up to Custodes (Lucas dropped a game to Brady) is an open question.
• 4th – Nick Miele – Tyranids: A rather esoteric spin on Crusher Stampede, going a bit wider than normal with some regular Carnifexes and packing in a Trygon Prime to drop in at the back. Lots of smaller monsters helps with Engage in the new missions, so that could be the consderation, but the drop in raw, brutal power compared to Dimachaeron lists could prove an issue.
• 5th ✪ – Ramses Alcaide – Drukhari: A last pre-balance Dataslate ride for Artists of the Flesh, going fully in on 9 Talos, and a whole carpet of Wracks with one whip and one ossefactor in each unit to provide a mix of punch, objective coverage and mobility (as the ossefactor unlocks Never Stationary). Undeniably one of the most powerful lists of the metagame that was, but we’ll see starting next week if it still has the staying power with the nerf to Artists of the Flesh.
• 6th – Rafael Buckentin – Adeptus Custodes: Infantry go-wide as Emperor’s Chosen, lots of MSUs of Sagittarum and Venatari, two Aquilon squads, a Vexilla Imperius to make them hit hard in melee and a Knight Centura with Silent Judge to help flip objectives, all rounded out with a punchy Telemon to land a hammer blow. Interesting alternate angle, and plausibly bypasses counters built with the bikes in mind.

Cross Swords GT

All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings. Note that while this event was mostly running on GT2021, because the Adeptus Custodes points changes for non-FW stuff got pushed early in a PDF, these were out before the rules cutoff, and thus were in play.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Cameron Giles – Adeptus Custodes – Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff with nine Bikes and some Achillus Dreads
vs.
Jack West – Adeptus Custodes – Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff with 11 Bikes and Sagittarum

The (old) Scouring

Thoughts

Custodes on Custodes action on the top table of this week’s UK GT, sending off everyone’s favourite GT2021 mission with a brutal deathmatch. Realistically, this is one of those matchups where variance is always going to play some sort of factor – with the mission as it is, players have to commit if they want to get anything done, and with each bike packing a missile that can comfortably one-shot their counterparts on the other side of the table, there’s always going to be some possibility that one side commits and bounces from invulns, then gets evaporated in response. This is also a game where it’s going to suck to go first, assuming the terrain is up to scratch, because the Scouring provides no option for staying fully cautious as the first player – you’re going to have to move out or fall permanently behind on scoring, and if you go too hard and catch a brutal counterattack, that’s that.

There are certainly ways this game can swing hard, in short, but it’s still worth comparing each players differing assets. Cameron’s list is a bit more of an all-rounder, bringing some Achillus Dreadnoughts and a five-model Shieldguard unit, while Jacks is faster and shootier, with extra bikes (including one unit of five), a Bike Captain and Sagittarum. Both have a Vexilla Magnifica and the Castellan’s Mark, and both have a small number of throwaway units – slightly more in Jack’s list, with an extra Allarus.

That gives both sides some notable assets. From Jack’s side, the big Bike unit is definitely handy, as while it’s more expensive to protect with stratagems, doing so will provide a bunch of value, and it’s an extremely effective bully unit, especially with the option to make it Shadowkeepers temporarily via Esteemed Amalgalm, and while it’s still operational it forces Cameron’s bikes to play a bit more cautiously. A second “spare” Allarus is good too – it provides the option to either go for ROD pretty comfortably (old missions, remember) or use these as an extremely minimal early commitment to objectives if forced onto the first turn. The flip side is that some of the units here are lower value than normal – the Sagittarum just aren’t going to do much (and you’d definitely prefer cheaper and/or better in melee here) and the Bike Captain is a less effective melee harasser than usual, as most of Cameron’s units will bounce his charge. For this mission and matchup especially, he would be much more useful to the list if there was a squad of Wardens around, as being able to have him Bodyguarded on an objective would help a lot.

From Cameron’s point of view, the unique toys he has to leverage are the big Shieldguard squad, which can out-ObSec anything in Jack’s army (and take Sagittarum out without breaking a sweat if they clash) and should also be able to soak a charge from anything via slamming strats, and the Achillus Dreads. Those are going to be very terrain dependent, but have a high chance of excelling here if they can get into a position where they can’t be sniped out at range, and have a reasonable charge on the central objective, they’re going to be very difficult to play around – the bikes do not want to be in a fight with one of these.

As it is wont to do, that ends up meaning The Scouring heavily influences this game, because having all points of interest within a Dreadnought charge of one another generally boosts what Cameron is bringing, while some of the upside Jack’s list would normally get from mobility is diminished by how constrained the main engagement is likely to be. It also means that Cameron can actually do something productive with the first turn, which is not nearly as true for Jack – using the Castellan’s Mark to bring the dreads and big shield unit forward then hustling them to whatever Obscuring terrain is in the mid-table creates some serious positional momentum, whereas Jack bringing a few bikes a bit further forward doesn’t make that much difference because they’re still going to have problems if they charge towards the dreads and fail to shoot them to death. The five bike unit is also by far the hardest thing in either army to hide, which might mean staging for battle is tricky. Despite all that, it does remain something with the potential to rapidly swing the game Jack’s way despite some of the challenges here – if it swoops in, shoots out the local Dreadnought then rolls through most of a shieldguard unit, that might provide enough momentum to take a win, but it would definitely prefer a mission that forced Cameron to spread out more.

As it is, this game looks to have been fairly brutal – which as mentioned up front is always a risk when powerful armies sporting invulns clash. Whether by being forced into a tricky position by the mission, being outfoxed by cunning dreadnoughts skulking behind walls or just by the dice going ice cold, Jack got fairly roundly chased off the table, with Cameron emerging triumphant.

Result

Custodes (Cameron) Victory – 78-27

Cameron Giles – Adeptus Custodes – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Because it’s just packed with great stuff. There already isn’t that much specific to say about this build, with the only unique inclusion being the larger block of Shieldguard. This can definitely help in the mirror, as if you start blowing strats it can soak the charge of most Custodes stuff, and still be standing with a reasonable number of ObSec bodies, and on that basis is also good if you run into the current UK meta favourite of Many Wracks – even if a squad of 20 rolls in, the Allarus Captain can warp in to join them, and you should be able to kill enough that your effective 14 models on the objective trumps whatever they have left. I also like the cheap and cheerful Achillus dreads for the meta, as they give you something that can counterpunch the beasties of the Crusher Stampede up-close, and as discussed above are a potent dissuader of enemy Bikes.

Very strong stuff overall, and a great showing from Cameron!

The Rest of the Best

Three players finished on 4-1 records. They were:

• 2nd – John Partridge – Drukhari: Covens Drukhari here, going with a wall of Talos and Grotesques with a few powerful characters and a small Black Heart Court of the Archon in support.
• 3rd – Gareth Purchon – Grey Knights: A reasonably future-proof Grey Knights list, running as pure Prescient Brethren and opting for a much heavier battle line than normal, with a Paladin Squad and Vendread joining the Dreadknight party.
• 4th – Jack West – Adeptus Custodes: An Emperor’s Chosen bike spectacular, packing in 11 regular ones protected by a Vexilla Magnifica and with a a tooled up Bike Captain to lead the charge. Goes quite light on Infantry to pay for it all, with just 2×3 Sagittarum and two solo-Allarus, with a small Prosecutor squad finishing things up.

Legion Events 40K GT

All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings. This event was still using the 2021 GT pack and rules.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Joseph Gillespie – Tyranids – Crusher Stampede with two Dimas and two Harpies
vs.
Steven Crawley – Drukhari – Covens with Artists of the Flesh Talos and Dark Technomancers Covens.

Retrieval Mission

Thoughts

Two brutal all-in builds clash here, with one of the most top-heavy Drukhari lists I’ve ever seen (12 total pain engines, and heavy investment in Characters beyond that) running into Crusher Stampede, whose secret is that it’s always top heavy. One of the reasons that the Drukhari build ends up so stacked is the Talos have some extra toys – they’re sporting twin liquifiers instead of their normal injectors, which is something of a mixed blessing here – it’s probably not the best matchup for them, but on the other hand spending a CP to take 4-5 wounds off an incoming Monster probably is worth it, and it makes cleanup duty for whatever Monsters cross the board a bit lower variance, always good.

The problem that the Drukhari have is that this investment means they’re pretty low on chaff and screening, and that means the two big Talos squads are very tempting prey for Dimachaerons, and the Characters are going to be living under constant threat of Crashing Through slamming home from the Harpies, so they’re going to need to use ruins and what limited screens are available to stay safe (at least the Haemoxcytes are pretty decent for this). However, if even one Talos squad gets Dima-fied then the Drukahri start looking light on ways to reliably clear out the big monsters as they check in and this becomes very uphill. Even Secondaries don’t really favour them as much as you’d probably expect, as they’re not super heavy on potential ROD units (or at least, will be sacrificing their screen to get them). The only real high point for the Drukhari is that the mission means that Crusher’s Battlefield Supremacy pick is going to be pretty high risk – both Engage or Stranglehold are going to mean feeding stuff to the Drukhari, who can pick up easy Herd in response. On paper, however, I would still hand this to the Tyranids, as I think this particular Drukhari list struggles to work around the hammer blows the Stampede can throw.

Awkwardly for me, the Drukhari took it, and while not a blowout, not by a wafer thin margin either, so what was the play? If I had to guess, I’d say either the terrain was such that it was possible to set the Talos up on the table fully screened from Dima charges by some of the infantry (inside an L-block with some chaff blocking them in) or the Talos all went into Strategic Reserves, and landed a convincing counterblow when they turned up. The biggest single challenge Drukhari can pose to Crusher here is that they have to come into the elves half of the table to make secondary scoring happen, and if that can be made unprofitable for the bugs, then the Covens counterpunch might be able to build enough of a material advantage to get the ball rolling from there. In addition, while the Dimas are terrifying threats, not every table has terrain pieces large enough to fully hide them (as they cannot benefit from Obscuring), so on some boards they have to play very carefully to avoid a potentially terminal heat lance volley (especially with a Raid Mastermind adding some extra re-rolls). Unusually, too, because of the liquifier guns on the Talos and Cronos flamers, a Dima losing some wounds but not dying starts to matter way more, as once they’re operating at ~5W remaining a charge becomes a super dicey prospect.

They definitely have some options, but boy would this be a scary game to play out, as it has the distinct feeling that one major mistake or a turn of very bad dice could hand things straight over to the Tyranids. With that in mind, well done to Steven for winning.

Result

Drukhari Victory 85-65

Steven Crawley – Drukhari – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Covens Drukhari

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

I am hurridly chasing this into the Rogue’s Gallery with a broom even as we speak – this list gets sliced up multiple ways by the Balance Dataslate and GT2022 army construction changes. I do think the pivot to more twin liquifiers had some potential interest attached prior to the Artists of Flesh nerf, but with Talos suddenly being significantly easier to kill in some games I think it’s hard to justify investing lots of points into them, though I can maybe imagine a world in which putting a unit of three into Strategic Reserves ends up as an interesting play depending on the meta. Plenty of Drukhari players will be heading to the drawing board in the next few weeks and I’m sure we’ll see what they come up with, but for now congratulations to Steven for locking up one final victory for the old hotness.

The Rest of the Best

This event ran as a knockout on day two, so I’m just going to cover the rest of the top four.

• 2nd ✪ – Joseph Gillespie – Tyranids: A fully vicious Crusher build, sporting a couple of Dimachaerons, a pair of Harpies and a Barbed Hierodule. No Hive Guard, but still a whole lot of problems for opponents to deal with. Also has the more unusual choice of a Haruspex with Murderous Size, and looking at it that sure is a lot of possible boosted attacks with the ravenous maw, so might be something to look at if points need to be shaved.
• 3rd – Jeremy Stan – Adeptus Custodes: Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff with Dreads and Bikes.
• 4th – Mark Aescht – Chaos Daemons: Well that’s one way to throw a curveball – Daemonic infantry horde as Disciples of Be’lakor, with just over 150 Troops of various flavours (including a big Horror blob) for opponents to try and chew through while Locus of Shadows provides protection.

Wrap Up

Next week we’re taking our first trip to major town, where we shall see how the Custodes fare against the newly arrived Tau Empire, as well as getting a look at how the game’s other factions are adapting to life in Nachmund. See you then! Comments, questions and suggestions to contact@goonhammer.com.