One final weekend for people to rack up points for the season finale, and on some level things were surprisingly quiet, with only three events of GT size or larger. However, two of those events were pretty spectacular in size, with both the UK and Australia seeing some of their biggest events of the season, and a decently sized US GT for players squeezing in some final reps.

We will, of course, be taking a look at all three, and the new Showdown format seemed to be a hit so it’s back (this time with the mission listed, as many requested in feedback). As mentioned last week, if you win an event or played on the top table in the final round and want to share any of your insights about the game or matchup, then hit me up at contact@goonhammer.com. I should also highlight some comments I spotted last week about the Ork Speed Mob, which is that while Attack Out of Da Sun does, as written, let you keep Deffkoptas safe with impunity, both players using the Speed Mob were playing with the precedent from the FAQ nerf to Booster Thrust that you can’t use it on the turn you arrive. Choosing not to exploit a gap in a rule that’s near certainly going to get fixed when the Octarius FAQ applies is great sportsmanship, and a really good thing to see!

Let’s dive in, and as ever any list marked with a ✪ in the placings entered the final round undefeated – though for this week that only applies to the GT, as both other events had top brackets going on. It’s also worth saying that neither of the big events this week were using the new GSC or Custodes books.

With the release of new points and army construction rules the Archetypes page does, of course, also need a signficant update, but my current plan is to hold off till after LVO to do that, since the old missions and points are all still in use there.

UKTC Nottingham Supermajor

All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings. This event saw a bit of a shakeup to the set of missions played at the UKTC events, with some Hammer and Anvil missions (Retrieval and Battle Lines) added to the mix. The variety was appreciated, and it generally felt like it slightly weakenend alpha shooting builds, as those tend to be hardest to avoid on Dawn of War maps.

All listed players at this event were undefeated across the first five rounds prior to the top four cut, so I haven’t bothered with stars.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Mani Cheema – Drukhari Wrack Spam
vs.
Malik Amin Rubio – Crusher Stampede with a Harridan

Scorched Earth

Thoughts

Two of the UK’s best players clashed on the Nottingham top tables, throwing down in a very unique matchup. Wrack spam has been building up quite a bit of hype recently as it’s become clearer and clearer that Artists of the Flesh Wracks are just the best Troops unit in the game, bar none. The layering of damage reduction, an invulnerable save and ignoring wounds means that killing lots of them is a slog, they’re far from harmless thanks to the power of electrocorrosive whips and full re-rolls from the Torturer’s Craft, and at only 8pts a model you can bring a lot. Mani’s list has en eye-watering 171 of them, carefuly arranged with layers of squads with whips and squads with an ossefactor for a cheeky shot, and sized so that only one exceeds the cost of the Court of the Archon and Drazhar. That gives the list three very durable To The Last choices (which are pretty easily hidden on the UKTC Terrain, though the Hive Guard are enough of a threat that you might choose to pass here), and if the opponent doesn’t have truly absurd damage potential, they’re never going to be able to reach out and take these down, will get overwhelmed on objectives and lose big on both Primary and Secondary.

Malik’s list is, to be fair, not short on damage, complementing some of the Crusher Stampede’s normal favourites with a Harridan. The Hive Mind’s favourite dragon is a terrifying multi-phase threat and extremely difficult for many lists to kill. Mani’s list is almost certain not to manage it – the sheer number of bodies he has on the board means that it probably does have to drop to hover mode to operate, but it’d take it catching full re-rolling swings multiple times and spiking down on saves to ever die, and it throws out more than enough pain to keep big units away from it. With Hive Guard operating as well, Malik’s list can definitely play keep-away well enough to be confident of pulling off To The Last as well, and has the alternative option of Grind from either picking off small Wrack units or focusing down one a turn while staying at bay.

The basic problem is that beyond that, from Malik’s side of the table, there aren’t that many angles for defeating the Wracks, and secondaries are tough just because of the sheer board coverage Mani’s list can maintain – simply moving in his half of the board is going to be rough, never mind bringing on a Lictor for any shenanigans. Warp Ritual from a Flyrant is probably one of the better options, especially as Crusher’s damage reduction and access to Transhuman means that the Competitive Edge Succubus is less terrifying than normal, but beyond that the basic plan is probably just to put up Banners on the two home objectives, bodily block one off as best as possible with a hovering Harridan, then go hell for leather on keeping the Wracks off those points (probably with a high-wound monster kept in permanent ObSec with Synaptic Imperative on the other) and using the Hive Guard to try and clear the To the Last targets if that’s what Mani has chosen. The problem, however, is that even the Harridan with Bioweapon Bond up is only going to take out 8-9 Wracks per shooting phase, and Hive Guard being unusually poor into Artists of the Flesh is one of the factors that have kept them at least somewhat in check since the Leviathan supplement dropped.

I feel like there is a world where the Hive Mind manages to do enough damage here to avoid the Wracks overwhelming them, and picking up a narrow win via well-timed denial on mid-board objectives, but I don’t think the vast majority of the time the inevitability of the Wracks wins out here. Looking at the scoreline, Malik clearly had a strong plan to rack up a decent number of points, as the outcome was far from a blowout, but waves after waves of shambling flesh monsters was too much to deal with in the end, and Mani took the win.

Result

Drukhari Victory 84-62

Mani Cheema – Drukhari – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Wracks for days.
• Nasty spike characters to remove melee threats that try to wipe the Wracks.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Most of this is covered in the showdown writeup above – this list is incredibly resilient, extremely good at playing both Primary and Secondary, and in most games (less so the Crusher Stampede) has enough ways of doing some spike damage that it can at least slow the opponent’s Wrack-clearing down. Frequently it won’t really need to – many armies just cannot deal with what it’s putting down, and will get overwhelmed. Other grindy lists can put up decent scores against it, but struggle to shut down its very linear plan, while lists that want to spike it out will just bounce, and this army has very few weaknesses. I’d guess Deathwing with multiple units of claw/bolter Relic Terminators probably has the best shot of doing it, combining ultra-durable ObSec to fight for objectives with the volume output to actually grind the Wracks out, probably followed by Grey Knights going wild with Storm bolters and Dreadknight guns, but I’d still bet on the Wracks most of the time, especially in Mani’s hands. Congratulations to Mani for winning the event with his latest diabolical creation, and I sort of hope he’s taking this across to Vegas, because Wracks badly need to go up in points in the February Balance Dataslate, and putting this list on the big stage can only increase the chances of that happening!

Malik Amin Rubio – Tyranids – 2nd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Harridan Crusher Stampede

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Crusher Stampede is already a list that can just obliterate some armies – the defences and damage output are just so high that they can eliminate the opponent’s key assets then roll them over from there. Including a Harridan takes that to the max – lists basically either can or can’t deal with one, and lists that can’t (excepting extreme outliers like Mani’s) won’t stay on the table against it, especially with the shooting of Hive Guard backing it up. That forces them to try and play for maximum objective points in the early and mid game, and the Stampede has more than enough tricks up its sleeve to brutally punish that plan and achieve a crushing victory. Unlike Mani’s list this army does take a small hit in the points changes, with the Hive Guard going up in price, but on some level this build gets hit less badly by the new season overall than other Crusher Stampede variants thanks to not particularly relying on Lictor-mediated ROD, and we’re probably going to continue to see dragons soaring across the sky in 40K as well as Sigmar. Congratulations to Malik on another excellent result.

Andrew Bourbon – Grey Knights – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Dreadknights and Interceptors

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

A semi-final ride for the five Dreadknight Swordbearers/Prescient combo takes Andrew to a commanding lead atop the ITC Best in Faction standings for the Knights of Titan ahead of Vegas, and is a timely reminder that they’re definitely in the conversation as a faction that could win the whole thing. Andrew’s build here does have some tuning for a metagame where hordier options and damage reduction are both on the rise, most notably the falchion unit – weight of D1 attacks that reliably slam into the mortal cap for Tide of Convergence being very much what you want into Crusher, Drukhari Covens and more. Given that both of those are still going to be a factor in the new season, while most Grey Knight lists are going to have to do some mandatory recalibration, expect to see that tech brought out more. Great stuff from Andrew here in third.

Chris Paterson – Iron Hands Successors – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Iron Hands Successors

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Neatly continuing our tour of top tier armies from the 2021 season we have Iron Hands Successors. Lethal alpha strike firepower from the drop pod, prepostorous damage potential from the fully buffed super Contemptor that can sit in a Bodyguard aura, all followed up by incredibly efficient universal melee punch from Vanguard Veterans buffed by the Chapter Tactic and blowing Mercy is Weakness allows this list to take down almost anything, up to and including most nasties the Crusher Stampede throws down, at least some of the time. The list is also excellent at Secondaries, with plenty of units for Engage, and ROD too, and this particular build is RND ready with lots of Phobos Troops.

While taking down big targets is something this list excels at, Chris’s rampage through the event was eventually put to a stop by Malik in the semi-finals, and it’s fair to say this army would rather face Dimachaeron builds than dragon-enabled Crusher. It probably can take out a Harridan, but it won’t manage it every time (especially if the Harridan gets buffs up) and can’t really afford the gamble, so ends up trying to kill everything else while weathering terrifying damage, and at that point all it’ll take is a minor stumble to fall terminally behind, which looks to be what happened. Still, a supermajor top four is a hell of a performance however you slice it, so congratulations to Chris.

The Rest of the Best

Four more players finished with 5-0 records. They were:

• 5th – Giulio Cesare Ghermandi – Drukhari: Goodstuff with a few Talos here, including several Venoms. That’s not hugely surprising, as they’re particularly excellent on the UKTC terrain, able to hide in small ruins and stage deadly charges from their passengers, and are also great ways of getting the standard-issue 2x liquifier & whip Wrack Squads to where they need to be.
• 6th – Ben Allen – Harlequins: Normally I would say “Bikes and Boats” here but that’s not actually accurate – this is “Whoops all boats”, with a mighty nine Skyweavers flitting around the battlefield packed with fusion goodness and a trio of Troupe masters at the head. The double header of Crusher Stampede and Talos at the top of the metagame makes a Harlequin build skewed in this direction look pretty appealing again, plausibly deserving a bump back to tier 2, as both those lists can be short of stuff to pop lots of transports in a single shooting phase, and get punished badly by this much mobile melta.
• 7th – Michael Costello – Deathwatch: Michael pilots the latest spin on his ultra-aggressive Kill Team Strike Force list to an undefeated run, bringing a Librarian back into the build to maintain the all-important access to Fight Last after the FAQ that removed Speed of the Primarch as an option for this. That helps out the terrifying melee push that is this list’s signature move, and this version also incorporates another powerful new element in the form of a heavy duty Indomitor Kill Team, featuring hellstorm bolt rifles and dakka Aggressors. Not only does this unit cheerfully sit on an objective for days with Fortified with Contempt and the Dominus Aegis up, it’s been selected as an Aquila Kill Team, so can mag dump a bazillion automatic wounds into almost anything once per game with Specialism Extremis, helping the army pro-actively interact with something like a Harridan, important if you’re aiming for the top in the UK metagame right now!
• 8th – Alex Fowler – Adeptus Custodes: The long goodnight of the old Custodes codex continues here, though this is another build that should transfer to the new book just fine – lots of Sagitarrum, two units of salvo launcher bikes and two Telemons provides some ferocious firepower, and all that remains true with the new book (more likely as Emperor’s Chosen now). Well done to Alex for taking the final undefeated spot with it.

Adelaide Uprising (major)

All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings. Note that this event split into four-player pods for the final two rounds, so the standings in BCP don’t directly correspond to the actual results – thanks to the organisers for getting in touch and sending the details of the top two pods!

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Matt Morosolli – Drukhari Covens
vs.
Liam Hackett – Goff Pressure

Surround & Destroy

Thoughts

Two strong factions in the hands of two excellent players meet here, with Matt’s relatively go-wide spin on Drukhari Covens meeting Liam’s brutal Goffs on a mission that forces an engagement on a pretty wide front. Mission-wise Matt’s list is pretty well suited – dropping down the number of Talos and investing in more go-wide board control is very helpful on Dawn of War setups with no central objective, much less vulnerable to an opponent picking away the non-Talos units then running circles around what’s left. My read on why the list goes wide is mostly to account for Crusher Stampede, which is just too good at punishing big units of Talos, but it certainly doesn’t hurt on objective play.

Unfortunately, where it does hurt is facing down a list like Liam’s, which is extremely capable of hitting reasonably hard across a broad front simultaneously. Goff Beast Snaggas are nasty damage dealer and near-perfectly suited for cutting down Wracks and Grotesques with minimal help, and while Wracks will also make a mess of Boyz and Beast Snaggas on the swingback, the fact that Liam’s list has both a mobility advantage and will come off better in a long-ranged slugfest means that he gets to dictate the terms of engagement. Eight BS4+ heat lance shots is nowhere near enough to equal the ranged pain the orks are throwing out, and when these lists slam together their army is going to be more intact, and it’ll be at a time of Liam’s choosing – definitely leaving him with the advantage. The fact that Ghaz might well get to check into some Talos largely untouched only amplifies these issues.

That’s not to say that the Drukhari have no options here mind – the Orks are relatively low on unit count, so if you can set up a situation where you can sweep one flank (or maybe all the infantry) on a counterattack that can leave you positioned well to run away with scoring. Putting the Cronos into Strategic Reserves would help with that – they’re pretty vulnerable to the Squigbuggies on the board, and will have minimal effect when shooting at the Ramshackle stuff, but coming in from a board edge they can target whatever infantry has emerged, and also threaten to break through to wherever the buggies are operating and shut them down. Not having anything to reach out and disable buggy shooting is definitely one of the Drukhari’s other problems here, so reserving the Cronos feels like their best angle to try and mitigate several of their challenges at once, and from their side of the table I would probably have combined that with a relatively gradual early commitment to the mid board to try and draw the Orks in – sure they can punch back, but every unit they use up is a serious payment for them.

As ever when top players clash this ran pretty close, but the Orks were triumphant in the end. While the Drukhari have some plans open, the fact does remain that a lot of what’s in the Ork list is just hard for them to deal with – lose the Talos and the Kill Rigs probably aren’t dying, and with two of those rampaging around the table, things are going to be very, very tough.

Result

Ork Victory – 89-75

Liam Hackett – Orks – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Goff Pressure

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Goffs have gone from strength to strength since people figured out just how good they really are, and this is another fantastic showing for them from Liam. As discussed in the showdown section this build isn’t especially complicated – it’s just incredibly brutal. Waaagh interacting with Kill Rigs allows it to get some incredibly nasty melee threats up the field at a serious pace, and turning relatively cheap units of Boyz or Beast Snaggas into terrifying missiles via the application of Warpath can cleave through both hordes and damage reduction targets alike. The fact that it’s heavy on Transports is also great in a Crusher Stampede metagame – other than arguably Ghaz, there aren’t nearly as many things in this list that they can profitably execute Breaking Through cycle-charges into as in most builds, and if they don’t chip down Ghaz’s wounds then he can brutally punk pretty much any of the big nasties, causing some serious problems. Makari is also a neat touch, as it turns out that if you just want something cheap to sit at home while the rest of the army does stuff a 2+ save Grot at a bargain price is perfect.

This list does need to fing quite a few additional points to continue operating after the latest update, but I suspect it probably achieves most of that by re-shuffling the buggy selection rather than making big cuts, and as a pure Goff build it isn’t as badly affected by the changes to faction selection as the Speed Mob is. Expect to see the Goff rampage continue in the new meta, and congratulations to Liam on the win.

Matt Morosoli – Drukhari – 2nd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Covens Drukhari

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Nothing wholly new in second place here, but it does highlight how the top Talos builds appear to be adapting to Crusher Stampede. When the threat of a Dimachaeron throwing claws with Thunderous Impact exists it looks like going a bit wider and lower is a safer bet than building tall with three-Talos units, and packing a higher number of Wracks and a Court of the Archon to spread around the table lets you overwhelm the number of different threats they have to operate with, target their relative weakness at objective play and avoid putting too many eggs in one basket. You clearly don’t have to go as far down that road as Mani did to make an extremely effective build, as showcased here, and including the Black Heart detachment gives access to Vect, also powerful into highly stratagem-dependent builds. Matt’s build may have run into a pretty tough matchup from Liam at the last, but he had a fantastic run to get to the finals, so congratulations.

Simon Gojkovic – Drukhari – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Talos Drukhari

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

More of the same in many ways – another Covens build that goes reasonably wide, once again minimising the risk of getting blown out by a big spike in any one place, while still putting more than enough damage reduction wounds on the board to overwhelm many lists. You know it, you either love or hate it, and it’s one of the lists to beat in the metagame – and indeed Simon’s only loss over the course of the event came in a mirror match against Matt in the penultimate round. Great stuff!

Ben Warrior – Adeptus Mechanicus – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Ah yes, another damage reduction list, excellent. Strong. Good. Just what the metagame needed.
• It is pretty cool though – cheaper robots lets this list hit critical mass of ObSec durability when sitting on objectives with robots and Cacophonous Leadership.
• Supervisory Radiance provides a terrible counterpunch into anyone who underestimates the army’s melee capabilities.

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

An unsung skill in attacking metagames is competitive 40K is maintaining a mental list of things that are nearly there but kept just out of serious competition by some factor or another. I must confess that I actually had to go and remind myself what this Army of Renown actually did, retaining only a vague memory that it was cool but never the right pick when AdMech was at full power. Now I have refreshed my memory – good news, it turns out that Armies of Renown that give wise access to Damage Reduction are pretty good!

On release, the Mechanicus Defence Cohort had two major issues – there was zero reason to play it over other AdMech options, and it lost bad to both the best Drukhari and best AdMech lists, as endlessly re-rolling dark lances or cognis lascannons and big Skitarii hordes all punked it. Now all those lists are dead, AdMech is looking for new options and Kastelan robots have gotten appreciably cheaper – and it looks like there might be something here.

Three elements of the AoR’s rules are what drives this build – damage reduction for Kataphrons and Robots while they’re either in your deployment zone or all within range of an objective, Cacophonous Leadership providing them with ObSec via an aura, and them all being able to Set to Defend in the open, allowing both Breachers and Robots to hit super hard back when charge,d and in the Robots case meaning they don’t really need to leave Aegis Protocol in order to smash as long as they’re on the defensive. Supervisory Radiance also provides the re-rolls needed for one squad to go on the attack without sacrificing their 2+, again very useful.

That adds up to an army that can take a punch just as well (maybe better) as any of the other damage reduction builds, perhaps even more so, and layering Lucius on top both amplifies that capability with Luminescent Blessing and adds the option to get one unit of Robots where they need to be fast with the Solar Flare. Being able to chuck some of the Electropriests into a Legio Teleportarium doesn’t hurt either, giving the list some options for objective play. Finally, while this list’s natural plan is to put a vice grip on objectives and punch out anything that comes close, it can easily go on the attack if the opponent underestimates it – switch on Invocation of Machine Vengeance for the 3d6-drop-lowest charge and go out swinging. The Breachers are also a super annoyting backline threat for the opponent to deal with – they’re not super accurate, but they’re a pain to destroy, and will gradually chip away at any vehicles about with their arc shots.

Much though I don’t love seeing more damage rduction about, I’m willing to allow it in facour of an awesome new build making a splash, especially using such cool models as Kastelans. Really awesome stuff from Ben in fourth place.

The Rest of the Best

Given the bracketing structure, here I’m going to go through the five lists in bracket 2 rather than cutting off at a number of wins. They were:

• 5th – Christopher Wright – Drukhari: Six Talos and a whole lot of Wracks. Just Covens things, though another example of the pivot away from three-model Talos units in a Crusher Stampede world…
• 6th – Shane Condie – Tyranids: …speaking of which, that’s what was on the other side on the top table of bracket 2 in round 8, a particularly brutal push list no less with two Dimas and one of each Hierodule, which would had a great shot at running over a nine Talos build but was presumably bogged down on the primary by a big wall of Wracks.
• 7th – Stuart Trainer – Grey Knights: A very unusual Grey Knight build in 7th that deserves a lot of attention for coming out of the recent changes vastly better than most. One Brotherhood (Prescient Brethren), one GMDK and only 3×5 Interceptors leaves this list down only 40pts, not too hard to salvage. Instead of the usual stalwarts it goes wide with infantry – three squads each of Purifiers, Strikes and Purgators (the latter with psycannons) fills out a list that can go very wide, is pretty challenging to shift with Tide of Shadows up, and looks like it could be pretty spicy into horde builds or GSC.
• 8th – Brian Lakeland – Aeldari: Mostly Harlequins here, mixing a few big foot troupes with some bikes and boats, but splashing a small Covens detachment for access to Mandrake screening, a couple of cheap Wrack units to leave on objectives and a respawning Haemoculus to annoy the enemy with. I’m a little wary of foot Troupes right now as there are quite a few things that can punish them badly (especially in Crusher stampede), but their high volume D1 attacks can definitely still be very valuable if used correctly, and this is a good performance.

Fort Palooza GT

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

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Kevin Leonard – Chaos Knight War Dog Spam
vs.
Quinn Kotecki – Dreadknights and Interceptors

Battle Lines

Thoughts

Grey Knights have been near the top of the metagame for a while, but since the Balance Dataslate handed out substantial buffs to War Dogs Chaos Knight builds like Kevin’s here have been gaining substantial momentum. In particular, Iconoclast War Dogs with Pride-fuelled Fury and either Abominable Consititution or Infamous Hereditry are phenomenally good units, being lethally strong in melee pretty much all the way down their damage track, good at controlling objectives and throwing out enough melta firepower at range to soften up hard targets prior to impact. Infernal Moiraxes, meanwhile, sport truly outstanding long-ranged firepower thanks to the combo of Infernal Power and exploding sixes from Lightning Locks. They’re a little swingy, but terrifying when they go off, and the opponent is generally busy enough dealing with the War Dogs that they’ll get lots of chances to try. To be honest, swingy is just generally how this matchup looks – I think there’s plenty of stuff here that can create a pretty cagey game, but if either side spikes hard on their damage output or invulns it could end up looking over pretty quickly.

Assuming that doesn’t happen, let’s consider each side’s assets. In the Chaos Knight’s favour, they’ve got the edge in forcing the narrative for mid-table objectives. If an Interceptor unit exposes itself on a point it’s just going to get trivially smoked by lightning locks, whereas a War Dog is going to need either a real melee response or the firepower of multiple Dreadknights to take down. In addition, when the Grey Knights do put something on an objective so what? They’re very short on ObSec, and the Unyielding Anvil Dreadknight ony counts as one model rather than five, so a War Dog daintly extending one of its massive stompy feet onto the edge of the objective radius shuts that down. In terms of contesting the Primary for at least the early/mid game, that’s advantage Chaos, and that’s particularly acute on Battle Lines, as it should be pretty easy for them to keep the Grey Knights on 5pt turns.

So what have the Grey Knights got going for them? A couple of things. First up, their ability to grind down Chaos Knights is much more reliable than the other way round – they’re shooting/swinging with much more volume into a worse invuln at range, and don’t have to deal with an invulnerable save at all in melee. They’ve also got access to far more diverse secondary choices, even on a map where Purifying Ritual is about as weak as it gets, especially as Bring It Down is free real estate (though the same is true for Abhor in the other direction). Also – if the time looks right, or things are maybe tilting against them, they can just go for it.

In most matchups the Chaos Knights can rely in part on the opponent just not having the damage to quickly push through them, but here if they overcommit and let the Grey Knights get a proper rampage going they could lose a third of their army in a turn – probably not something they can then recover from, especially as that’s likely a tick of Grind them Down they’re not getting (which seems quite likely the third secondary choice here). The fact that multiple Dreadknights can charge War Dogs and be extremely confident of not dying to an interrupt is a big part of that – the Grey Knights have to be careful of the Khornate Target, but otherwise would have to get absurdly unlucky to die to a single swing from a War Dog which is uh, not the case for any Chaos Knight brave enough to charge one of the GMDKs.

For any mission other than Battle Lines I’d say the confluence of factors pretty strongly favoured the Grey Knights. On Battle Lines specifically it’s close – it’s much safer for the War Dogs to deny primary without risking overcommitting and dying to a big swing turn, Purifying Ritual is less potent than normal and it’s easier for a second rank of War Dogs to contain any Grey Knights that try to break past and take over the board. Ultimately, however, even with all of that the issue for the Knights is that if they do nothing, the Grey Knights win. They’re going to have to take one of Stranglehold or Engage, and that forces them to push models forward, which feeds BID points to the Grey Knights, but if they’re playing cautiously they might not score Grind or enough points on Abhor to equal whatever the Grey Knights have going on – even here at it’s weakest sacrificing one unit a turn to slam a second tick of Purifying Ritual is 10pts over the game. The Grey Knights win if they get a big counterattack turn, and they probably win if both sides go slow, and that forces the Chaos Knights to try to land a perfect hammer blow to tip the game in their favour – and into a wall of 4+ invulnerable saves, there’s just too much chance of that going wrong.

The Chaos Knights put up a respectable score in the end, but the Grey Knights came away with 92, which given the objective placement suggests they must have pretty convincingly pushed back the War Dog horde by the mid-late game, as their primary can’t have been less than 40pts total.

Result

Grey Knight Victory – 92-72

Quinn Kotecki – Grey Knights – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Dreadknights and Interceptors

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Two Grand Masters enter. In a few week’s time, one Grand Master leaves. I am probably more out of things to say about this list than I’ve ever been about an army since this column started, so all that’s left for this section is to say congratulations to Quinn on the GT win.

The Rest of the Best

• 2nd ✪ – Kevin Leonard – Chaos Knights: Full on War Dog spam, with nine Iconoclast warglaives loaded for enduring threat with Abominable Constitution and Pride-Fuelled Fury joined by a quartet of lightning lock Moiraxes with Harrying Packs and Dark Forging to play keep away from the back lines. I played against a similar build at the weekend, and the threat these lists present is pretty eye-watering, especially with how well they play the mission – but they’re also a build hit extremely hard by the changes, as without being able to split traits they can’t have both flavours of War Dog operating at full power. I expect them to break harder towards the Iconoclast side (especially as Moiraxes went up in price), as pressure from the melee threat is vital to their success.
• 3rd – Jeremiah Petit – Adeptus Custodes: A strong showing for new Custodes here, running as Emperor’s Chosen with 3×3 bikes, two units of shield guard to hold the line alongside Trajann and a Caladius Grav Tank to round everything out. Surprisingly the Vexilla Magnifica still makes the cut over the Defensor here, which is plausibly a reaction to the presence of lots of Hive Guard in the metagame, as against them it helps minimise the chip damage to the bikes out the gate, especially when comboed with Emperor’s Auspice. Also this list has a cool 100pts more to play with (and free misericordias for the bikes) in War Zone Nachmund, so look forward to seeing a lot more of it.
• 4th – Oliver Smith – White Scars: Oliver has been doing well with Scars for a while, but this build looks like quite a departure from his previous lists, cutting back on VanVets and VolCons in favour of a massive Assault Terminator brick (very scary as Scars thanks to their mobility), even more devastators than normal to feed out with Hunter’s Fusilade and lots of Eliminators to fill up the board. Screening is definitely back with the advent of Genestealers (and shutting down Crusher Stampede flyers being important) and the latter choice can help out with that a lot, while providing perfectly good value models at the same time. This list not being dependent on VolCons is obviously great news as we go forward, and id’s s nice twist on the formula in general.
• 5th – Matt Root – Tyranids: Leviathan good stuff here, retaining a small 4AE GSC contingent that crams in Undermine for causing a bit of extra trouble alongside A Plan Generations in the Making.
• 6th – Tarzan – Orks: Pure Evil Sunz speed mob with a whole lot of Deffkoptas, building effectively for To the Last between them and some Rukkatrukks.
• 7th – Hugh Murphy – Death Guard: A bit of everything as the Inexorable, with Mortarion ominously overseeing proceedings.
• 8th – Jordan Rakow – Tau: Jordan manages to put in a final, highly credible 4-1 showing for Tau ahead of their book with a pretty classic Farsight Enclaves build. Impressive work, and let’s hope it’s well rewarded once the new rules land.

Wrap Up

That’s it for this week, and nearly it for the season, with just the LVO to go. We will, of course, be looking at that next week, probably covering the full top eight unless a lot of other events pop up. We’ll see you then for the big finale.