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Competitive Innovations in 9th: Joker Mode pt.2

By Liam "Corrode" Royle and James "One_Wing" Grover

As mentioned yesterday, there’s been quite a few events this week, so we’ve split the post up.

Today we’ll look at:

  • Fool’s Errand (Major)
  • Grand Onslaught 3
  • Black Heart GT
  • Deck Box Masters Grand Tournament

If the event you’re looking for isn’t on that list, yesterday’s article covered:

  • The Gibraltar GT (Major)
  • Fantasia Fanatic XLI (Major)
  • Midtcon GT 40K
  • Grimdark Open
  • Heroes Retreat Mini GT

Also make sure to check out yesterday’s post for a rundown of how the stats are looking.

Wings: We’re in Corrode mode now, so sticking with the clown theme assume the “tragedy” mask has been donned as regards the level of mercy shown to strong books.

Fool’s Errand

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

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Ozzie Meloche – Harlequins: Dark Saedath Harlequins eschew Starweavers in favour of putting a gigantic pile of clown bodies on the table. Still 9 Voidweavers.

Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Frasier Parry – Harlequins: Light Saedath Harlequins with only 6 Voidweavers, filling the extra points with 5 Starweavers and a chunky foot Troupe.

Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

If you read last week’s post, you’re probably thinking hey, Light is what everyone’s playing, there must be a reason for that, right? Surely it beats Dark pretty handily?

Thankfully the answer here is more interesting than that. Frasier’s list is interesting because it only runs 6 Voids and puts 5 Starweavers alongside them filled with Troupes, plus a foot Troupe; consequently it’s a little lighter on Voidweaver shooting than normal. Slotting in instead is a Prince of Sins Solitaire – which effectively gives him Mirage Launchers – and a cheap foot Troupe.

It’s all fine, and took Frasier to the top table, but Ozzie’s list has almost exactly the answers it needs here. He’s gone with the full 9 Voidweavers, and they have basically the same defences they would in Light anyway – BS3+ at -1 to hit is just 4s, after all. He brings no Starweavers though, and goes heavy on massive blocks of Troupes as well as double Troupe Masters. They’re backed up by a Shadowseer with the Laughing God’s Eye, granting a 5+ to ignore wounds to what’s around her. This is pretty rough for Frasier, since he’s likely always trading at a disadvantage. With fewer Voidweavers he needs to get the jump on Ozzie’s somehow, and he cannot have a bad turn when he goes or he’ll rapidly be losing materiel; beyond the boats, if he wants to flip objectives he’s gonna need to get Troupes into melee, but his mostly smaller Troupes are going to be running into bigger units that are tougher than his, and which all get to fight on death. Dark and access to Oblivion’s Caress also means that all the Harlequin weapons can be hitting at AP-3 and ignoring invulns, so will scythe through anything they touch in this came (and the units have the volume of these where it starts to matter).

It’s not unwinnable for Frasier – he has an advantage in manoeuvre thanks to the Starweavers – but Ozzie’s put some thought into what the mirror match looks like and built his list accordingly, and it makes the Light gameplan here pretty uphill.

Result

Harlequins Victory – Dark beats Light, 100-40

Ozzie Meloche – Harlequins – 1st Place

Harlequins Troupe. Credit: Corrode

The List

See Showdown.

The Standout Features/Archetype

Dark Saedath Voidweaver spam

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Voidweaver spam usually means near-automatically that you’re running Light for the defensive capabilities, but Ozzie proves that you don’t have to go that way. Without the trait the Voidweavers are still -1 to hit with no re-rolls, which means that a lot of armies are gonna be hitting them on 4s anyway, and the loss of Capricious Reflections is more than made up for by the Overwatch suppression and fight on death parts of the Dark package. As discussed in the showdown, it’s a smart choice in a Harlequins-dominated world, and clearly Ozzie didn’t struggle too much with the rest of the factions out there either.

Calvin Osterdal – Adeptus Custodes – 2nd Place ✪

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features/Archetype

Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

There’s not masses to say here that we didn’t say a dozen times before about Emperor’s Chosen, but the one novelty is taking the Telemon in place of a third squad of Vertus Praetors. As decisions go it’s completely defensible, offering a tough body with some strong shooting output, and it clearly worked out for Calvin here who went undefeated and beat another Emperor’s Chosen list in the game 5 mirror match to do it.

Cory Burns – Harlequins – 3rd Place

Credit: Quinn Radich

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features/Archetype

Dark Saedath Harlequins

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Cory lost game 3 against eventual first place finisher Ozzie, playing a list that’s on much the same plan building for the Light mirror. He trades off two Voidweavers and a couple of the characters to put some guys in Starweavers, though, and that’s probably a lesser version of the same idea – like in the Showdown, he’s immediately at a disadvantage in the Voidweaver shooting war, and he has a little less punch from the Troupes and characters. The gains in having a couple of Starweavers don’t quite make up for it.

Dan Miner – Necrons – 4th Place

The Silent King
The Silent King. Credit: Pendulin

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features/Archetype

Eternal Expansionists Necrons

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

After spending a lot of 2021 as the whipping boys of the 9th edition codexes, Necrons have started to shine recently with the addition of CORE to a number of their datasheets and some reasonably chunky points decreases in Chapter Approved 2022. Dan’s list takes full advantage of the changes, packing the Silent King and his wound re-rolls into a list with Wraiths and Skorpekh Destroyers, who can now Rip and Tear to their robotic hearts’ content, and of course it’s all Obsec too. It’s a simple plan, but an effective one!

The Rest of the Best

7 more players went 4-1 at this event. They were:

  • 5th – Adrian DeRoche – Blood Angels: A surprise appearance from the Blood Angels, with Adrian’s list featuring Dante and a bike Chaplain backing up a pile of vicious combat units – a big Death Company block, 3 Sanguinary Guard units, and some Vanguard Veterans.
  • 6th – Stephen Lind – Harlequins: More Dark Saedath Harlequins, this time built around 12 Skyweaver Jetbikes with shuriken cannons
  • 7th – Adam Green – Asuryani: A Psyker-heavy Ulthwe list takes the field, with Eldrad and a second Farseer backed up by two Wraithseers. A mix of Aspects including 10 Dire Avengers, 10 Striking Scorpions, 10 Swooping Hawks, and 10 Shining Spears takes advantage of their psyker support
  • 8th – Frasier Parry – Harlequins: See Showdown.
  • 9th – Ian Wills – T’au Empire: T’au Sept Crisis spam
  • 10th – Mike Garcia – Adeptus Custodes: Emperor’s Chosen goodstuff
  • 11th – Daniel Chrenek – Tyranids: Crusher Stampede built around everyone’s favourite dragon, the Harridan

Grand Onslaught 3

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

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Robert Hawkins – Harlequins – Light Saedath Voidweaver spam

Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Bryan Malpass – Chaos – Disciples of Be’lakor making it to a top table!

Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

Bryan’s spin on Disciples is almost all Daemons, but he brings along a Sorcerer to Shrouded Step things around the table, while making one of the big blocks untargetable with Wreathed in Shades. The presence of a lone mortal warrior also unlocks the powerful Mortal Boon stratagem to auto-pass morale and regenerate some Daemons, clearly excellent here.

Otherwise the list is dominated by those four big blocks of Daemons – two fat units of Plaguebearers and the full 30-Neverborn block of Bloodletters, plus a slightly more slimline unit of Pink Horrors. Notably for the latter the list also brings 360 reinforcement points, leaving plenty of room for splitting.

It makes for an army with a clear plan – anchor around the Plaguebearer and Horror blocks, making one of them untargetable each turn while tarpitting with the Horrors being able to split on death, and wait for the Bloodletters drop in and charge the first thing they get an angle on. Meanwhile, Be’lakor does what Be’lakor does. You should end up with strong options for grinding out primary scoring, and a reasonable line on secondaries from the Furies flitting around retrieving data or raising banners, and presumably a good line on TTL with Be’lakor and the ‘bearers.

It’s a cool and interesting take on a counter-meta list, but against Robert it has some severe challenges. It only has one option for killing the ‘weavers at range; you can hope for the Bloodletters to drop in and murder a unit, or to try and Shrouded Step something over to start intefering with them – but Robert can probably just screen them out for as long as he needs to, with the Skyweavers offering particularly good value for money in this department since they a) have nice big bases and b) you kind of don’t care about them doing anything else in this game. This is not even to mention Capricious Reflections, which ties into the issue with having just a few big blocks. Meanwhile the prismatic cannons on the Voidweavers have their dispersed pulse profile ready to go – 3d3 shots with Blast just loves those big blocks, and at S5 they’re even wounding the Plaguebearers on 3s – which is not even to mention the shuriken cannons and throwing Bladestorm on a unit. They don’t have it all their own way, since Cloud of Flies will interfere with their ability to actually hit the target, but they should be able to do enough to keep this one in the Harlies’ favour. It’s a much harder game for them than they’re probably used to though – there’s a lot of ObSec Daemons to go through, and the characters and vehicles have to be extremely careful of Be’lakor himself thanks to his main mode ignoring invulns – can’t re-roll a save you don’t get to make at all.

Result

Harlequins Victory – 97-83

Robert Hawkins – Harlequins – 1st Place

Credit: Docsucram

The List

See Showdown.

The Standout Features/Archetype

Light Saedath Voidweaver spam

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

See previous entries. Next.

(As always, congratulations to Robert for winning the thing)

Jordan Sorchevich – Adeptus Custodes – 2nd Place ✪

Trajann Valoris
Trajann Valoris. Credit: Pendulin

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features/Archetype

Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

The good people of Tampa are just giving me fucking nothing, huh? I guess there’s 2 more bikes here than normal. Well done for going undefeated, Jordan, I hope your army is nerfed next week.

The Rest of the Best

8 more people went 4-1 at this event. They were:

  • 3rd – Bryan Malpass – Chaos: See Showdown
  • 4th – Justin Moore – Adepta Sororitas: The struggling Sisters put up a 4-1 performance, with Justin running Vahl + 30 Valorous Heart Sacresants, two squads of storm bolter Dominions, and some melta Rets plus Celestine.
  • 5th – Ariel Cortes – T’au Empire: Farsight Enclaves, many battlesuits, now, handle it!
  • 6th – Mark Perry – Orks: Veteran Ork player Mark brings a Freebooterz Spearhead of the Good Buggies plus a ton of Lootas and Tankbustas in Battlewagons, with two Wazbom Blastajets backing it up
  • 7th – Ian Mckenzie – Adeptus Custodes: Fill in the blanks: _mp_r_r_s Ch_s_n G__dst_ff
  • 8th – Gabriel Caban – Harlequins: Say the line, Bart
  • 9th – Quinton Johnson – Asuryani: An interesting Children of Prophecy/Vengeful custom Craftworld, with triple Farseers and triple Warlocks, two 10-model blocks of Wraithblades, and Baharroth. Honestly this list rules and is really different to other Asuryani lists recently, go check it out
  • 10th – Matthew Douthat – Harlequins: Dark Saedath with a max-sized squad of Skyweavers

Black Heart GT

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

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission: Recover the Relics

Mike Porter – Harlequins – Light Saedath Voidweaver spam

Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Innes Wilson – Forces of the Hive Mind – Twelve Hive Guard, and then some other stuff that gets in the way of stuff trying to kill the Hive Guard

Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

I asked Innes what his thoughts on this game were and he replied “I had to go first in Recover the Relics. Mike deployed 30.1″ away from Hive Guard and shot everything that tried to stand on an objective and my combat isn’t good at killing Voidweavers.”

That’s about the size of it – Innes’ main justification for his list was that he needed to fly to the event and didn’t want to transport the models for Crusher Stampede, so instead we got the Last Ride of the Hive Guard, who are great in most match-ups but do not want to have to play against Light Saedath on a hammer and anvil mission, which is exactly what we have here.

Since I was TOing this one, I was sat nearby and can say that the guys made a real go of having a game here, but Mike is a very accomplished player who’s heavily favoured by the match-up here for the reasons outlined above, and the result was never really in doubt – if anything Innes’ high score reflects the fact that Mike could, within reason, play this whole thing on cruise control, safe in the knowledge that he could get within touching distance of 100pts without any danger of Innes being able to do the same.

Result

Harlequins Victory – 95-84

Mike Porter – Harlequins – 1st Place

Harlequins Troupe and Starweaver. Credit: Corrode

The List

See Showdown.

The Standout Features/Archetype

Light Saedath Voidweaver spam

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

It absolutely is not, but at least Mike’s a nice lad and also the current Goonhammer Open UK Champion, so we hope to see him again soon to defend his belt.

Zach Becker – Adeptus Custodes – 2nd Place ✪

Trajann Valoris by Crab-stuffed Mushrooms

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features/Archetype

Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Kyria Draxus is cool, I guess? I have no idea if Zach had a specific plan for her or just liked the model, but it’s a datasheet that doesn’t get seen much, so cool. Being able to throw her into melee and deploy here Fight Last when she charges can be clutch in the mirror. Otherwise it’s down the line Emperor’s Chosen, of the kind we’re desperately hoping gets some tuning in next week’s promised balance dataslate.

The Rest of the Best

4 other players went 4-1 at this event. They were:

  • 3rd ✪ – Innes Wilson – Forces of the Hive Mind: See Showdown
  • 4th – Liam Callebout – Harlequins: Light Saedath Voidweaver spam
  • 5th – Dan Richards – Chaos Daemons: Be’lakor carries the otherwise long past-it Daemons codex to a 4-1 finish
  • 6th – Jay Seebarun – T’au Empire: T’au Sept Broadside and Crisis spam

Deck Box Masters Grand Tournament

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

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Jonathan Betteridge – Harlequins – Dark Saedath with a mighty 6 Starweavers, matched with 6 Voidweavers

Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Ben Pelzer – Asuryani – Ulthwe with a range of Aspects and Eldrad, plus a Guardian bomb

Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

Jonathan’s list is at least a little different to the usual here, going lighter on Voidweavers and running as Dark rather than Light Saedath. It presents a tough frontage for an opponent to try to get to grips with, with 12 ‘weaver hulls, half of them with great shooting and the other half packed full of Troupes which are lethal both on the charge and also when getting charged thanks to Dark Deeds.

Since looking at Ozzie’s list above I’ve been thinking about Dark Saedath a bit, and specifically through the lens of Drukhari, and it seems pretty hard to handle. Your fragile but deadly melee units are likely to just get punked by whatever they killed, if they manage to kill it at all, and thanks to the sheer number of Troupes on the table you will quickly lose a trading war. In Ozzie’s version that’s magnified by the mass of on-foot bodies; here Jonathan is running them in Starweavers, which means the Troupes are at least smaller but also means you need to de-mech them first, and your shooting is probably already occupied by the Voidweavers you need to put down. It’s a lot to handle.

The main reason I’m bringing up Drukhari here is because Ben’s list is built on similar lines to the old Drukhari Goodstuff, in particular because he’s running two squads each of Howling Banshees and Striking Scorpions. These are very much like Incubi, and face much the same challenges into Dark Saedath Harlequins. Ben also packs some artillery in the form of two Night Spinners, which do help but are surprisingly poor counter-fire to Voidweavers (I am not the Maths Guy here but as I understand it the EV is between 0 and 1 unsaved wounds, depending on if the Harlequins player burns Luck of the Laughing God re-rolls or not). The Fire Dragons are also a big miss here – in theory they’d be good anti-tank to try and bust up some ‘weavers, since they’re likely going to drop pod out of the Falcon, but the likelihood of them even killing one let alone the 12 that Jonathan puts down is very low, and once they’ve dropped and shot you may as well just remove the models since they’re already dead (though presumably you don’t, because you also want to Will of Asuryan them with the Farseer so that they can RND a quarter for you at the same time).

If anything this is a good reminder that while Light Saedath is very strong, it’s not the be-all end-all of Harlequins – the defences it offers are very relevant against BS2+ in particular, but against BS3+ the Mirage Launchers get you to the same place most of the time (though the Guardian bomb increases in value here, since they can use Discipline of the Black Guardians to counteract the -1 and Bladestorm to push the output to the point that they can reasonably threaten the ‘weavers – the first half of which just wouldn’t be relevant against Light). Mirror Architect is also horrific for anyone planning to use 12″ range deep strike shooting like Fire Dragons in a Falcon or Warp Spiders.

None of this is meant as a critique of Ben’s list – it otherwise looks like it has a great toolbox for a whole range of different threats – but in this match-up specifically it looks very uphill for the Asuryani, and so it proved.

Result

Harlequins Victory – 83-63

Jonathan Betteridge – Harlequins – 1st Place

Credit: Ben Hampshire

The List

See Showdown.

The Standout Features/Archetype

Dark Saedath Harlequins

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Much the same commentary as for Ozzie’s list in the Fool’s Errand event applies here too, with the main difference being the choice to run fewer Voidweavers and smaller Troupes in favour of being able to have everything in a boat. It’s a decision that ups the manoeuvrability of the individual Troupes, and also means that the list presents a very uniform target profile to the opponent – your options are to shoot at Starweaver hulls or Voidweaver hulls, and neither of those things is a great prospect. Whether Dark Saedath becomes the top dog after next week’s dataslate and whether the foot-heavy or Starweaver-heavy version is better is something we’ll have to find out, but Jonathan has set out a great case for the latter with this win.

The Rest of the Best

4 more players went 4-1 at this event. They were:

  • 2nd – Nicholas Lawrence – Harlequins: Light Saedath Voidweaver spam
  • 3rd – Ben Pelzer – Asuryani: See Showdown
  • 4th – Brian Blanteran de Rozari – Asuryani: An outing for Biel-tan, with no fewer than three Farseers backing up a diverse mix of Aspect Warriors
  • 5th – Kailey Elaschuk – Chaos Daemons: Hey look, Disciples of Be’lakor again! It’s like buses, you wait for one for ages then two show up at once. In this list, the big man is supported by blocks of 30 Horrors and 30 Plaguebearer, plus the Contorted Epitome and its still surprisingly useful range of rules making an appearance

Wrap Up

Another week down, and one more week in which we can hopefully host some sort of viking funeral for the current metagame incarnation. See you then. Questions, comments, complaints about how mean Liam is being to the poor, defenceless Custodes, all to contact@goonhammer.com.

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