It cannot be held back forever – Teams Week returns, Nephilim-style!

Both the US and UK saw large team events taking place this past weekend (the ATC and Northern Warlords teams respectively) and because of how many players were drawn to these, there aren’t as many other events to look at (though we’ve still got a major from Australia and one US GT). Therefore, as well as looking at the week’s big singles events, we’ll also take a look at the top teams on each side of the Atlantic, and see how the new mission pack and recent updates are shaping the team metagame.

As a whole that means today we’re looking at:

GongHammer GT (major)
The Warhound at Game Grid
The American Team Championship
Northern Warlords Summer Teams

As normal for the last few weeks, where a player who didn’t win the event outright was undefeated, I’ll note it next to their placing.

GongHammer GT

72-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in West Wollongong, New South Wales, AU on July 15 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Note that the showdown here was table 1 in the final round, but does not actually feature the eventual winner of the event, as there were five players undefeated going into the final round.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – Death and Zeal

Paul Gurney – Necrons: Eternal Expansionists with the Silent King and max Skorpekh.
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vs.

Josh McMillan – Adepta Sororitas: Bloody Rose Goodstuff skipping Celestine to cram in lots of extra bodies.
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Thoughts

These two factions have come hot out of the gates in Nephilim, and both these lists look very strong. The Bloody Rose goodstuff list features plenty of the exciting toys we’re already getting used to, but it’s notably daunting in just how much stuff it has, to the extent that I had to read it a few times to get my head around what was missing. The main answer is Celestine, with the army also going a bit lower to the ground on upgrades than some, making a few things a little less nasty but giving it more waves of toys to play with.

Over on the Necron side the Summer of Skorpekh is in full effect, with the maximum 18 of them whirling their way to war alongside the Silent King, ready to detonate whatever they touch. Backing them up to nuke any heavier targets are plenty of Lokhust Heavies, and to complete the list some cheap units of Tomb blades provide extremely good value ObSec reach. All of this can be buffed up by Illuminor Szeras, definitely looking more appealing at his new cheaper price tag, and with such powerful CORE units to upgrade, and the Silent King is as brutally potent as ever.

Lining these two lists up, the choices each side have made very definitely tilts this towards the Sororitas. Their army has no real targets for the Lokhust Heavy Destroyers, nullifying a lot of the value from them, and having lots of valuable units matches up well against the fairly concentrated damage dealers the Necrons are sporting – those Skorpekh will absolutely slaughter whichever unfortunate unit catches a full charge from them, but are likely to get rolled up in response. Lots of Zephyrim also means that the Sisters have a good chance of getting the jump on at least some of the Necrons, especially with this mission map potentially forcing the skeleton horde to split up (and the Tomb Blades being pretty anemic into power armour). In addition, the Dogmata means that the Sisters can force the Necrons to commit with a serious unit to flip objectives or max out their Secondaries, and the Retributors have the luxury of lying in wait until they have a great target, forcing the Silent King to be pretty cautious. All that said, the Silent King does have the potential to seriously dominate the mid-board if the Retributors can be somehow dealt with or tied, and is very difficult to remove in melee, which could swing things the Necron’s way some of the time.

Overall, however, the Sisters appear to have both the ability to dictate the pace of the game and can better afford to lose a few units, which gives them a strong plan for the game, and they’re also one of the few factions with Secondaries on-par with what the Necrons have. As this played out, the Necrons did put in an excellent score – but Sisters still outdid them. I would guess the Necrons went first and made very rapid progress on some of their Secondaries, but ran a bit short of stuff in the late game, allowing the Sisters to spike up with end-of-game Sacred Grounds.

Result

Adepta Sororitas Victory – 97-80

Richard Hill – Death Guard – 1st Place

The Best of the Rest

There were 9 more players on X-1 records. They were:

5th – Egor Kalinin – Necrons: Eternal Expansionists favouring a full unit of Lokhust Destroyers (also good now) alongside some other heftier units like Lychguard.
6th – Ben Way – Tyranids: Leviathan Warrior spam with a PyroPod.
7th – Paul Gurney – Necrons: See Showdown.
8th – Alex Rymill – Blood Angels: Blood Angels Jet Pack spam, with some Eradicators providing heavier backing.
9th – Chris Oneill – Tyranids: Leviathan combining lots of Warriors with massive psychic firepower, featuring two Maleceptors and two units of Zoanthropes.
10th – Justin Lach – Drukhari: An unusual Drukhari list combining the Coven of Twelve (Grotesques and Wracks) with the Cult of Strife for mobile killers. Clearly potent, and was the fifth undefeated player going into the final round of the event.
11th – Nathan Princi – Adeptus Custodes: Armour-heavy Custodes, featuring lots of dreads and Caladius tanks.
12th – Oscar Curry – Adeptus Custodes: Dread Host Custodes with a mid-sized Allarus unit and some Caladius Tanks
13th – Ben Browne – Chaos Knights: Herpetrax with two big Knights (the tanky Abominant and a Desecrator) and a bunch of War Dogs.

The Warhound at Game Grid GT in July

34-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Lehi, UT, US on July 16 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – Secure Missing Artefacts

Colin Kay – Night Lords: Night Lords with all sorts of nastiness, centred around powerful Characters and a full Terminator brick with the Black Rune of Damnation.
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vs.

Richard Kilton – Goffs: Go-wide Goff Pressure with lots of small units of Meganobz and Squighogs, plus Trukk Boyz and powerful characters.
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Thoughts

Lots of innovation on show here – a brand new Night Lords list, and a Goff Pressure list with some quite distinctive tuning. The Night Lords list rules, and I can assure readers that Rob is even now ricocheting around the Goonhammer offices in glee at seeing it here. It manages to pack in quite a few different angles of attack, making it pleasingly flexible, and in proper Night Lords fashion that should leave the opponent reeling in terror. First up, against low Leadership armies (which Orks certainly are) the Night Lord faction trait is going to do some vicious stuff, provding all sorts of boosts and plenty of extra attrition where the opponent might not be anticipating it. Even against the large numbers of MSUs the Orks are fielding it can be a huge deal – kill one Squighog Boy in the aura and it’s then a coinflip for another to run, and the entire unit dies to morale 25% of the time, which is wild, and it only gets worse once the Raptors get involved (who can neatly flex to playing objectives when required).

Boosts to wound rolls in melee is going to juice up all the herohammer stuff here nicely, and there’s lots of that on show (to the point where the list just casually rolls up turn one with 0CP). A Lord Discordant with the Intoxicating Elixir and Dirty Fighter is extremely unsurprising if very good, but other choices delve a bit deeper into the books goodies. I love the Master of Executions with the Night Haunters Curse and Warp’s Malice combo – we did spot that you could jury rig a Kuornos Bow style setup with this combo when prepping our review, but didn’t spot that the Master of Executions had a pistol to carry it, and he’s the perfect delivery option – easy to hide, wants to be in amongst the enemy, and can use the automatic six from the Warlord trait to dish out Mortals in melee as well. Don’t forget too that because he’s Slaanesh, he can double up on automatic sixes using Murderous Perfection, so for a CP he can reliably dump minimum four Mortals on something. In a list like this MoEs are also just really good on rate, and the second one being Chaos Undivided also grants access to Terrifying Phenomena to exploit Night Lord debuffs. Finally, the Daemon Prince with the Nurgle weapon is very scary to units like C’tan and Ghazghkull, the latter of which needs to be very careful here!

The other key things to highlight are the big Mark of Khorne Legionnaire unit, surprisingly terrifying if they double fight via Hatred Eternal, and of course the Terminators. A full brick of Black Rune of Damnation Terminators (plus other durability stuff from the Master of Possession, casts boosted by his pet Venomcrawler) seems to be an immediate fixture in most Chaos builds which isn’t hugely surprising, but in Night Lords they bring the extra excitement of being able to Deep Strike turn one for a mere single CP via From the Night, which even this list will have access to out the gate most of the time. That’s certainly not always going to be the correct move, but just the fact that the opponent has to plan around the possibility is a huge advantage. This list rounds out by having good plans on RND or For the Dark Gods, having the herohammer needed to slam Rise to Glory quite often, and taking good advantage of the Night Lord Secondary too.

Over in Ork land there’s been plenty of tinkering too, creating a list that goes very wide and can rapidly respond to whatever the enemy gets up to. Lots of smaller units does create something of a vulnerability to Grind them Down, but that appears to matter a bit less than might be expected, as a lot of the better Faction Secondaries share a category with it. It then creates the upside that the army can engage in a lot of places at once, and has massive trade-up potential. Those Meganob or Squighog units can happily flatten a Chaos Marine unit worth significantly more points than them, and it’s going to be extremely hard for the Night Lords to dodge all of them at once. Adding three Smasha Nobz and Zakstrukk to this adds even more mobile troubleshooting, with the Nobz being a particularly cool highlight. Low key they’re one of the units I’ve missed most badly on in my initial impressions – it turns out the mortals on a relatively cheap and fast body make them good, clean fun. They’re particularly good here because a pair or trio of them have a pretty good shot of ganking some of the Chaos Characters with Mortals alone, which could prove a nasty surprise.

That’s one half of what’s going on here, but while those skirmishing killers are reaching out and killing stuff, the other side of this army is that it has a slightly more hefty ObSec component at its heart than some, loading a whole bunch of Beast Snagga Boyz to the mid board with a Battlewagon, and retaining one unit to keep at home alongside Grotz if needed. ObSec is definitely an angle the Orks have to take points from the Night Lords here, and I think the combined setup here works super well. This is also another list with good secondary plans – while Stomp ‘Em Good feels very risky in this matchup, it’s pretty happy to have Ghaz chill out till the mid game on a nearby objective then rampage for Da Biggest and Da Best (Assasinate is also strong here), has plenty of Grots for Get Da Good Bits, and can potentially finish off with Behind Enemy Lines here thanks to all the small units and Characters.

So, how do they stack up in this clash? The advantages the Orks have are that they can apply a bit more ObSec pressure, and have a lot of tradeup threat. The upside if you’re Chaos is that this mission rewards being able to dominate the centre and/or your Priority Objective, and the Terminators are quite a bit better at that than anything else on the table, and slightly punish the Orks for not having any big hammer units like a larger Squighog or Meganob unit (remembering that because they have Fight First from the Mark of Slaanesh, multi-charging them isn’t really an option). Chaos do also have some pretty reliable and flexible ways to remove the Ork trade pieces once they emerge, risking the game swinging back hard against them.

I would, I think, call this as anybodies game, but say that the Night Lords have the narrow advantage once you tot everything up – the challenge the Terminators represent is a lot, and there’s enough stuff on the Night Lord side to make getting stuck in with Ghaz, the unit that really wants to clear them, very risky. However, in the event the Orks were able to channel the might of the Waaagh to take a victory in an incredibly close fought game. Congratulations to Rich on the victory and his kunnin’ refinement of the Goff formula, and to Colin for putting such an exciting list with the new book into the final.

Result

Goffs Victory – 80 – 74

Richard Kilton – Goffs – 1st Place

Ork Squighog Boyz. Credit: Magos Sockbert

The List

See showdown.

Archetype

Go-Wide Goff Pressure

Thoughts

Always cool to see people experimenting with tradeoffs, and as covered in the showdown Rich’s list here exchanges access to hammer blows from bigger units of Squighogs or Meganobz for a list that has lots of different pieces to play with, giving it plenty of scope to keep scrapping all the way through the game, but still gets enough momentum from a big Waaagh turn to threaten to roll an enemy. Great stuff, great to see Orks succeeding, and well done Rich.

The Best of the Rest

There were four more players on X-1 records. They were:

2nd – Chase Chappell – Ynnari: An Ynnari built that exposes a minimal attack surface by packing a bunch of stuff into Falcons and bringing a couple of planes, with the Yncarne naturally leading things up.
3rd – Colin Kay – Night Lords: See Showdown
4th – Thomas Knight – Imperial Knights: Man I thought a strong finish with named units was the ultimate flex, but a challenger approaches in the field of nominative alignment. Anyway, the build here is House Raven, and combines the Princeps Paladin/murder Crusader combo with a bunch of Armigers.
5th – Thomas Hegstrom Oakey – Aeldari: Ulthwe Goodstuff with loads of Banshees and Scorpions alongside two Phoenix Lords and the Avatar, adding up to some truly brutal trade pressure.

Team Events – How They Work

As a reminder from last time we looked at team events, the following is a general, very high level primer on how they differ from singles events.

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. In particular, lists that are strong in their own right, but also excel at doing one thing really well, or no-selling some kinds of opposition, often end up really good in teams, as they’ll crush some matchups and still havg a fighting chance in others.
This also means that lists that are very strong but have a few terrible matchups can have more play in teams, especially in larger team size events, as it’s easier for them to avoid these.
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.

The last few times we covered teams we were in the throes of a bit of a power level spike and while we saw some of these principles in action, a lot of teams also just crammed in as many of the top factions as possible and tried to win on efficiency. Has Nephilim changed that? Let’s find out!

American Team Championship

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

This event was running with five player teams using pretty much the standard WTC pairings process at that number (with the remaining list on each side after two rounds of Attacker/Defender selections facing off). Each match had two heavy terrain tables and three medium terrain tables, and was using player-placed terrain within that, which I suspect makes Defender builds relying on heavy terrain slightly more powerful than normal. It also pushes infantry melee lists like Blood Angels and Bloody Rose quite a bit, as it’s easy to make a very good board for them if you’re on a heavy table.

1st Place – Art of War

To the surprise of literally no one, our friends at the Art of War took first place at this event, saved from the normal issue of eliminating one-another over the last few rounds. Let’s take a look at what they were wielding.

The Lists

Nick Nanavati – Drukhari

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Richard Siegler – Necrons

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John Lennon – Adepta Sororitas

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Brad Chester – Asuryani

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Jack Harpster – Blood Angels

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Thoughts

So, one of the first things we often want to look for, and usually easiest to spot, is a “champion” list – something that has a decent game plan into everything so that it can be safely kept back as the final list in pairings, or thrown up as an early defender where the opponent isn’t going to have great counters for it even with their full roster available. The reason these are easy to spot is that they tend to be drawn from among the best singles lists of the current metagame, and here that’s pretty clearly the Bloody Rose build. Good mix of melee and ranged threats, a very high score floor because of how good the secondaries are, and happy playing on any level of terrain. John is, of course, a Sororitas master, which helps, but this is an easy list to include in any team roster.

The next most “normal” lists in the Roster are probably the Blood Angels and Craftworld builds. Neither of these would be shocking to see in a normal top four, but both look like they’ve had some tuning to make them even stronger in a team format. The strength of the Blood Angels list is that it can absolutely push an opponent’s face in, making it an ideal counter to lists that can’t handle the speed and pressure, and bringing Inquisitor Coteaz helps out with that. In the low CP environment of Nephilim, he has a very real chance of preventing an opponent using a key stratagem in the early game, which can be fatal against a list like this. This feels like an army that’s swinging big for the 20-0 wins to really push the team ahead, and Coteaz providing stratagem disruption and a good Psychic Secondary angle helps with that.

The Craftworld list is also one I could see picking up high scores, as it counters any sort of horde build very effectively, and certainly isn’t bad at cutting through an army leaning in on damage reduction. In teams, it has a much better chance of dodging matchups where opponents can overrun it (I certainly wouldn’t want to run it into those Blood Angels, for example) and that allows it to skimp on “all-rounder” units like Wave Serpents, instead going deep on the stuff that it does really well. Multiple Phoenix Lords also makes it particularly dangerous to armies with their damage concentrated in one phase.

Rounding the team out, we have two spicier builds. Double C’tan Necrons isn’t a massive surprise to see in a teams format, as early on in the edition that was one of the places that Necrons saw most success (though obviously the days of To The Last are behind us). Like Phoenix Lords, pairing this into an army that can’t do damage to it in the Psychic Phase can be extremely nasty, and in general this list makes it really hard for the opponent to deplete its forces, while still having the ability to skirmish for objectives until some damage has been done thanks to Eternal Expansionists. Combining newly cheap and CORE Doom Scythes with the Deceiver and Silent King is a neat trick too – if you go first they give some reach to strip away stuff that threatens the King, if you go second you pull them from the table with the Deceiver, then drop them back in within the King’s full hit re-roll aura and get some big damage in. Cool idea, and works very effectively with the general plan of not permitting the opponent to do any real damage early.

Finally, Nick’s build, the most unusual of the lot. Even when Drukhari were on top of the metagame, in team events you tended to see the transport-heavy shooting builds chosen, because they’re the most “unique” thing that the faction brings to the table. They’re very mobile, helping ensure they can always score decently and adapt to terrain density, and being heavily mechanised makes them a great counter to melee-focused lists, as if they can’t pop the transports in the shooting phase then they’re very limited in how much damage they can do in a turn, and have to face a horrific Drukhari counter-charge. Nick’s list takes that to the max by using three Tantalus (Tantaluses? Tantalusen? Tantali?) packd full of Wracks with liquifiers and glass cannon melee units, and is a great example of leaning in on a strength. The durability of the Tantalus means that small arms fire isn’t going to get lucky and pop one, and their size means that wrapping them is nearly impossible most of the time. Even gunlines that want to blast them out of the sky are on a pretty tough clock, as once turn 2 rolls around they can be advancing 28″ and charging, locking stuff down for good, and even if they get blown up a static gunline might have trouble getting a big win against all those Wracks fighting for objectives.

That’s all the lists individually, the last thing to look at is any team synergies, and I think there are two I’d call out. Having a double Phoenix Lord and a double C’tan list can make putting up a one-phase army as a Defender pretty risky, which can help skew a matchup in this army’s favour, and I also don’t think any of the armies properly fold to concentrated anti-tank, potentially shutting down some counters. The Necron and Drukhari lists have some good targets, sure, but the Necron army can whisk them out of harm’s way with the Deceiver (and C’tan tend to punish gunlines), and the Drukhari still have ways to play for a pretty good score after a nasty round of shooting. Maybe more of a marginal gain, but if an opposing team has brought something dedicated to flattening Knights, they might be disappointed.

A very powerful lineup overall, and a pretty promising start in terms of variety – one all-rounder singles list, two singles lists from the skew end of the spectrum, and two armies very much built for teams. Congratulations to the Art of War Team.

2nd Place – ProTabletop

Taking a clear second place as the only team finishing on 10 BP, we have another powerful roster from ProTabletop.

The Lists

Thomas Byrd – Ultramarines

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Jaime Paris – Tyranids

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Arne Zerndt – Harlequins

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Damien Owen – Orks

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Brad Weir – Adepta Sororitas

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Thoughts

An easy way to start here – Bloody Rose make their second appearence in the all-comers slot, adding further weight to the sense that they’re one of the best armies out there right now. Probably worth calling out, in search of something to say about them, that their ability to incidentally brutalise any Psychic-heavy army adds even more value in teams, and it’s no surprise that both John and Brad brought Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude along to lean into that a bit.

This team then has three lists that fit the mould of being singles capable, but excelling at a particular kind of game and being tuned to that. Transport-heavy Harlequins causes much the same kind of headaches for some armies as Nicks’ Drukhari build is capable of, and it can also shut down opposing armies relying on re-rolls for their damage. The two small Skyweaver units seem like a nice flex pick too, as they give the army something expendable to zip over the table and shut down a powerful shooting threat for a turn if what the army needs in the moment is time to eke out a few extra points.

Goff Pressure is another build that’s looking good in Nepilim singles, and this build goes hard on what it does best – absolutely bodying an opponent. Double Trukk Boyz Meganobz and two Squigosaurs and Zagstruck and two Kill Rigs is a pretty terrifying amout of stuff to throw at the opponent, and what’s really notable about this list is the lack of Ghazghkull. In singles you want him for the staying power, but he’s a bit slower than the rest of the army and the sole focus here is on running the opponent down, so cutting him out for more stuff that can do that is a strong call. It also gives the list more of a chance to fish for points with Da Biggest and Da Best in a more hostile game, as the Squigosaur can’t be sniped out as easily. Also helping with building up points is Get Da Good Bitz – on some maps those two units of Grots can wrap this up extremely quickly while the opponent is scrambling to deal with the early onslaught, good for raising the score floor.

Our final singles import is the Leviathan Warrior Spam build, and this list is excellent for teams because it’s very difficult to beat without a relatively narrow counter, which it can often avoid. This list can dominate the table with highly durable ObSec models with ease, and two Harpies provide the Spore Mines needed to really constrain the opponent’s options to safely use melee units (also hindered by the risk of Warriors taking a swing with Reinforced Hive Node and doing big damage back). To beat this army you want to either be able to shoot them off the objectives very quickly, or somehow out ObSec them. I’d potentially fancy some Knight builds against it, especially Imperial Knights, as they tend to pack plenty of D3 attacks, and damage reduction Armigers can charge Warriors with relative confidence, then don’t need to kill too many to flip an objective, but outside of that it’s a pretty challenging army to beat.

Last up we have Thomas Byrd’s list, a rather unusual Ultramarines build. Thomas is well known as a dedicated Ultramarine player, and you do see players using their favoured factions in teams a bit more often, but is there more to this than that? I think yes – this list does one thing fantastically, which is absolutely annihilate a centrepiece target, and then has enough all-rounder potential that it should be able to pick up a decent score most of the time. Combining the Seal of Oath with either double shooting Intercessors or the Eradicators will comfortably smoke a horde, Victrix Guard provide great little utility units to reach out and take objectives, and the wall of Characters and buffs here is powerful enough that an opponent who gets too cocky trying to push into the Marine lines will get a nasty pushback. Stacking Psychic Fortress and Tigurius’ defensive buff on one of the two big units certainly leaves them non-trivial to kill as well, potentially surprising some opponents.

So, synergies here? As well as also being relatively low on large targets for big guns (outside of the Orks, who can potentially still overrun a gunline), the non-Sisters lists here kind of fall into two sets of two. Harlequins and Orks can both bowl over the opponent, while Ultramarines and Tyranids both make it very tricky for opponents to take advantage of single powerful units – the Warriors can roll with the blows while Spore Mines cause problems, and the Ultramarines can just murder stuff at a distance. Having “sets” of this like this is obviously very good for putting in as Attackers, as it can restrict what armies the opponent can safely use to defend.

ProTabletop and Art of War did not clash over the course of the event, with ProTabletop’s lose coming at the hands of a team of midwesterners packing Grey Knights, Leviathan Warriors, Bloody Rose, Warrior-heavy Necrons and Hail of Doom. Lots of very controlling games there, and I wonder if maybe they were able to no-sell the Harlequins – none of those scream great matchup for the Harlies build.

Northern Warlords Summer Teams

All the lists for this event can be found in Tourneykeeper.

This event was running using the second “half” of the WTC pairing process to account for four player teams. This means:

Two games get paired by the standard Attacker/Defender process.
One game gets played between the two refused Attackers from that process.
One game gets played between the remaining teams.

1st Place – Make Adam Great Again

Art of War strike in UK was well, with Matt Robertson featuring in the top lineup, alongside three great players from around the UK.

Lists

Matt Robertson – Tyranids

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Adam Ryland – Thousand Sons

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Alex Petford – Chaos Knights

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Chris Kinnair – Necrons

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Thoughts

Kraken Pressure, Chaos Knights and the Thousand Sons build here should all be fairly familiar to regular readers, and the double C’tan Silent King build is clearly very strong in teams, so what’s the unique draw for this setup?

This is the first team we’ve looked at today where there’s a clear “whole team” synergy going on, because all four of these lists can do simialr things pretty well to pressure opposing weaknesses, while having different specific strengths to try and line up against opposing armies. All four of these lists are high durability, ideally demanding some very big guns to put down, and all pressure ObSec extremely well, and that means that some teams are going to find it difficult to set up enough reliably winning games against them. Lists that exert high pressure also have a tendency to pick up more big wins, so by stacking four lists that can go for the throat means that the opponent is scrambling to find at least one big counter matchup to pull that back. I also think it’s a decent plan in this four player format where there’s slightly less control over the games – strong, pro-active game plans can generally salvage points from almost anything.

It feels like the odds are that in almost any matchup one of these four lists is going to be something that the opponent doesn’t have two decent answers to, so that can go up as dedender, and from there it’s a case of fishing to line up a good counter with the rest. I do also like a few of the little choices like bringing Annihilation Barges rather than Canoptek stuff for ObSec Necrons, which aligns with the overall focus on durability. No surprise to see this kind of macro strategy from long-time WTC players, and a well-earned win.

2nd Place – Bad Batch

Hot on their heels (equal on 9BP, so only separated by victory point totals) comes another strong team, this time with a heavy Team England presence.

Lists

Josh Roberts – Blood Angels

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Nathan Roberts – Tyranids

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Alex Harrison – Imperial Knights

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Courtney Rhodes – Orks

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Thoughts

Honestly? In some ways this is more of the same – four different armies that can exert extreme aggressive pressure, just skewed a bit more towards sheer killing power rather than durability. Goffs and Blood Angels can both go at rocket speed and roll over the enemy, which in this format can take some lists out of consideration for ever going up as the Defender, Leviathan Warriors with Harpies are great for controlling the table and countering enemy melee, and Imperial Knights line up well with the Ramshackle from Orks and Reinforced Hive Node in Nids to give this roster a “soft” counter into opposing armies that struggle with Damage Reduction.

Knight Crusader (Duchess Silas Magellan, Piloting the Auric Might) Credit: SRM

I think the most notable thing beyond that is Alex’s use of the Freeblade Lance, which works super well here as a toolbox counter build, in addition to its intrinsic strengths. As we discussed when looking at the Freeblade Lance last week, the two units of Warglaives with each of Noble Combatants and Strike and Shield let you judiciously select a first melee wave to counter whatever your opponent is using, and with the invulnerable save from Herald they’ll be particularly good at that. Behind them lurks a powered up Crusader, ready to bury anything in Mortals once the army builds up to 3CP (which can be as early as its first turn if it goes second), providing the list with a way to punch through armies that rely on invulns or Armour of Contempt for defence. It feels like an especially well-suited Knight list for the format, so a smart choice that I’m sure served the team well!

These teams did meet and ended up drawing their game – Make Adam Great Again did score more points, but not by a big enough margin to get out of the draw range. Still, I think that makes the overall placing of them in first and Bad Batch a close second feel pretty much spot on!

Wrap Up

It’s back to singles next week, with the Lone Star Open bringing us our biggest Nephilim event yet, and plenty more besides. Team fans shouldn’t despair though – the WTC will be upon us pretty soon, and it seems likely that Teams Week will once agaion emerge from the warp upon its arrival. Till then, comments, questions and suggestions to contact@goonhammer.com.

Competitive Innovations in 9th: Nephilim Team Special

GongHammer GT

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – Death and Zeal

Thoughts

Result

Richard Hill – Death Guard – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Josh McMillan – Adepta Sororitas – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Joshua Brodie – Adepta Sororitas – 3rd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

Joshua Hynes – Necrons – 4th Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

The Warhound at Game Grid GT in July

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – Secure Missing Artefacts

Thoughts

Result

Richard Kilton – Goffs – 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Thoughts

The Best of the Rest

Team Events – How They Work

American Team Championship

1st Place – Art of War

The Lists

Nick Nanavati – Drukhari

Richard Siegler – Necrons

John Lennon – Adepta Sororitas

Brad Chester – Asuryani

Jack Harpster – Blood Angels

Thoughts

2nd Place – ProTabletop

The Lists

Thomas Byrd – Ultramarines

Jaime Paris – Tyranids

Arne Zerndt – Harlequins

Damien Owen – Orks

Brad Weir – Adepta Sororitas

Thoughts

Northern Warlords Summer Teams

1st Place – Make Adam Great Again

Lists

Matt Robertson – Tyranids

Adam Ryland – Thousand Sons

Alex Petford – Chaos Knights

Chris Kinnair – Necrons

Thoughts

2nd Place – Bad Batch

Lists

Josh Roberts – Blood Angels

Nathan Roberts – Tyranids

Alex Harrison – Imperial Knights

Courtney Rhodes – Orks

Thoughts

Wrap Up

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