Nachmund hits its stride this week with two big events in the UK, and despite the warzone theoretically being a battleground between the forces of the Imperium and Chaos, it’s the latest Xenos challenger making all the headlines. Tau are here, legal at all three of the weekend’s events, and it looks like they mean business – as we’ll be seeing right out of the gate.

On top of that, the Adeptus Custodes continue to make some serious waves, certainly helped by the fact that lots of UK players went hard on jetbike lists way back when they first launched in 2017, meaning there were plenty of armies just waiting to fly out of storage cases and back into action. Let’s see how these two powerful contenders got on, and who else was putting up a fight at the weekend’s events.

As ever, any player who entered the final round undefeated has their placing marked with a ✪. I am also well aware that the Archetypes page needs another big update, and will be taking a first pass at that in time for next week, as with a few more majors coming up this weekend I’ll then have a solid pool of lists to draw from.

Beachhead Brawl 2022 (major)

All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings. Tau were in play (boy were they), and an event-FAQ was in place for them, notably disallowing bodyguarding Longstrike and making it so that Mont’ka doesn’t allow units to Advance during an Action like Markerlights without the Action failing. This event was also using player-placed terrain.

Note: For the Showdown section of this event I’ve covered the table one game, as there were three undefeated players in the final round. In the event, the undefeated player on table two actually won overall, but I think featuring the only game with both players undefeated going in makes the most sense.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Vik Vijay – Tau Sept Goodstuff with two stacked Crisis Teams (one plasma/CIB/flamer, one plasma/plasma/CIB), a unit of ATS broadsides, two Commanders and Shadowsun

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vs.

Mani Cheema – Crusher Stampede with three Scythed Hierodules, two Dimachaerons and Hive Guard.

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Death and Zeal 

Thoughts

A titanic showdown here, with defending Beachhead Champion Vik with the new Tau hotness facing down Mani Cheema with a new version of one of the strongest recent builds. Vik’s list goes hard on some of the standouts from the book, with the centrepiece being the two large Crisis units with heavy buff support. Stacking the buffs from a Crisis Commander, Coldstar Commander, Exemplar of the Mont’ka and (sometimes) Shadowsun or Focused Fire on top of one of these units creates an appaling force of destruction, zooming 18″ around the battlefield and unloading spectacular force on anything that gets in their way with huge numbers of re-rolls ensuring that they land a solid blow. With plenty of shield drones and shield generators, they’re also resilient enough to roll with at least an initial punch, meaning that an opponent needs concentrated firepower to make a dent in the squads.

That’s a real challenge, because their speed and relative ease with which they’re hidden on good terrain (which Beachhead had, using the Vanguard Tactics/4Ground kits as the Goonhammer opens) means it’s pretty easy for them to get the first strike in a lot of situations, so the opponent will be scrambling to deal with them. They can, of course, also use Strike and Fade to get out of dodge once they’ve done their wicked work, picking off the opponent’s best toys then retreating to safety before revenge can come, and in this list can arrive from a Homing Beacon on turn one if the game requires it. Finally, if the opponent tries to run and hide from them then they’re going to be reckoning with a barrage of smart missiles from the Broadsides, who can combine Advanced Targeting Systems with Shadowsun’s re-roll buff to put out a very reliable clip of automatic wounds, chipping away at anything playing the waiting game. Vik arrived in the final after a chain of strong victories, with only the Tau mirror running him particularly close, so what was he up against.

None other than Mani Cheema, sporting yet another build where he’s taken something successful and gone “but what if we did more of that?”. His new Crusher list has a mere eight units, but they’re good ones – the mandatory Swarmlord and brutal flyrant, then two Dimachaerons and three Scythed Hierodules to trample opponents into the dust, a full Hive Guard unit to apply Swarm Leader to, and that’s it. Not complicated, but very potent – all the big beasts take serious killing and will tear stuff to pieces if they get close, and the acid sprays and impaler cannons in the list add up to a pretty massive chunk of shooting damage. The build is also very good at playing this mission – I happened to match into Mani in round 2 on Conversion, which has the same map, and in it he can saturate the mid-board with monsters then lash out in whatever direction is needed, relying on the fact that many lists will struggle to kill more than once a turn, especially once the Hive Guard have chipped away at opposing forces with the powerful combo of Relentless Flurry and Single Minded Annihilation.

The Tau do, though. Emphatically. Vik’s list does have a small challenge going into this that his list doesn’t have as many sacrificial units as some builds out there, so he doesn’t have that many turns before he has to start playing for objectives with his Crisis Teams, but in this game against such a small number of opposing units that does not appear to have mattered – Vik took this down with a commanding 100-69 victory, which strongly suggests the Tau were able to comfortably put up a clip of two monster kills a turn, at which point Mani just runs out of stuff. While Crusher has some formidible defences, one of the things it notably doesn’t have much it can do about is high-volume re-rolling shooting, and most Tau lists have that in spades, with the flamer Crisis Team in particular being a full nightmare for a Dimachaeron in particular, as it’s only T7.

With Broadsides to deal with the sturdier targets as well, and plasma rifle and commander shooting to backfill wherever there’s a miss, things look very good for the Tau going in, especially as the shield drones on the three big suit units mean that Hive Guard aren’t going to go through them nearly as brutally as they will anything else – on normal dice, the first volley strips off shield drones, and the second maybe takes out one Broadside or a couple of Crisis at best, which is a surmountable loss – and things look far worse if the Tau go first and smoke a couple of Hive Guard with the Broadside’s SMS volley (2-3 is the average with Shadowsun’s re-rolls on).

All that said, this isn’t completely unwinnable for the Tyranids if things go perfectly for them. Hive Guard stripping off drones matters a lot more if a Dimachaeron then follows up, and Death and Zeal definitely makes that a bit easier. However, Vik can basically afford to go all-out towards ensuring that doesn’t happen, such as by deploying the suits inside a corner ruin with a wall of Fire Warriors to ensure there’s no space to charge, which the Hive Guard can clear out, but then the drones are potentially still there, or can load one unit up ready to drop via Homing Beacon, which again could be stopped by Mani with the first turn, but will eat up valuable firepower or force a Dimachaeron out into space to do so. This really showcases what’s making the Tau Codex tick – intensely reliable firepower into all targets combined with enough different options for how to thwart or roll with opposing punches that they’re an extreme challenge to deal with. Fundamentally, the Tyranids here are looking for the Tau player to make a mistake to provide an opening, and that’s not something that you’re going to get from a player of Vik’s calibre most of the time, and the guns of the Tau were able to claim victory.

Result

Tau Victory – 100-69

Alex Harrison – Tau – 1st Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Tau Sept Suits

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

As mentioned above, three players entered the final round undefeated, and while Mani and Vik clashed, Alex was busily blasting Drukhari off of table two, and emerged with the highest overall score to take victory. Alex’s list is another shooty Tau Sept build, with a partial overlap with what Vik was using, but some notably different choices – though still adding up to overwhelming firepower. The obvious eye-catching toy here is the second full unit of Broadsides, meaning that anything emerging into the open is going to get absolutely blasted, and anything hiding has a lot of missiles to contend with. Particularly notable is that the Broadsides are pre-teched for a Tau metagame with Velocity Trackers, also very effective into Drukhari and at least handy for Custodes, especially with no Shadowsun buff. Initial suggestions are the being able to strip away ablative shield drones is going to be absolutely crucial for beating Tau, so having that extra clip of damage into them prior to the big anime showdown is very valuable.

That would actually be particularly good into this list, as the next notable difference in Alex’s build is that his Crisis Teams don’t have shield generators themselves, being purely offensive focused. That does make them a lot more vulnerable at baseline once they commit, but the army compensates by ensuring that they’ll always land some damage first. As well as the smart missiles from Broadsides, one of the Crisis units here is loaded up with airbursting frag, which when plenty of re-rolls (and maybe an auto-Markerlight from Longstrike) are applied will take a huge chunk out of whatever is skulking in cover, really adding to the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” aspect of playing against this army. The Ethereal floating around on a hoverdrone as a hype-fish also adds Sense of Stone to the mix, and it looks like the speed of this option is giving it the nod over any of the fancier Ethereals in top builds, turning up in Vik’s too (which is fair, keeping up with Crisis is important).

To round out, the list has a melee build on one Commander, making them a potent brawler to back the suits, Longstrike to keep big targets cowering and amp up whatever needs it with a free Marker, and auxiliaries to lock in secondaries – Kroot and Vespid are both very cheap, and can easily tick off some RND quarters. Plenty of Tau lists out and about were using Devilfish too, but it’s definitely notable that the two best performing ones eschewed that option in favour of going hard on raw killing power.

Tau clearly mean business, though as ever it’s important to stress that the players winning with them are very experienced generals as well, sure to be a contributing factor. We’ll have a slight pause in observing metagame evolution in the UK next weekend, as the biggest event isn’t using the Tau book, but with a few weeks for players to pore over these results, we’ll see what emerges. In the meantime, congratulations to Alex on the big first win with the big new book.

Vik Vijay – Tau – 2nd ✪ Place

The List

See Showdown.

Archetype

Tau Sept Suits

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Not a huge amount to say here beyond what’s in the Showdown section and general Tau thoughts above, but one point that I think it is worth drawing attention to is that although Vik’s list is slightly short of the raw killing power that Alex’s has, having the three Commanders (one of whom has special targeting rules) does give Vik more of a fallback plan if things start going south, especially given how dangerous the Precision of the Hunter one is. Even if a badly depleted opponent finally manages to wrestle the Crisis bombs to the ground, they may find they’re just a bit short of tools left to pin down the Commanders, giving the Tau a second route to victory. Given this is one of the biggest differences between the two top builds, that’ll be something to really watch as we see players try to adapt. I am also a big, big fan of the ATS Broadside/Shadowsun combo, and was faintly surprised not to see more builds using it – so we’ll see if Vik sets a trend there. Huge congratulations to Vik for returning to Beachhead and taking another undefeated finish, starting the season incredibly strong once more.

Ben Jones – Adeptus Custodes – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

More Emperor’s Chosen here, showing off some different toys alongside the staples. Most notably, Telemons appear to still be very good in this Shield Host, still extremely resilient and broadly deadly, and also pretty well specced for Tau hunting between their D2 anti-drone shots and D4 Crisis-crushing melee. Being able to turn off re-rolls against something that durable is also a way to actually genuinely stimie Tau that most armies just don’t have. Elsewhere, and making sense given its generally lower model count, this list sports an Inquisitor for Secondaries, and Kyria makes a whole bunch of sense as the choice there – she adds a clutch Fight Last on the charge for a key moment as well as the Psychic Action capability, and is even Ordo Xenos for To the Exclusion of All Else if you find here and some bikes away from the Shield Captain against Tau or Drukhari. A great choice as long as you have Dreadnoughts to screen her, and another thing I suspect we’ll see more of. A great run from Ben overall, with his only loss coming at the hands of the dreaded mirror match.

Vincent Chandler – Adeptus Custodes – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Tau’s initial success was one of the big headlines from the weekend, but the incredible surge in Custodes performance was definitely the other, and Vincent here emerged as the most successful of the many, many players of the faction at Beachhead. Custodes have broken out rapidly enough that some of what here is increasingly standard – pretty much every build is sporting two or three Bike units, Trajann and one or both of the two super Shield Captain builds, and usually a couple of solo-Allarus, but this list has a couple of unusual elements as well.

First up, a big Sagittarum unit provides some broader firepower than a lot of builds have, and looks very handy into Shield Drones in particular – definitely of increasing relevance given the top tables here – and is also pretty tasty in the mirror, helping the Troops in this build overpower those in others. It also provides a large surface area for the Allarus Captain to potentially warp into combat from. The second new toy is the bigger unit of Allarus Terminators, which has a couple of very neat tricks you can do with them. Per Rare Rules, if you apply a buff to a unit then split them, all the separate units keep that buff for the normal duration, which means that there are two particularly powerful combos with Unleash the Lions available here. Applying Esteemed Amalgalm to switch the Allarus into Shadowkeepers can tank opposing melee output on multiple fronts, phenomenal at a crunch point in the mirror, while putting the unit into Kaptaris can allow multiple enemy units to be trapped in melee at once, potentially game-changing against Tau. It’s a really, really powerful package, and given that Allarus are frankly also pretty good just on rate, something I wouldn’t be surprised to see more players adopt (and indeed it’s already spread to some other lists, as you’ll see next).

Adding some extra spice to a common archetype is a recipe we always like to see here on Competitive Innovations, and it’s great to see that it paid off for Vincent with a third place finish.

The Rest of the Best

Three more players finished up on 6-1 records. They were:

• 5th – Michael Costello – Deathwatch: Michael puts in a fantastic performance with the latest iteration of his Kill Team Strike Force build. The list includes three big, nasty Proteus teams as the core, then a dakka-heavy Aquila Indomitor team to hose down things like Crusher Stampede nasties, and a new addition of a Spectrus team, which adds a bit of flexibility and some more first turn charge potential when dealing with super-deadly shooting armies like Tau.
• 6th ✪ – Mani Cheema – Tyranids: An absolutely brutal new spin on Crusher Stampede that sacrifices objective play and fiddly flying units for sheer muscle – three Scythed Hierodules and two Dimas rush down the enemy, overseen by the Swarmlord and a Flyrant, with only a single full block of Hive Guard providing additional interaction beyond that. Having had the dubious pleasure of getting utterly run over by this round 2 – it works.
• 7th – Dan Bates – Adeptus Custodes: More Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff to round things out, going for three units of bikes and three Achillus Dreads and filling out from there. Packing one unit of bikes with hurricane bolters, which can help clear out Tau infantry without fully committing in that increasingly important matchup.

36 Chambers (Team Stonehammer)

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

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Matt Robertson – Tyranids Crusher Stampede

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vs.

Mike Porter – Adeptus Custodes

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Conversion

Thoughts

All evidence indicates that Crusher Stampede is just fine in the new world, harder objectives be damned. Matt’s list mitigates any challenges arising from that by doubling down on the mobility aspects of the list, with a second winged Hive Tyrant, two Dimas and Two Harpies, maximising the ability to drop Breaking Through wherever needed, and just generally putting the fear of the Hive Mind into the opposition. Since it also still sports Tyranid Warriors, it can play a fairly cagey game, as it’s got some spare models to feed onto a central objective, and extra deadly counterattack potential.

That poses a challenge to Goonhammer Open Champion Mike Porter’s Custodes build, which has gone extra hard on more mobile elements, but in this game might struggle to fully utilise them. Lots of salvo launchers is definitely an upside, and there’s definitely versions of this game where some overperforming early volleys do spectacular work and give the Tyranids a good fight, but the tradeoff there is the lack of something like an Achillus Dread to counter-counterattack if a Dimachaeron goes on a rampage, as D2 melee just isn’t going to cut it if the Custodes are spread out. Worse, while the salvo launcher volleys do have a chance of racking up good damage, using them means entering Swarmlorded Dimachaeron threat range, and while the two armies stay at a distance, the power of the Hive Guard is going to accumulate advantage for the Tyranids – they can quickly strip away Pallas and singleton Allarus, leaving the Custodes restricted in what they can safely play with.

To be fair, I don’t particularly think that the Tyranids can afford to get very aggressive either, as a single monster thrown out unto the teeth of the Custodes will get stabbed to death, but because the attrition here favours them, that doesn’t matter nearly as much. In addition, on this mission in particular they have some powerful options for boosting their Primary in the mid-late game – once you’re deep enough in that you can afford to start throwing Dimachaerons or Harpies into sacrificial situations, you can ObSec one up with Synaptic Imperative and yeet it over to the opponent’s home objective for a sweet 4VP of Primary, making up quite a bit of a score gap even if you’ve been treading water on 6s and 10s most turns. That also forces them to scramble to actually clear it out our risk losing a point in their own turn, which is presumably extremely embarassing for the Custodian Guard. Since Custodes can’t as easily do the same in response, as Bikes aren’t ObSec and getting enough of them onto the Nids home one to out-hold the Swarmlord is going to be rough, you end up with a relative stalemate where the Tyranids have the tools to reliably pull ahead. Matt sent me a few pointers on this one, and it sounds like both players knew that committing was too high risk and played for points, and the advantages the Tyranids had in that regard let them take victory, albeit one that was very high scoring on both sides.

Result

Tyranid Victory – 96-84

Matt Robertson – Tyranids – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown.

Archetype

Crusher Stampede

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

As covered above, Matt’s build of Crusher is extra mobile, which gives it a lot of flexibility on the tabletop and plausibly ends up the play in a Tau world – if going extra heavy doesn’t overwhelm their guns, as the top table at Beachhead might suggest, then going flexible and having tools to bully charge stuff may well play out better. Congratulations to

Mike Porter – Adeptus Custodes – 2nd ✪ Place

The List

See Showdown.

Archetype

Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

The Pallas are the obvious rarer choice here. On paper they’re very good in Emperor’s Chosen – they’re inexpensive, benefit strongly from the re-roll, and provide you with something fast and moderately durable to commit onto objectives with. Their issue is entirely that the bikes are wildly good, and most players are sticking to a single Battalion to maximise CP to pump into Emperor’s Auspice. Mike’s success here suggests that they merit some amount of consideration despite that, and cheap, mobile stuff to grab objectives is definitely going up in value as the metagame consolidates around Tau, Crusher and Custodes. Congratulations to Mike on another excellent finish, and for giving us another interesting piece of tech to watch.

Ashley Parkinson – Tau – 3rd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

The Standout Features

• Stormsurge – definitely stands out.
• Bork’an Sept provides some extra durability in the mirror in particular, and range flexibility.
• Shadowsun teams up with an alternate Sept to turbo-charge Crisis Teams

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Although Tau Sept drove the weekend’s biggest wins, Bor’kan looks to be marginally edging ahead of Farsight Enclaves for second place right now, though it’s obviously still early days. The big things it has going for it are that the extra range trait is highly impactful on a lot of guns, smart missiles and air frags in particular, ensuring the opponent has nowhere to hide, and that the strength reduction trait is pretty impactful in mirror matches, as it means that enemy burst cannons and smart missiles are suddenly wounding on fives into Borkan’s Crisis suits, helping them come out when Sept fights Sept. It’s obviously still less good when bigger and/or smaller guns come out to play, but being able to better weather no-LoS shooting is a big deal for letting you decide the pace of battle.

It does also, obviously, give you access to full comedy mode by dropping Experimental Weaponry on a Stormsurge’s pulse blastcannon. The dream here is just to get to erase an enemy’s titan or whatever with the big shots, but the boring-but-practical option is to crank the AP on the six-shot mode to -4 with Mont’ka and Coordinated Engagement and shotgun an enemy Crisis Team right off the table. That’s also pretty damn scary to Custodes as long as you can sneak one wound off a bike with another gun first (and you probably can), and the Stormsurge is also far more likely to get a shot at this than a lot of big targets. T8 2+/4++ is a formidible defensive statline just on base, and having the option to no-sell a couple of shots a turn with Saviour Protocols (here with boosted range from a Drone Controller) and the Counterfire Defence System means an opponent has to really go for it if they want it dead – and that means the Crisis are being left alone. Adding a Fireblade with the Lantern and some Tetras helps to support the Stormsurge as well, as it’s far more Marker dependent than Crisis units.

Most of the rest of what’s here is spins on things we’ve seen already, with the Ghostkeel being the only other notable, and definitely fair as another unit that makes more sense in Bork’an and when extra Markerlights are kicking around. Pushing enemy air frags to wounding on 6s against it removes one of enemy Tau’s better ways of closing in and prying one out of cover, and it can much more safely bully enemy stuff with lots of S4 shots or attacks than it would be able to in other Septs. I’m still not totally sold on them in general, but this clearly is one of the better ways of putting one on the table. Shadowsun also seems great here, as she ensures the Crisis Team is ready to do some heavy lifting if the Stormsurge gets punked somehow, while being quite sticky and hard to take down in her own right.

A good mix of interesting stuff here, and a demonstration that Tau definitely do have more than one build up their sleeve, and quite a few tools to work with. Good work from Ashley.

Jay Wood – Drukhari – 4th Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Drukhari Goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Someone, somewhere (and I swear it wasn’t me this time) presumably wished on a monkey’s paw for fewer Drukhari lists in top fours, and we’ve certainly got that, with only Jay making it into an X-1 bracket across the four events we’re looking at this week, what with them being full of Custodes and Tau. Doesn’t seem unreasonable for Drukhari to maybe get a few weeks on the bench, but can we see what let this build shine above the rest?

Happily, there clearly is something new at play here to talk about, which is the appearence of Prophets of the Flesh. Their trait hasn’t really slotted into the metagame that well up until now, as there just weren’t quite enough things it mattered against, but the advent of the smart missile system suddenly makes it look a lot more relevant. Drukhari in general seem to risk death by a thousand cuts against Tau, and the existence of the SMS means it’s much harder for them to play their normal plan of staging for counterattacks and devious thrusts without suffering heavy attrition.The Prophets trait meaningfully lessens the blow of that, especially when you bring Twisted Animator along to put some back into units. It’s also very good into Custodes, the other current hotness, as tanking bikes down to only wounding on 4s rather than twos in melee means a unit isn’t going to be able to sweep a full Wrack unit away. Bringing Prophets along also gives you access to the Vexator Mask, always good, now even better for an emergency bully charge.

That’s something that the Cult of Strife Hellions can also pull off, and I’m assuming that access to Flawless Approach is the key draw for splashing for a second detachment with the metagame as it stands (though Drazhar is, of course, always nice too). They do suffer a bit from the SMS scourge, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see units switch to taking Painbringer by default going forward, as in Tau matchups keeping some alive to execute a shutdown charge has got to be the biggest priority – it’s not like Drukhari don’t have plenty of other tools for doing damage.

Mostly familiar stuff past that,

The Rest of the Best

Five more players finished on 5-1 records. They were:

• 5th ✪ – Adam Lane – Adeptus Custodes: Emperor’s Chosen goodstuff with Achillus Dreads, a Caladius and a splashed Inquisitor for secondaries.
• 6th – Sam Kirkman – Adeptus Custodes: Shadowkeepers with a nasty melee core, with two units of Wardens escorting two flavours of Vexilla and some shield captains to battle.
• 7th – Ash Loftus – Adeptus Custodes: Emperor’s Chosen goodstuff going extra hard on high-quality units, with a big squad of Wardens as an anchor and 11 salvo bikes rather than the normal 6 to 9. Packs an extra nasty punch into elite lists as a result, and might sometimes be able to stretch defensive tools further.
• 8th – Michael Armer – Adeptus Custodes: Emperor’s Chosen goodstuff with a Telemon.
• 9th – Mark Pilkington – Genestealer Cults: Sneaking in at the end, Mark racked up a good result for the Cults with a high-threat Twisted Helix melee list – lots of Purestrains, lots of drill Acolytes and a full squad of Ridgerunners with From Every Angle as a hard to take out shooting threat.

West of Scotland GT

All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings. New Tau were not in play at this event.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Fraser McFetridge – Crusher Stampede with three Scythed Hierodules, Hive Guard and Harpies.

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vs.

David Macleod – Iron Hands with Redemptors, the character VolCon and a Gladiator Reaper.

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Conversion

Thoughts

Another round of “can the guns squish the bugs”, again on one of the new Sweep and Clear variations, only this time the answer is pretty likely to be “nope”. There are a few high-roll options for the Iron Hands here, but particularly with a mixed devastator squad coming in from a pod rather than full melta, the odds are stacked against them to get enough damage through early on to push back the monstrous tide. Worse, with very few mobile units, and no lightning claw VanVets in the wings, if they don’t do extreme damage straight away they’re going to find themselves overrun, especially with Hive Guard chipping away at their units, and Harpies able to bully charge the Reaper with ease. I don’t think the Hands have the mobility to make this particularly complicated, and it’s straight up a question of whether their melta overperforms and the super VolCon stacks a a bunch of buffs and goes wild, leaving two Scythed Hierodules dead pretty much straight away. Given the result, I think it’s fairly safe to say that did not happen.

Result

Tyranid Victory – 98-42

Fraser McFetridge – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Crusher Stampede

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Neatly splitting the difference between Mani’s and Matt’s spins on Crusher, this has heavy duty Hierodules to do a godzilla impression mid-board and Harpies to play the harrassment game, and looks just as brutal as all such builds do. Whether Scythed Hierodules survive in threes in Tau Meta is an open question, but they’re a very good unit into almost everything else, and probably the most cost efficient monster these builds have going at the moment, so they definitely stay at least in the conversation. Congratulations to Fraser for leading the Hive Mind to a second glorious victory for the week.

The Rest of the Best

Two more players finished on 5-1. They were:

• 2nd – Brian Seipp – Orks: Leicester supermajor winner Brian returns with a new Orky iteration, swapping out his Freebooterz for an Evil Sunz speed mob going hard on Deffkoptas and Warbikers, with a couple of Dakkajets overhead. The Evil Sunz stratagem is crucial for keeping stuff alive in this increasingly violent metagame, so it makes sense to see players pivoting in this direction, and the sheer amount of good dakka this list has makes it seem very strong into Custodes.
• 3rd – Paul Metcalfe – Necrons: A very cagey build centred around To The Last and reliable RND here, with the Nightbringer and Void Dragon supported by 3×6 Flayed Ones, some backfield troops, a big unit of Wraiths as the final TTL choice and fast filler from there.

NorCal Open

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

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

John Bianco – Emperor’s Children with Chosen and Noise Marines in Dreadclaws, plus a whole bunch of Claw Terminators.

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vs.

Treynor Wolfe – Emperor’s Chosen goodstuff with Sagittarum and lots of bikes.

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Tide of Conviction

Thoughts

This seems, to be honest, rather cruel. John put in a frankly heroic run to get to the final with pure Chaos Space Marines, navigating past two Tau players, Crusher Stampede and another Custodes build to arrive there, getting a full blast of the incredibly hostile vibes of the current metagame, but what’s waiting for him after all that? Another Custodes list, even better tuned for taking his stuff out, and on a mission that makes an already uphill matchup even worse.

The basic problem for the Emperor’s Children here is that their damage dealing capabilities are hugely reliant on re-rolls, but Custodes can just switch those off, no questions asked, which is a big problem. Twinned with that, Custodes bikes go through anything in this army like a hot knife, and that includes the Bike Captain, who can cheerfully use Auric Exemplar to pick up 6-7 Terminators in a single swing. Playing as Chaos here, you need to be being incredibly careful and sparing about how you use your resources, feeding out Cultists and other chaff to take objectives, and using the threat of the Remnant of the Maraviglia potentially allowing you to do re-rolled attacks in lots of directions at once (plus army-wide Fight First) to keep the Custodes from quite daring to just entirely roll you over, and aiming to squeak out a win on points – and I roughly assume that’s what probably happened in round four.

The problem here is that, as well as there being lots of bikes here, Tide of Conviction just does not allow that plan to work. It’s a Domination mission where the alt-primary needs you to go into the opponent’s half of the table, so feeding units out onto objectives isn’t going to score a few primary points, it’s going to score zero, while the Custodes can probably Bodyguard their Bike Captain on one near objective and put an Achillus ready to use Emperor’s Auspice on the other, and cheerfully rack up a commanding Primary lead. They then convert that into a crushing victory in the late game, because the alt-primary of this mission is heavily backloaded, so tabling the opponent locks in a massive advantage as well.

All these factors conspire to force the Emperor’s Children to pick a fight that they are near certain to lose, and they did. No 40K game is ever actually impossible to win, but there certainly are some that you look at from one side of the table and only sigh faintly. Commiserations to John for running into one of those after such a strong performance overall.

Result

Custodes Victory – 100-45

Treynor Wolfe – Adpetus Custodes – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown.

Archetype

Emperor’s Chosen Goodstuff

Why it’s Interesting in 9th

Pretty much a pinpoint nailing of the archetype here – 3×3 bikes for pressure and shooting, Achillus dreads for countercharge, and some concessions to objective play from an Inquisitor and some Prosecutors. Custodes – they’re good folks, but only Treynor was able to turn that into an event win this week, so good work.

The Rest of the Best

Four more players finished on 4-1 records. They were:

• 2nd – Paul McKelvey – Tau: A suit-heavy Dal’yth list aiming to squeeze maximum value from the automatic Light Cover the Sept trait provides, while throwing out some pretty terrifying firepower.
• 3rd – Matthew Glass – Adeptus Custodes: Emperor’s Chosen goodstuff with a Caladius and a couple of Achillus dreads.
• 4th ✪ – John Bianco – Chaos Space Marines: See Showdown.
• 5th – Zack Backus – Adeptus Custodes: Emperor’s Chosen goodstuff with a heavier ration of Allarus Terminators than usual, plus a Vexila Defensor to keep them swinging.

Wrap Up

Next week we travel back to a time before Tau (edit: Never mind – they’re using a shorter cutoff for the Open than the main supermajors, so Tau are go) at the UKTC London Open Major, where we find out if the UK metagame has come up with anti-Custodes tech yet, and will of course be doing our standard tour of the world’s GTs. See you then, comments, questions and suggestions to contact@goonhammer.com.