This week we’re taking a bit of a different tack, with a broader view of the meta – on a Wednesday! – with three major events from the past weekend. We’ll be back next week with interviews with attendees from those events.

This past week also represents the last week before the broad adoption of Kill Team: Termination, and it was a busy weekend, seeing several new qualifiers crowned for the World Championships this fall.

Continuing a trend from our last Meta analysis, the teams from Kill Team: Nightmare continued to perform admirably, with Mandrakes in particular doing well. Though it’s worth noting that they’re not nearly as popular as the Nemesis Claw, which this past weekend accounted for 11% of the meta! One of the summer’s new hot picks, Heirotek Circle, seems to be struggling without the crutch of Temporal Nanomine. In our last meta analysis we noted that the meta seemed to be healthy overall but this past weekend was much more of a feast-or-famine situation, with many teams falling well below the 45% win rate mark and a few big surprises in the teams doing well – Hearthkyn Salvagers and Compendium Demons both also had stellar weekends.

This week we’re covering the following events:

• Atlantic City Open
• UKTC Bristol Kill Team Tournament
• Midsummer Mayhem 2024

Atlantic City Open

A 17-person, 5-round Golden Ticket event run as part of Front Line Gaming’s US Tournament series. You can find the event in Best Coast Pairings. We made liberal use of the WTC Bandua terrain which we reviewed here. Along with a lovely painted set of terrain from Dwarven Forge!

Shane S, Fellgor Ravagers, Command Point – 1st Place

Command point came down to ACO with both members making appearances. However Shane tore through the tournament with his Fellgor Ravagers. At one point he commented that “Fellgor can feel suffocating” noting that he really enjoys their play style for tournaments. His final’s match was a mirror against the 3-1 Fellgor player Janis, and he won that with a 6 point delta. Breaking the mirror in half with a cheeky turn 1 charge that deleted Janis’s leader! Shane dominated his appearance here with at least 6 points over each of his match ups. Maybe the goats could use another balance tap after all.

Andrew W, Nemesis Claw – 2nd Place

Andrew came in second place, and we’ll have him along with the others in an interview piece next week. The finals match between Andrew’s Nemesis Claw and 4th place Matt’s Demons was a true nail biter. A 3-point delta, that saw the Visionary’s prescience tokens really dictate the flow of the end game state. Andrew said that while he enjoyed Gellerpox, Nemesis Claw were the most powerful team he was playing at the moment. It certainly seemed the case especially in the mirror match where grabbing more prescience than Command Point’s Ryan certainly swung it Andrew’s way. Congrats again to Andrew for snagging the ticket for second place!

Dylan G, Hearthkyn Salvagers, FishandFungus – 3rd Place

Dylan made the trip from from St.Louis and had an amazing run. With a single loss to Shane’s Fellgor at the start of day 2, with wins against 4th place Demons in round 1, and 2nd place Nemesis Claw in round 3! His run had the highest strength of schedule amongst players at the tournament only missing second place due to tiebreakers. Throughout the tournament he repeatedly did the Hearthkyn Grenadier’s best impression of the old Countertemporal Nanomine with the Vâyr-3 Utility Grenade. Recon dashing, and dropping the slow field of the grenade to stall out players approaching their mid board objectives. Considering that the slow field doesn’t require visibility, and the Hearthkyn Gunner’s can pick apart teams stumbling over their newly slowed deployment. It seems the bag of tricks of the Kyn have plenty of room for play!

Best of the Rest

The rest of the top 8 were:

• 4th: Matt O, Khorne/Slaanesh/Nurgle Demons, The Board Authority, 3-2
• 5th: Chris B, Blades of Khaine, BATS, 3-2
• 6th: Janis G, Fellgor Ravagers, Plasma Spam, 3-2
• 7th: Alexander M, Elucidian Starstriders, The Board Authority, 3-2
• 8th: Ryan C, Nemesis Claw, Command Point, 3-2

UKTC Bristol Kill Team Tournament

A 34-person, 4-round Golden Ticket event run as part of UK Tournament Circuit series of events. You can find the event in Best Coast Pairings.

John R, Gellerpox Infected, Can You Roll a Crit?- 1st Place

Friend of the site John R. secured his third return to the world championships at the UKTC’s Kill Team tournament. His Necron-themed Gellerpox infected barely dropped a point through his tournament run, missing a grand total of 8 points over his four games. It seems that this year Orion may have some other Gellerpox competition if this ends up being John’s selection for the world champs!

Simon P, Mandrakes, Lincoln Kill Team – 2nd Place

Teammates Simon and Rob had a box set tie game in the third round, that ultimately saw the two of them lock themselves out of contention for first place. For his part Simon narrowly grabbed 2nd place on the opponent game win % tiebreaker, with 56.25% to 56.17%. I’d probably ultimately call this more of a case of too close to call, though in a fifth round final against Gellerpox one wonders who would win.

Rob S, Nemesis Claw, Lincoln Kill Team – 3rd Place

This week’s meta menaces showed up again in the UK, with Rob S, grabbing a Lincoln Kill Team 3-0-1 special. It seems that Nemesis Claw is poised to strike many teams, especially when you roll hot on prescience tokens. While the Claw has a weakness to stun effects, you also gain some of the best activation gaming the game currently has. Which means that if you can get into the midgame with mostly safe pieces, you can really push a strong advantage.

Best of the Rest

The rest of the top 8 were:

• 4th: Nick C, Kommandos, The Old Ones, 3-1
• 5th: Jonathan Darley, Veteran Guardsmen, KT 404, 3-1
• 6th: Jethro Gilbert, Nemesis Claw, Bristol Kill Team, 3-1
• 7th: Ryan S, Exaction Squad, Turning Point Tactics, 3-1
• 8th: Kenny G, Nemesis Claw, Kill Team Alliance, 3-1

Midsummer Mayhem 2024

A 32-person, 4-round tournament event run as part of Squad Games series of events. You can find the event in Best Coast Pairings. With more photos and media on @Squad_Games_Entertainment.

Jimmy K, Mandrakes, Kell Team – 1st Place

In a tournament dominated by the KT: Nightmare entrants, Jimmy K ran the tables, dropping 9 points across his four games. While his wins were against 3 marine teams, and Nurgle Daemons, we can’t take much away from him. Being able to manage the alternate board state of the within shadow state while juggling a myriad of tricks snagged Jimmy a resounding victory. Mirroring the 64% win rate of the Mandrake players across the world this week.

Jason S, Wrymblade – 2nd Place

WCW competitor Jason S. is probably wishing there’d been a fifth round at this tournament as he lost to Jimmy on the secondary scoring tiebreaker. His third round victory against Nicole’s Mandrakes probably means he would be somewhat confident going into the last round against Jimmy. Unfortunately for him those accolades will have to wait for another tournament! However it seems that the bevy of nerfs from the last dataslate have kept Wrymblade in a good meta position.

James R, Nurgle Daemons, Southern Discomfort – 3rd Place

Surprisingly enough, Daemons made another appearance in this article! James R overpowered most of the competition with the raw stat blocks of his plaguebearers. With the team performing admirably on ITD with lethal 5+ Rancid Vomit, and Open Death’s Head pistols. The team can perform a reasonable mimicry of Hearthkyn Salvager mobility, while absolutely stat checking opponents with teamwide 5+ feel no pain, and no injury. This can be coupled with an injury aura making mincemeat of opposing stats, and James even got the better of his Gellerpox Infected opponent in the last round. With only 1 loss to tournament winner Jimmy K, who knows what might happen later this year, with NOVA Open’s uncapped rosters!

Best of the Rest

The rest of the top 8 were:

• 4th: Jeshua K, Nemesis Claw, Kell Team, 3-1
• 5th: Auston L, Nemesis Claw, Kell Team, 3-1
• 6th: Anthony M, Wrymblade, 3-1
• 7th: Alex S, Mandrakes, Southern Discomfort, 3-1
• 8th: Robert P, Mandrakes, High Desert Kill Team, 3-1

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.