Goonhammer Interviews 2024 World Champion Folger Pyles

Last weekend the 2024 Warhammer World Championships concluded, with the United States’ Folger Pyles winning the event with Adeptus Custodes. We sat down with Folger to talk about the event, his list, and his experiences becoming world champion.

Congratulations on winning the 2024 World Championship! You had a hell of a run through the field. How’s it feel to be champion?

I still can’t believe it. Playing against eight of the best players in the world and coming out on top with a clearly off-meta army was an out-of-body experience. The level of competition was completely different from any other event and the sportsmanship and overall class of all of my opponents is really what made the event so great. 

I don’t think anyone expected to see Custodes in the top 16, much less winning the event. Why’d you pick them – and this list – for the event despite it, and I quote, being “Mid AF”?

I picked them because I did not want to play MSU Eldar – my main and favorite army – in this meta. Between Exorcists, Hypercrypt, GSC, and Aquillons, my pointy-eared space elves were going to be hard-pressed to perform over an eight-round event against the best players playing the best lists. I had a Custodes army and decided to start playing them about two months ago in earnest. I’d had a solid number of practice games playing the different detachments and found that the Talons of the Emperor gave me the most flexibility and utility. The other two semi-viable Custodes detachments are damage amplifiers and in my opinion Custodes don’t need help with that. From there I refined the list you see below and took it to the 2 GTs leading up to WCW. I went undefeated at both of those events and so I decided to take them to the World Championships.

”Folger’s

Walk us through how the list works, and what makes it tick. What was your secret sauce?

The list is designed to maximize the three units of wardens to deny primary and lock down areas of the board while your 3 shooting units, 2 grave tanks and Draxus + Custodian Guard, move as the 2nd wave to scoop up the (hopefully) depleted scraps of your opponents army. The Wardens ability to survive 1 phase of the game is back breaking to mono phase armies. Against the combined arms armies you need to be on your A game and really work on positioning, pre measuring, and understanding how both you and your opponent are going to score points in order to pull out wins. Most of my close games at this event were me losing on board presence but winning on points. If there is any secret sauce it’s the 2 movement phase stratagems Taloned Pincer and Hunt as One. Reactive moving 6 inches and falling back and changing opens up a whole other layer for Custodes and can lead to you getting 110% out of your units. 

Why Talons over the more common Shield Host?

As a 40k player I’ve always valued utility and movement over stats and damage. The movement phase is where 40k is won and lost and Talons does that better than shield host. Hitting harder is always good but being able to more effectively apply your damage where you want is the difference between winning and losing games. 

Any armies you think you’d have struggled with? Was there anything you were worried about going into the event?

Going into the event I was worried about Guard and Sisters. Both of those armies have so much more chaff than I do with the fire power to threaten all of my infantry. I was also concerned with some of the other melee factions such as Death Guard and Blood Angels. If Custodes don’t have melee supremacy the game is much much harder to navigate. 

Let’s talk about your final against John Lennon’s Astra Militarum. Did that play out how you expected it to? What gave you the edge?

I knew going into that game that it was a bad matchup against one of the game’s best players. I also knew that trying to out-trade or out-score Guard wasn’t a realistic strategy so I was always going to go for a big push turn. After taking a 20 minute turn one Command Phase I decided that I couldn’t afford to wait if I ever wanted to meaningfully interact with his natural expansion objective. The only way to stage my units lined up to get there was to present enough of a threat in other locations that he couldn’t answer everything. Running two units of wardens into the front of a guard Army was maybe not the safest idea but I felt it gave me the best chance at victory. 

Any other games or interesting plays you want to highlight?

There were two games in particular against the same opponent I’d love to highlight. Normally playing the same opponent twice at any event is impossible but myself and Borja FM found a way. We played in round three and again in the Shadow Round on Friday Night, with the winner advancing to the top 16. Round 3 came down to me drawing exactly Containment and another five point secondary on the bottom of turn 5 in order to tie. I hit containment with secured no man’s land and scored 26 points on the bottom of turn 5 to tie the game 82 to 82. After we both won our round 4 we were back in the shadow round paired again. Once again Borja was ahead and I was at an even greater disadvantage on material. He picked a secret mission and took my home field on the top of turn 4 with his General. I decided my only avenue to victory was to deny him the secret mission so I abandoned the midfield and ran everything I had back to try and stop him. I killed 4 of 6 Sanguinary guard on my turn 4 but had to abandon my position and had to score neither of my secondaries to do so. He kills most of my remaining assets on his turn and on the bottom of turn 5 I have a blade champion, a rhino, and grav-tank. My rhino charges into 2 sang guard and tank shocks for 5 mortals to perfectly kill the last 2 sang guard. Borja uses his strat to to get a save and makes no FNP’s. I steal the point with my last activation and this time pull out a 4 point win. Borja was a gracious opponent and an even better general. 

What’s next for you, now that you’ve climbed the mountain? Is there anything you’d change for your next event?

In terms of list construction my list performed better than anticipated and I think I’m already pushing the Custodes codex to 110% of its capacity. I’m looking forward to the December update and then grinding out games until LVO. If I can come close to repeating my performance from last year I’ll be very happy. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a buff to the Adeptus Custodes but most likely not to my list. 

Thanks again for answering our questions! Is there anything else you’d like to say or people/groups you want to shout out?

My team Gem Wargaming and more specifically my 2 teammates who came with me to WCW. Garrett Stacy, Conan Jennings, and myself have been playing test games together and Iron sharpens Iron. I look forward to see how far we can all go as a team next season. Shout out to my opponents Dino Sauri, Kyle Grundy, Borja FM, Nick Blackburn, Kit Smith, Stefan Mertens, Jesper Unander-Scharin, and John Lennon. You guys were all awesome sports, competitors, and people. 

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