Dutch Masters Grand tournament | golden ticket qualifier

46-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Amersfoort, UT, NL on May 25 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Stefan Meertens - Space Wolves (Stormlance Task Force) - 1st Place

Credit: "Contemptor" Kevin Stillman

The List

Archetype

Space Wolves Mixed Arms

Thoughts

Space Wolves are enjoying a solid win rate at the moment, and the 'Wolf Jail' lists of the last few months are starting to evolve to accommodate a wider range of tools and threats. That's very much on display here with this list, packing Brutalis and Hellblasters to ask different questions of the opponent and slightly trimming back on the cavalry push. Storm Lance keeps it mobile and tricksy, but a smattering of support tanks and guns means opposing armies have to respect it at range as well as up close. A really innovative list and I for one will always champion any list bringing the punch Dreadnaughts. Amazing work!

The Best of the Rest

There were 8 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

• 2nd - Ron Eliyahoo - Tyranids (Invasion Fleet): Mixed arms Invasion Fleet with plenty of big monsters and scoring chaff.
• 3rd - Dino Kho - Necrons (Hypercrypt Legion): Silent King / Triple Monolith Hypercrypt, tasty!
• 4th - JC van der Lee - Blood Angels (Sons of Sanguinius): All-in Death Company / Van Vet Sons of Sanguinius.
• 5th - Dick van der Harst - Black Templars (Ironstorm Spearhead): A very nasty Ironstorm List with triple Vindicator. What a year the Vindicator is having!
• 6th - Rhamon Zoelman - World Eaters: Full Sized Eightbound and Berzerker units running alongside the usual WE characters.
• 7th - Martijn van der Most - Thousand Sons: Slam Dunkulous Tsons with a big brick of Terminators.
• 8th - Florian den Uijl - Thousand Sons: Massed Rubrics and Wizards with lots of supporting Cultists.
• 9th - Ruben Malschaert - Orks (Bully Boyz): A diverse BB list with Ghaz, Mozrog and a big slab of Squighogz.

Capital Clash - Get 'em Boyz!

44-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Canberra, ACT, Australia on May 24 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Space Wolves versus Tau

Ewart Searle - Space Wolves (Stormlance Task Force)

vs.

Kirby - T'au Empire (Mont'ka)

Thoughts

I was lucky enough to have T'au stalwart Kirby get in touch to discuss this showdown, so I shall hand over to his firsthand account of the action:

"Hey all, Kirby here. Appreciate the opportunity to give my perspective on a great matchup with Ewart and the aptly named Wolfjail, so cheers to Goonhammer and let’s get ready to get embarrassed.

I was playing a Mont’ka list that had a lot of bulky hulls to assist with movement / move blocking backed up by the significant output of a Broadside unit, two Riptides and three Breacher squads. I had already played against 6x NDK Grey Knights, Vanguard Nids, 180 Boyz Green Tide and a hybrid melee / hulls sisters army and most of my opponent’s ended with little in terms of resources by the end of games, so I felt confident in my ability to remove things if I could stay away from being tagged. What I did find in particular with those matchups though was Breachers with 10” range were hard to maneuverer around 9” reactive move rules combo’d with blood surges.

We were playing Supply Drop, Search & Destroy, Chilling rain on GW layout 3 (you can check out the stream here: Australis Tabletop Wargaming Network - YouTube; Ewart was also on stream for Round 4 vs World Eaters and I was on stream Round 2 vs Vanguard Tyranids; ATWN covers most of the major tournaments in NSW / ACT for Australia if you ever want to see our “weird” meta). The terrain gave me three nice firing lanes down the centre and to each table edge (along the “bottom” long table edge and on my left flank to the “top” long table edge) so the game plan was to park the Broadsides & Riptides around the main deployment ruin to use Mont’ka advances to shoot down any line and delay the wolves with Piranhas, Devilfish and Pathfinders. The big hulls could jam up space in between the ruins and force the TWC units to go the long way round or melee a throwaway unit to then allow me to shoot them. I knew if key units started to get tagged, I was in a pretty negative spiral. I ultimately wanted to dominate my left flank to try and turn the game to hammer and anvil and have the main shooting components as central as possible with layers of blocking units denying primary and slowing the big combat units.

Winning the defender roll off let me put down Pathfinders first to block out the shortest route to my deployment zone but given it was search and destroy, Ewart still had space to drop some scouts to occupy my left flank. Unfortunately, the objective that ended staying was on the right flank and if I wanted to hold that objective, I would need to play Dawn of War / Pitched Battle and create a much bigger front for the TWC and Wulfen to hit me on. Nonetheless, we powered forward with our plan as I think I just auto lose if I try that. Ewart takes fixed secondaries homers and BID (I give up 27) and I go tactical. The go first roll off is really important here – if I go first, I can push out Devilfish and Pathfinders a lot further to slow down the TWC and keep them locked in his deployment zone for a turn or two. I can use advances and Scouts to get the Riptides / Broadsides into the middle of the left flank and rely on the auto 6” advance strat and the sheer size of the TWC units to cover all three firing lanes. The Devilfish can also drop off Breachers in more useful spots towards the centre of the board where they can out OC some things and be better speedbumps.

Instead of all of this wonderful action happening, Ewart went first. What unfolded thereafter, was pretty painful (including a couple of positioning mistakes by myself, see the end of this wall of text). TWC limited shooting angles and sent Wulfen / Jump Pack Assault Intercessors forward to take my shooting and the amount of damage the Wulfen absorbed made Ewart a lot more confident in exposing the TWC afterwards (the -1 hit/ wound stratagem really paid off for him). The combination of two characters in the unit, the defensive stratagems and reactive moves meant the Tau shooting was never able to bring its full efficiency to bear and Ewart slowly started to get things to tag into my army while only losing a full Wulfen + TWC unit (and some smaller units) by game end.  I only got two kill secondaries (assassinate T1 and BID T5) so my secondary score was pretty low along with only getting 8 primary (I was pretty happy about this, small victories!). Ewart was kept off of primary Turn 2 but racked up 33 primary over the last 3 turns while nearly maxing his secondaries. I would be curious to see how this matchup goes when Tau go first and maybe on Crucible instead of Search & Destroy. I might have been able to score 50/60 and keep Ewart in the 70/80 range so it still feels very Wolfjail favoured (a more “normal” primary mission swings heavily into Wolfjail favour I think even if the floor of Tau scoring is raised). Final score was 81 to 34 Ewart who played pretty flawlessly.

To my mistakes… I had found through the tournament so far that Breachers against reactive move / blood surging units to be woefully annoying to position and use due to their 10” range (move to 8.9”, get a reactive move, now you are within blood surge tagging range for example). Combo’d with going second, I ended up dropping breachers out of transports so they didn’t get tagged when Devilfish blew up or surrounded and unable to get out. I also left a gap where two scout units tagged Breachers units T1 and T2. While they might not have had a lot of use due to their movement and range limitations, they could have been used more effectively as speed bumps or screens after the Devilfish / Piranhas and been another resource to shoot at non-TWC units like Wulfen / Intercessors. Not having them readily accessible ultimately changed my level of activations and I could have screened with one unit of breachers into the scouts so that multiple units weren’t being tagged. Secondly, order of operations – one time I had Broadsides clearing Wulfen that were in combat with them as the first shooting activation – this meant when the TWC were shot, they had space to Blood Surge into combat while I had previously blocked out any space for that to happen. Having the Broadsides shoot last meant there was no Blood Surge + tagging. Woopsies. Neither of these would have changed the general outcome of the game I think as I was already overrun though it is always good to keep fine tuning for next time as those little mistakes can be important in a closer game.

Ewart was a gem to play as usual and full props to him for beating a tough gauntlet of opponents (I think he had Speed Freak Orks, another Stormlance Marines, Double Vault Necrons, World Eaters and Mont’ka Tau) and he has smashed it with Wolfjail lately – until the entire army goes up in points, we will have to suffer our fluffy overlords!"

What a lovely, sporting and reflective take on the final, thank you Kirby!!

Result

Space Wolves (Stormlance Task Force) Victory - 81 - 34

Ewart Searle - Space Wolves (Stormlance Task Force) - 1st Place

Logan Grimnar as Santa Claus. Credit: Kevin Stillman

The List

Archetype

Wolf Jail

Thoughts

Another event triumph for Wolf Jail, with an all-in take that goes hard on Wulfen (newly restored to excellent trading piece by recent changes) and Thunderwolves. Durable, punchy, with some deceptive sneaky tricks, this list can block in and body the unwary. Logan is really useful for some 'second Waagh' energy, and this list has all the tools to cause enormous problems. Well done on the event win!

Dale Mann - Aeldari (Battle Host) - 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Credit: Wings

The List

Archetype

Aeldari Mixed Arms

Thoughts

A finely balanced Aeldari list here, which packs Yvraine and a Troupe for some counter charge / push potential. This little unit is a lot more obnoxious and durable than opponents often give credit for. Plenty of supporting hijinks in Warp Spiders and Skyweavers, and you have a potent list that can mix it up with Tanks and bog down and frustrate slower, more durable armies. They may not be the meta force they once were, but Eldar are still extremely strong when played well. Great work on the top placing.

The Best of the Rest

There were 5 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

• 3rd - Kirby - T'au Empire (Mont'ka): The Tau list from the showdown.
• 4th - Jordan McGregor - Adepta Sororitas (Hallowed Martyrs): A mixed arms Sisters list with Castigators, an Exorcist, and tonnes of Arcos and Repentia.
• 5th - Egor Kalinin - Necrons (Canoptek Court): CC Goodstuff with Doomsday Arks in place of Doomstalkers.
• 6th - Rowan Kennett - Tyranids (Vanguard Onslaught): Vanguard goodness with a Zoan brick, big slabs of melee warriors and all sorts of sneaky support pieces.
• 7th - Cody Howden - Grey Knights: GK Dreadknight spam.

Heroes Of The Mid Table Spring Gt, 2024

40-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Langley Twp, BC, CA on May 25 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Ryan Burns - Dark Angels (Ironstorm Spearhead) - 1st Place

Credit: Kevin Stillman

The List

Archetype

Dark Angels Ironstorm

Thoughts

Dark Angels Ironstorm has trended down a little in recent times as players more to greener grass with the Templars or Blood Angels. Nonetheless, shooty Dangels Ironstorm remains phenomenally potent, with Azrael and the Dark Shroud offering crucial buffs to a brutal core. The Stormraven makes another run out here, blasting opponents to pieces as Dreadnaughts take the mid board. A really powerful build that will still body the unwary. Great work on the event win Ryan!

The Best of the Rest

There were 7 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

• 2nd - JT McDowell - Drukhari (Realspace Raiders): A glorious shooty Realspace Raid list with 6 Talos.
• 3rd - Myles Scott - Aeldari (Battle Host): Aeldari mixed arms with D Cannons, aspects and Troupes.
• 4th - James Jones - Orks (Bully Boyz): Full send Meganobz and Nobz with two teleporting Boyz bricks in support.
• 5th - Steve W - Imperial Fists (Anvil Siege Force): A really cool Siege Force build with loads of Heavy Intercessors and Eradicators.
• 6th - Daniel Knight - Grey Knights: Massed GK Terminators and some Dreadknights.
• 7th - Daniel Card - Chaos Daemons: All-in Bloodcrusher / Rendmaster heroism with some War Dogs in support.
• 8th - Lucas Sterne - Astra Militarum: Leman Russ heavy guard piloted by a guy who literally sounds like a Krieg officer, what more could you want?!

GRIMDARK 21: New venues to conquer!

32-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Stockholms län, SE on May 25 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Björn Eriksson - Imperial Knights (Noble Lance) - 1st Place

Armiger Warglaives. Credit: Kevin Genson

The List

Archetype

IK Armigers / Canis

Thoughts

Sometimes you just need to slam Armigers on a table and shoot people to bits. This build leans hard into OC8, durable platforms with solid shooting to overwhelm the board, and the opponent. IK haven't seen many top placings in recent times so this is well worth celebrating. Canis Rex remains a very tough and powerful Knight and has seen a lot of joy in GK builds, so it's nice to see it come home to it's little robot buddies for a storming victory. Really well done!

The Best of the Rest

There were 4 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

• 2nd - Johan Norrman - Dark Angels (Ironstorm Spearhead): Go-wide Dangels Ironstorm with a bucketload of tanks.
• 3rd - Juan Manuel Sánchez Molina - Orks (Bully Boyz): Bully Boyz with Ghazgull, Mozrog, Meganobz and bricks of Squighogz.
• 4th - Christian Olofsson - Chaos Space Marines (Slaves to Darkness): An early sighting of Renegade Raiders CSM with Vashtorr, 20 Warp Talons and lots of trading from transports. Baller.
• 5th - Tobias Sellberg - Orks (Green Tide): Green Tide with swathes of Boyz, Weirdboyz and a Meganobz brick for troubleshooting.

Wrap Up

That's it for this week folks! A shift in the metagame is afoot, with Necrons starting to wane a little and those that hunt them on the rise. Orks have started strong but plenty of armies are holding their own, so things look finely poised as we await the arrival of new rulesets and (hopefully) new contenders. Get out there and wreck your enemies!

Lowest of Men, out.

Latest

---

• 

  Games Industry News Roundup- April 7th, 2026 - Apr 07 2026
• 

  Infinity N5 First Principles: Understanding the Outcomes of Face to Face Rolls - Apr 07 2026
• 

  A Brush With Greatness, Part 1: Introductions - Apr 07 2026

Patreon

Support us on Patreon to get access to our Discord and exclusive App features.

Thank you for being a friend.

Already a Patron? Login with Patreon.

Fashion Accessories

Visit our incredibly official store on RedBubble.