Not much of a slowdown from last weekend's massive events - we've got ten events for you this week, including four majors, and some encouraging novelty at the top. Are the Aeldari still here? Obviously, but we've got undefeated builds from Orks, Sororitas and monogod Daemons, and that's just in part 1!

Today, I'll be covering:

• Michigan GT (major)
• Pantheon GT (major)
• Broadsword Wargaming
• Dragon Fall 2023
• Call To Arms 40K

On Friday, we'll have Lowest of Men taking the helm, covering:

• Battle for Salvation (major)
• Belgium GT (major)
• GT La Laguna II Edición
• Battle Zone Ursa 2023
• Quebec City Open

This week's showdowns, as voted for by our Patrons (in a particularly enthusiastic poll, since variety is the spice of life), will be:

• Unending Swarm Tyranids vs Invasion Fleet Tyranids at the Pantheon GT
• Necrons vs Adepta Sororitas at Battle Zone Ursa.

Let's go!

2023 Michigan GT 40K Championships

126-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Lansing, Michigan, US on October 07 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Brenton Weiss - Aeldari - 1st Place

The List

Archetype

Double Avatars

Thoughts

Name says it all really - even at their elevated costs, the Avatar of Khaine and the Yncarne are some of the best units in the game, and running both of them gives you an exceptional core that can be well supported by Prisms/Spinners and speedy scoring Aspects. As with all current Aeldari lists, it's much more beatable than the pre-nerf versions (what with it having 300-400pts less to play with and all) but it's still ultra potent, and in Brenton's hands took down this major handily.

Scott Ketcham - Adepta Sororitas - 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Credit: Keewa

The List

Archetype

Flagellants and Hulls

Thoughts

Ah yeah, this is much more the sort of thing that we're hoping to see in the post-Slate world - Sororitas breaking through to an undefeated finish. This list rules, and feels like it essentially comes in three parts. You've for the Triumph alongside some powerful shooting hulls to throw out tonnes of damage (potentially using the unlimited Acts and 6+ Feel No Pain modes of the Triumph), Vahl and a unit of Warsuits as a core roving murder band, and (literally) all the Arco-Flagellants you can take for a mixture of harrassment pressure and counter-charge. Arco-Flagellants are really, really good at their current price (in fact I talked about this on Contact Lost a few weeks back), and it's great to see someone taking the plunge and going all in on 30 of them to great effect. You get a lot of wounds and attacks for your points, and for a list like this which wants to keep the enemy away from its precious tanks that's ideal. Multiple Rhinos to stage them in helps a lot too, as does the option to go for Lethal Hits off the Triumph in a counter-charge emergency. Good cheap scoring units and a nasty Palatine-bearing Sisters unit finish stuff up, and overall I think this is the real deal - it can flatten the enemy at speed and can take a serious punch in response. Great stuff from Scott.

Brad Chester - Orks - 3rd Place (Undefeated)

Painboy. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Archetype

Ork Goodstuff

Thoughts

Yeah that's right, we're doing it, I'm declaring this a Goodstuff list. Hello to my five haters on Reddit who get big mad every time we do this.

That's broadly because it is - it's an assembly of the best and most efficient units that Orks have, doesn't skew in any particular direction, and ends up as a highly efficient all-rounder build that has the chops to take a 5-0 finish at a major. Mozrog is one of the best datasheets in the game, the Headwoppa Squighog unit is a tremendous (and fast) all-round damage dealer, Badrukk's Gitz are a shooting nightmare, and Nobz are proving to be a stronger and stronger part of most Ork lists, often (though not always) supplanting Meganobz. I like the choice to build one of the two units extra tough with a Painboy, as it lets you tune the deployment of the two squads to whether the situation needs more krumpin' or more tankin', definitely an interesting bit of flexibility. All business as usual after that, but we love to see a Warboss winning, so well done Brad.

Tim Schmidt - Imperial Knights - 4th Place (4.5-0.5)

Imperial Knight Castellan. Credit: Jack Hunter

The List

Archetype

*Nods sagely* ah yes, Big Guns.

Thoughts

Rounding out our top four, which is conveniently also our undefeateds (albeit with a draw here), we have this very unusual Knights list. I think this build is a very smart way to adapt to the slew of changes that Knights have been hit with. Bondsmen abilities not as worth it without affecting the big? Ditch them, just give all the Armigers cover instead. Can't no-scope the enemy any more? Turn that to your advantage - run one ultra-deadly big Knight, which you'll be able to hide, then use either Towering toe-in and/or Deep Strike/teleport from Mysterious Guardian to line up a first strike on your opponent's best shooting stuff, and go from there. Unless they can instantly counter-punch through a Dominus, no mean feat, you then switch on Shoulder the Burden next turn and continue to dominate the table. It's an ambitious and unusual plan, and it's clear that it really worked, blasting through some pretty tough opponents on the way to fourth place, so major props to Tim on coming up with the plan.

The Best of the Rest

There were 19 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

Pantheon GT

61-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Padstow, NSW, Australia on October 06 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Scorched Earth - Chilling Rain - Sweeping Engagement

Brodie Middleton - Tyranids: The full horde build out of Unending Swarm - endless Termagants and Gargoyles, cheap and cheerful shooting from an Exocrine, scoring from Neurolictors and Deathleaper, then some force multipliers for the horde to finish.

vs.

Alexander Englezos - Tyranids: Deep Strike pressure monster mash

Thoughts

Two very different skewed Tyranid directions on show here. In the endless, chittering corner, we have Brodie's Unending Swarm horde, capable of flooding the board with truly horrific numbers of inexorably advancing Gaunts, respawning them repeatedly with Endless Waves, and unleashing surprisingly hefty damage spikes using lethal hits from the Tervigon and cover-stripping from the Pyrovores. It's an incredibly effective scoring list, able to flood the Primary and either push through fixed Secondaries or use the Neurolictors and Deathleaper to play for Tactical. It also gets great disruption capabilities from the Neurolictors and Tyrant, the latter of which sets up a real nightmare for the opponent where even if they set up a counterpunch to the Gaunt carpet, it might just flop thanks to army-wide Battle-shock tests.

On the other side, we have a different curveball - Alexander's snake spam. Monster mash, but you can hide all the monsters, if you want. If the opponent can't screen this out, it unleashes enormous amount of pressure on them, and the dakkafex unit behind them will do some great damage while that's handled. Invasion Fleet supports the dakkafexes super well, as it helps them adapt to different enemy profiles, while access to the Feel No Pain from Rapid Regeneration helps the big snakes stay up for longer. Very fun, and pleasingly different from the standard Monster Mash setup.

So who wins? It's actually pretty interesting. On the one hand, the deep strike gimmicks of the snake list do nothing here - keeping them off the board is just asking to never be able to deployment. However that's not the only thing that the snakes do well - they also have a massive number of attacks, and while they need to be worried about the Gaunts going Lethal Hits mode and decking one, the rampage they can carve through the lines is considerable, especially when you remember that there's going to be army-wide Sustained Hits on the snake side. The dakkafexes are also incredible in this matchup, its practically the perfect game for them, being comfortably able to flatten a unit in an activation at range, and maybe do even more if they're close enough for the bio-plasma and spine banks to kick in. There aren't that many lists that you look at and think they've got a shot at clearing the horde, but with this one? Honestly maybe.

I think a reasonable amount here is hanging on who gets the first turn, because the risk for the snakes is just getting move-blocked into oblivion. The Gaunts can get up the board and into position at extreme speed, with the Gargoyle fire-and-fade and Termagants Skulking Horrors giving lots of positioning options, and the Insurmountable Odds ability means that the snakes can't use any of their incidental shooting safely - basically only the Dakkafexes are allowed to fire. If the swarm gets the first turn, I think they've got a pretty decent chance of preventing the snakes from ever getting a decent mid-table foothold if they play cagily, and thus allowing them to cap scoring and ride safe secondaries to victory. It's not totally certain, because it's just about possible that with a massive amount of charges turn one the snakes might be able to do enough damage to pull back some scoring late game, something that this mission supports, particularly if they get lucky when they unleash the Shadow in the Warp. A small chink in the armour of the horde is that if their units get Battle-shocked then they can't be respawned with the Stratagem, so what I'd expect to do is to focus fire Neurolictors into one unit turn 1 to try and give a free pickup, then unleash the Shadow turn 2 and hope that some of the Gaunts that are positioned for a charge fail their test. Not reliable, but it's a shot, and sometimes you have to play the numbers.

If the snakes go first, then they probably want to concentrate a couple of their big bodies on two of the mid-table objectives, abandon hope of contesting the third, and desperately fight for control agains the oncoming horde. Overwatch from the dakkafexes is a surprisingly serious factor, as full re-rolls plus Sustained Hits is the route to big overwatch damage, helping slow the horde from grabbing objectives. I do think the horde remains in the driving seat in a lot of cases, but there's something there, and the final score reflects that. The swarm triumphed, but only by a sliver, so well done to both players.

Result

Tyranids Victory - 69 - 64

Brodie Middleton - Tyranids - 1st Place

Termagaunts. Credit: Rockfish

The List

See Showdown.

Archetype

Horde Unending Swarm!

Thoughts

The horde approaches. Unending Swarm looked pretty interesting out of the Tyranid Codex, as while its effects are narrow they're a very good narrow, and it looks like the builds you can craft out of that are serious contenders, able to put an absolute stranglehold on the Primary in most games, and needing a serious lift to clear. I think the key innovation to highlight here is the use of spinefists for all the Termagants - by ensuring they can still do some damage even if they're stuck in combat you remove the need to use the more expensive Hormagaunts, maximising the bodies on the table and helping with the flood. It also means that they can more reliably do some damage on a respawn turn, and helps chip anything via re-rolls (and it's extremely funny that in the edition of free equipment, the spikelauncher is so bad you don't take it instead of a base weapon).

All powerful stuff, and introduces a real new metagame threat for people to contend with. Well done Brodie!

Liam Ma - Astra Militarum - 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Rogal Dorn. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Archetype

Tanks Go Brrrr

Once again the list-naming feature lets players do my job for me.

Thoughts

Name once again says it all - this list has some massive tanks, can redeploy them to line up the best early-game sightlines, and can then point the opposition to dust post-haste. Not an especially complex plan, but a few points worth highlighting. First up, the Banesword is definitely the best of the Guard Big Tanks at the moment, as far as I'm concerned. The Quake Cannon is just a vastly superior all-rounder weapon (which you want on your big stuff), well tuned to absolutely annihilate heavy infantry and enemy tanks alike (and there's enough of those around that the Deadly Demise on 3+ effect is seriously good, not a meme). AP-4 and Ignores Cover means that stuff relying on being able to ride a 5+ in cover is suddenly back to a 6+, and if something absolutely has to die you can also bring the Leman Russ Exterminator to bear, with its AP-boosting effect adding up to remove a 2+ save agains the Quake Cannon entirely, something that's way rarer in 10th.

I think the Exterminator has been massively slept on in general, because its turret gun is actually one of the best of the Russ variants this Edition, and the +1AP effect is phenomenal for either making something turbo dead to the Banesword or (more likely) helping the AP-2 big guns on the Dorns push through against sturdier targets. Definitely put one (probably exactly one) in your Astra Militarum lists if you haven't been already.

I will admit that I don't love that this is another "whoops all hulls" list, something the meta seems to be encouraging, but it's nice to see a Big Tank getting the business done, so great job to Liam.

Alexander Englezos - Tyranids - 3rd Place

Trygon Prime. Credit: Rockfish

The List

See showdown.

Archetype

Snake spam

Thoughts

Covered in the showdown - a unique twist on Monster Mash that handles one of the challenges with the army, which is not being able to hide enough of it and getting blasted. There's lots of shooty tank lists out there right now, making that a genuine concern, so it's nice to see some smart adaptation to it. That's the Tyranid way, after all, so great job Alexander.

Joshua Hynes - Tyranids - 4th Place

Credit: PierreTheMime

The List

Archetype

All-rounder Invasion Fleet

Thoughts

Invasion Fleet is still a great way to run a bunch of monsters (optionally including Old One-Eye as here), so there's not a massive amount of new ground to cover here, but it is worth highlighting the presence of Warriors with a Winged Prime just as a general all-rounder melee unit. They did get a decent point drop between the Prime and the unit, which obviously makes them more appealing, but I think they're another sign of the more general trend that the removal of 10-model Custodes blocks has opened up the space for mid-tier melee stuff, because you're less likely to hit a game where they're literally dead points on the way to the top. While I think there's some good play for them in the Vanguard detachment, being Invasion Fleet does also open up the option of switching on Lethal Hits into hard targets, which combines with built-in Twin-Linked to mean that they'll put actual chip damage on anything, and are surprisingly deadly into some top meta picks like Crisis Suits. Love to see an interesting flex choice performing well, great stuff Joshua.

The Best of the Rest

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

Broadsword Wargaming

56-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Castlebar, County Mayo, IE on October 07 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Colin Power - Aeldari - 1st Place

Wraithguard with Wraithcannons. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Archetype

Wraithguard and Spinners

Thoughts

If I speak I am in big trouble.

Other than saying well done Colin, I guess. Let's go with that.

Mark Morrow - Tyranids - 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Zoanthropes. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Archetype

Brainy Bug Bonanza

Thoughts

More Tyranids, here turning their large brains to the challenge of blasting opponents off the board. They do that pretty well, but there's not that much to say about it, as this is largely what you did with Tyranids before the book, just augmented with Neurolictors as one of the game's best objective/utility tools. The only other thing to highlight is the Hormagaunts, which I do like a lot - I'll keep hammering on this, but it's refreshing that the departure of big Custodes bricks have opened up the possibiity of using a mid-tier melee threat. Good stuff all-round from Mark.

The Best of the Rest

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

Dragon Fall 2023 - 40k Champs

40-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, US on October 07 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Kevin Leonard - Khorne Daemons - 1st Place

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

The List

Archetype

Khorne Bloodcrusher Spam

Thoughts

A hearty (or possibly heart-rending) hell yeah for this one, monogod Daemons taking down an event is fantastic to see. This list is just pure pressure, and maximises its broad capabilities by taking Skullmasters everywhere, which allows the Bloodcrusher units to flatten mid-tier stuff solo, and has a Rendmaster and Bloodthirster to punch up into large targets too. I must admit, it's a while since I've looked at the Rendmaster datasheet and there was definitely a moment of "it does what?" when i pulled it up - that's a buff right there. Given that a list like this will wither and die if it stumbles on a kill at a key moment, this seems like a critical addition to the plan, and I'm glad to see it helping Kevin get this highly flavourful list to the top.

The Best of the Rest

There were 6 more players on 4-1+ records. They were:

Call To Arms 40K - Away Games

36-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Williamsburg, VA, US on October 07 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Justin Rosko - Orks - 1st Place

Ork Beast Snagga Beastboss by Crab-stuffed Mushrooms

The List

Archetype

Mech Orks

Thoughts

See I'm not just going to call all Ork lists Goodstuff, just the ones that are. This is transport-based pressure instead, able to swiftly get into the opponent's face, unleash  a devastating Waaagh turns that flatten key targets, then use a mixture of bodies and charge harrassment from any surviving Trukks to close out the game. Plenty of cheap scoring stuff too, allowing this army to max its Secondaries handily, and the result is another great way to play Orks. Good stuff from Justin.

David Penfold 🎃🎃🎃🎃 - Thousand Sons - 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

The List

Archetype

Rubric Spam

Thoughts

A Magnus-free Tsons list at the top? In this economy? Apparently it's more likely than you think, and I can sort of see why - this build gets to take massive numbers of Characters without lots of them having to be exposed (there's one without a bodyguard, presumably going off to do Doombolt/Grenade-based mischief), which will keep the Cabal Points flowing, and has much more of a solid core than some builds. It does lose the pressure threat that Magnus can sometimes provide value as, but it also removes a model that can be vulnerable against the (increasingly popular) gunline tank lists. No idea if it's the best way of approaching it, we'll see what happens as Thousand Sons continue to evolve, but it's certainly intriuging to see a non-Magnus build run undefeated - good stuff from David.

The Best of the Rest

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

Wrap Up

That's it for part 1, but we've got more spicy content in part 2, so make sure to check back in on Friday.

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