It's team event time once again readers - we've had one last weekend of calm on the singles front, but players down under haven't been idle, with two different team events going off. Spanning the whole weekend, the ever-growing Gladiator Gaming team series put on its third event, this time with a mighty 14 teams participating (leaving it only two players short of what would be a major in the singles world), while on Sunday the C. O. A. C. H. event took place. While smaller than the Gladiator Gaming event, this one came with a pretty hefty pedigree, as members of the Australian WTC team split up and each took the reigns of coaching one of the particpating teams of five, ensuring all the competitors had some real experience backing them.

As we've done for team events in the past, rather than doing separate list reviews for each army, we're going to take a look at the full composition of the top two teams from each event. In team tournaments, every list should have its part to play in the overall composition, so taking a look at how things fit together is much more important than going deep on any one list.

We'll talk about what we're looking for when we do that in a second, but just before we do, a reminder that if you have an event you think we should be taking a look at, especially if it's not super obvious in BCP or DUP, you can let us know at contact@goonhammer.com or via our Facebook page. Your tips are always appreciated even if we can't act on all of them, and this week I'd like to thank Connor, one of the players in the C.O.A.C.H. event, for helping furnish me with all the details I needed!

Team Events - What to Look For

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

At team events, rather than every player getting paired randomly each round, teams get matched up, with each player on the team playing one game, and the team that ends up with the highest total score across those games wins the matchup. To decide which players play one another, a pairing process is used within each team matchup, which gives each team some degree of control over how the games line up. There also tend to be varying densities of terrain on the tables each team match is being played across, with teams also having some control over which table each game plays out on. Games are also scored differentially, with margin of victory determining how many points the winner and loser get out of a matchup. Finally, they also tend to limit each codex to only be used once per team, forcing players to dip in to diverse strategies.

We did a full writeup of how the pairings at the Gladiator Gaming events worked the first time we covered one. The C. O. A. C. H. event featured five player teams and a different process (more directly aligned with the standard WTC process, just cut down to five tables), meaning there are slightly varying motivations at play, but in general for both we're looking for examples of the following:

• "Defender" lists. Both events have parts of the pairing process where your team has to put a list forwards and your opponent can choose some matchups for it from a decently sized pool out of their team. "Defender" lists are ones that have a strong plan to rack up at least a decent score in highly adverse matchups (minimising the differential points given up) or have game plan that needs very specific counters to deal with, allowing them to punish a team that doesn't have the right tools.
• Buck wild all-in damage dealing lists, designed to be thrown into the right matchup and achieve overwhelming victory for maximum points.
• "Counter" lists, which will kick the stuffing out of some strategies, which can either be deployed tactically for the right matchup, or used to force the opponents to make tough choices to avoid them.
• In general, lists skewing a bit harder to doing one thing really well than being all-rounders - without needing to take on all comers, you can lean in to whatever game plan a faction has that's a real pain to deal with unless faced with the right counter.
• Team-level skew - if you can build a whole team composition where many or all of the lists lean in a certain direction defensively, you can overwhelm your opponents' counters.

We'll quickly go through any additional incentives each structure creates prior to going through the armies for each event - starting now, with the Gladiator Gaming results.

Gladiator Gaming Team Event

The Gladiator Gaming pairing structure creates three notable additional incentives:

1. You have to put forward a "Champion" list secretly prior to doing any of the rest of the pairings, which matches up to your opponents' Champion. This incentivises a team to bring at least one powerful all-comers army. Having a second list that's reasonably able to play an all-comers game also helps for the matchup you have left over at the end.
2. The first time a defender is put up, the other team gets a free pick out of all three of their non-Champion lists to go up against it. This makes counters a bit stronger here.
3. The flipside of that is that the team that puts up the first defender is guaranteed to get a free pick of terrain densities to play on. This means Defender builds can lean in to specialising in playing on a certain kind of terrain, past examples of which have included a Kastellan Robot heavy AdMech build that would be a screaming nightmare to play on a light table, and a Khorne-focused Chaos Space Marine list designed to brawl across heavy terrain.

You can find all the lists for this event in Down Under Pairings.

1st Place - Art of War Victoria

The Lists

Jeremy Martino's Adepta Sororitas

Matt Morosoli's Drukhari

Adam Camilleri's Dark Angels

Leigh Abbey's Chaos

The Breakdown

Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

Right out of the gate here, there's a whole new tension at play. In the team events we've seen up till now, Adepta Sororitas have been the largely undisputed champions of the, uh, Champion slot, as the incredible mixture of power and flexibility makes them the safest bet to try and take on the opponent's finest. There's a new, incredibly spiky kid on the block, however, and the exceptionally potent Drukhari codex looks to be taking a swing at that crown. For regular readers, Matt's Drukhari list here is (as far as I can see) identical to his major-winning list from last week, and throwing a top singles list straight into a team comp and performing extremely well with it (Matt came third in individual player placings here, and the top-ranked individual player was also on Drukhari) strongly suggests they're going to cruise straight into a tier 1 position in the metagame overall. This list is horrific, it's incredibly fast, surprisingly durable out the gates because it can start almost entirely mounted, and can do massive damage both at range and up close. Very, very nasty.

Sisters haven't gone away, mind - after all, if two armies are vying for the top spot, why not bring both? Jeremy's list would also not look massively out of place at a singles event, but there are some tweaks from the norm that I think suggest an attempt to give it a bit more of a counterpick identity than just being a pure all-rounder. The full Celestian and Seraphim squads are both nasty anti-horde tools, and favouring those and other high-volume damage dealers like Zephyrim and Repentia over maxing out on Retributors suggests that this build wants to lean in on the close-mid range infantry brawler aspect of Sororitas, something they're distinctly better equipped for than Drukhari thanks to power armour. It also goes very wide on infantry bodies, likely overwhelming the weaponry of many armies. You end up with a build that's perfectly happy stepping up to the champion plate if the Drukhari are feeling lazy/facing the perfect counter, but that will also thrive if called on to go toe to toe with a horde or enemy brawler builds.

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

Next up, we have an extremely obvious Defender build in the form of Dark Angels. In singles play, heavy Ravenwing or healthy mixes of Deathwing and Ravenwing have appeared to be a slightly stronger plan than going this hard on the bone boys, but if you want a Defender build two massive bricks of ObSec Terminators screening a bunch of Talonmasters is pretty much exactly what you're after. Thanks to being able to stack Stubborn Defiance and While We Stand (probably Combat Squadding the Infiltrators to keep one half safe), and with Deathwing Command Squads for Actions, this list seems unlikely to ever dip below a score of ~60pts without even really having to do anything, heavily capping the score the opponents can hope to walk away with, and unlike some Defender lists is trivially capable of switching gears to be a counterpick and crushing some matchups. Finally, Watched provides another source of big headaches, as it lets the army shut down some key tools that might otherwise be able to punch through its defences, reducing the breadth of possible counters. Expect Dark Angels to be a very common way for teams to use their Adeptus Astartes slot going forward, and for a serious arms race to find either tools that can crack the Deathwing bombs or lists that score equally highly when left to their own devices to beat them at their own game. One slightly depressing thing, as a confirmed Xenos fan, is that Necrons have vanished from the top team comps, having previously been a very good source of Defender builds, and that's bluntly because they're just worse at playing this game overall, and lose hard to these lists in the specific because Talonmasters can grind out Scarabs while Deathwing detonate warrior blocks. Sad times for skeletons.

Gellerpox Infected
Credit: Pendulin

Finally, we have the traditional "give Wings a headache as he tries to work out what the deal is" list, a key part of any composition. In all seriousness, having a list that confuses the hell out of opponents is actively valuable in team events because it can cause them to make mistakes in the pairings, letting you line up an extra favourable matchup that can easily make the difference between victory and defeat.

Note: Unfortunately it turns out there's a reason people haven't tried this before - Gellerpox are unique in that their NURGLE keyword isn't a faction keyword, meaning you can't use them in a detachment like this. I even went and checked what keywords they had and didn't spot that NURGLE was in the wrong bit! Thanks to the readers who pointed this out.

Note 2: The plot thickens! The team have reached out and shown me a response from the GW FAQ email confirming that NURGLE not being a faction keyword on these units is a mistake, and will be fixed in an upcoming FAQ release. The TO was aware, and had approved their use on this basis. Obviously your local TO's mileage may vary until this is in print, but this can now showcase why you might want to include these guys in a Nurgle list once it's widely permitted!

My read on this build, having mulled it over extensively, is that it's a counterpick list designed to punish opponents that don't have a way of dealing big ranged damage. Obviously the up-front "what the hell is that" moment comes from the Gellerpox tools, and having reminded myself of what they can do, the summary is basically "play objectives real good" - the Glitchlings are Infantry that can redeploy for cheap, while the Eyestingers are fast, small and can re-spawn if they die. Add in some Tide of Traitors capable cultists and Nurglings as well and you've got a fairly rigid lock on Scramblers and sometimes Engage, while the three CSM units can pick up WWSWF. With the Plaguebursts providing a reliable clip of ranged damage, you end up with a high score floor, which forces your opponent to try and deal with your stuff. Problem is, if their plan for that involved getting in your face they're going to get ripped to shreds by a mix of Terminators dropping from deep strike and double-shooting Bikers, quickly turning the tide in this list's favour and letting it pick up a big win. It thus counters opposing brawler lists extremely well, and from the scores Leigh picked up over the weekend it looks like the plan worked very effectively, and the Gellerpox stuff is going straight onto my mental backburner as a weird flex you can pull if your army needs this very specific kind of tool added.

Someone's going to have to take down the Art of War crew at one of these eventually (and to give them credit, the team from the Normal Blokes podcast came agonisingly close right out the gates in round 1 here), but this powerful set of lists came through five rounds triumphant, and honestly a combo of Drukhari, Sororitas, Dark Angels and your team's double secret super tech list feels like it forms a very effective composition for four player events in general.

2nd Place - Art of War Queensland

The Lists

Hayden Walduck's Raven Guard Successors

Dan Savage's Adeptus Mechanicus

Erik Lathouras' Adepta Sororitas

Nick Standing's Imperium

The Breakdown

Adepta Sororitas Sister Superior. Credit: Jack Hunter

The second Art of War team brings us a refreshingly different set of builds, with only one overlapping strategy. The Sisters list here shows similar tuning, once again favouring melee, extra bodies and anti-horde over ranged damage, making it something of a skew build that will excel at rolling close-range combats. It's honestly going to be enough of a nightmare to shift on heavy terrain tables that I could see it being used in a Defender role, as it's arguably the closest of any of these to having a very clear plan in almost any matchup on the right terrain. A neat illustration of how versatile the Sororitas codex is, certainly.

Moving on to the Raven Guard army, this is an example of one of the main things we saw Marines used for in teams prior to Dark Angels arriving, which is the all-out damage build. Usually running as either Raven Successors or White Scars, these pack a bunch of melta and plasma weapons into a lethal package alongside high-powered melee killers, sacrificing some of the durability you can build into Marine builds in favour of enough killing power to punt unprepared opponents directly into the sun. I like the choice of Raven Guard over Scars for this role right now, because Master of Ambush gives you an extra counterpick angle that Scars wouldn't - some lists, really don't want to have to deal with a guaranteed turn one VanVet charge if they lose the roll off. The only issue I have with these builds right now is that I'm not certain they're packing quite the level of firepower needed to reliably crack the Deathwing blobs open, and whether it's worth continuing to pack a hammer like this when the metagame contains an indestructible nail. The extent to which Drukhari can go wide is also a potential issue here, as they can usually hold on to enough toys to launch a devastating, potentially game ending counterattack. Still definitely not a bad strategy, but maybe not quite as good as it was a couple months back.

Ironstrider Ballistarius. Credit: Rockfish

The AdMech list here is somewhat unusual for one in a team event, in that it actually looks like an all-comers list that I could see being put forward as the Champion. Conventionally AdMech see a lot of use in this kind of tournaments as nightmare shooting hammer builds to crack open enemy tarpits, but this isn't skewed too hard in that direction, and I would honestly be utterly unphased if you showed it to me and told me it had won a singles GT. Three Skorpy Ds and a big unit of Ironstriders with the relevant buff backup is still more than enough to achieve shooting supremacy against non-specialist lists (and pushed the Dark Angels list above to a draw), and when you combine that with the very strong board control the cavalry and Pteraxii provide you end up with a build that just plays a very effective but also very normal game of 40K. I do like the one unique touch in the addition of Servitors that are packing heat, because when you've got Cawl re-rolls and the Mars Canticle up they actually end up a distressingly cheap way to get some extra powerful shots into the army for a key swing turn. I don't think that's especially unique to team events, and wouldn't be shocked to see the tech creep into singles play now someone's figured it out, but it's always fun to see new things. I do also enjoy seeing a "normal" AdMech list in teams, and putting something like this up as a Champion might be an unexpected enough play if opponents aren't paying attention to reap some rewards.

Our final build here is a pretty classic defensive skew build - if you want to do any meaningful damage to this list you need to crack through the T8 of the Tank Commanders or the 2+ and the damage reduction of the dreads, and if you can't then the dreads and Shield Captain are going to roll right into your face and cause you big problems, while all the little infantry units sort out Actions. Go-wide pressure hull builds can work pretty well in singles, but in teams where you can deliberately avoid their worst matchups (usually either massive hordes or opposing damage fiesta lists like the Raven Guard one) they can really come into their own, and can be a decent pick to go into something where you don't have a great direct counter, or as something to put up as a defender if you assess your opponent's composition and see no counters. I must admit, were I fielding this I'd probably rejig the guard stuff a bit - with all the other threads being -1D, it feels like putting Master Mechanic on the Russes instead of Slow and Purposeful might be better, as it further concentrates defences. From the scores this list put up, it looks like it was mostly sacrificed on the altar of salvaging points from nasty opposing armies, as it has a strong enough pro-active plan to at least go down swinging in a lot of games, and considering that it feels like leaning in to the hard-to-kill angle is much more valuable to the list's purpose. Very cool to see the dreads on the march nonetheless.

Another neat set of lists overall, pulling back a bit from specialisation in favour of some slightly more rounded builds, and showing that this can still work reasonably effectively - though it being narrowly edged out by a more specialised team does suggest that going hard with some of the best codexes ends up as the superior strategy right now.

C. O. A. C. H. Team Tournament

Unsurprisingly given the players involved, the C.O.A.C.H event used a pairing process much closer to the ETC standard, just cut down for five player teams. This goes as follows:

• Teams roll off to decide who will pick the first table. In each pairing, there was one light terrain board, three medium and one dense.
• Each team puts up one list as a Defender secretly. Once both teams have chosen, these are revealed.
• Each team now secretly puts up two attackers against their opponent's defender. Once both teams have chosen, these are revealed.
• Each team secretly picks which of the attackers to refuse, then reveals their selections. This creates two matchups.
• The team that won the roll off picks the table for their defender to play on, then the other team picks the table for their defender.
• This process repeats to generate two more matchups, with the exception that the team that lost the initial roll-off picks the first table this time.
• The two lists left over at the end play each other on the remaining table.

The main differences in incentives that this creates compared to the Gladiator event are:

• You're likely to see two Defender-style lists a lot of the time, because there are two rounds where those are put up.
• There's no explicit "Champion" pick, so bringing a pure all-comers list is less incentivised, but...
• You don't get to counterpick as perfectly against Defender builds, as your opponent can refuse one of them. That means you either need multiple counters that can go after the same kind of list and/or to just pack strong all comers lists that happen to be extremely good in specific matchups on top of general quality.
• It's harder to guarantee the table you want for a defender list - in the Gladiator event you always get the compensation of picking the table if you have to put up first defender against the full spread of opposing lists, but here that isn't true, so relying on the light or heavy board for your defender strategy is riskier.

Lists for the event can be found in Down Under Pairings.

1st Place - Dice in Combat Squad

The Lists

Earl Clarke's Adeptus Mechanicus

Aaron Thompson's Adepta Sororitas

Shane Horvath's Dark Angels

Ben Leeper's Tyranids

Connor Ockwell's Chaos

The Breakdown

To me, this team looks like it breaks down as follows:

• Two Defender builds in the Dark Angels and Chaos lists.
• One fairly skewed damage dealing list from the AdMech that can play Defender or counter.
• Two strong all-rounder lists in the Sororitas and the Tyranids.

The Dark Angels build is on a very similar plan to what we saw at the Gladiator event - Deathwing Terminators turn out to be really good defenders - with the only notable differences being the Infiltrators getting cut down in favour of an Attack Bike unit, and Ezekiel showing up. This gives the army some further tools to mess with the opponent in the psychic phase and a little damage spike to deploy in an emergency, while handily ensuring that WWSWF goes straight onto one of the Talonmasters instead of the Infiltrators. Just as nasty here as it was above, and in the Defender role it's joined by a Daemons list. While still great, Beasts and Bird builds have fallen slightly out of favour in singles play as other powerful tarpits like the aforementioned Deathwing have emerged, but when you need a second source of extremely durable models they're still waiting to bound joyfully/flap ominously into battle. It doesn't hurt that they're also kind of the polar opposite in what they punish damage wise - Deathwing are best taken out with high-volume high-AP D1 attacks, but those are pretty much wasted on Beasts. Because of the other tools this list includes, you also can't punish it nearly as easily with high-powered ranged attackers, as it's got the Keepers and Terminators just dying to get up into your face and tear your precious toys apart. With Furies and Cultists to finish things off, this build honestly wouldn't look too out of place in a singles event, but it's the kind of singles list that needs specific tools to beat, making it excellent in a team format.

Adeptus Mechanicus - Corpuscarii Electro-Priests
Credit: Pendulin

The AdMech list seems to be intended as a kind of omni-counter against pretty much any flavour of army that's relying on winning a damage war. Metalica Fusilaves are a pretty phenomenal debuff swiss army knife  - they can use Seismic Bombs to slow most aggressive units down, unleash Electrofilament Countermeasures to switch off auras and now activate Blaring Glory to shut off re-roll abilities of any sort. Take all that into account, and very few opponents are going to win a war of attrition against the Kataphrons and Robots this list puts up - vehicle heavy lists will get blown apart by the heavy arc rifles, while phosphor blasters and electrostatic gauntlets will make a horrendous mess of enemy hordes, and this list is likely to have at least one more turn of relative impunity to use them than it really should. If anything does manage to get right in its face, a squad of fulgurites re-rolling wounds via the Metalican Lung is a frankly terrifying final hurdle to cross. Add in the fact that Power Core Kataphrons are no slouches in a fight and you've got a list that's a real headache for a lot of armies to face. It's especially good on light terrain boards, and that adds the incidental option of putting it up as a Defender when your team gets first table pick too.

Credit: BuffaloChicken

Finishing off the roster, we just have two very strong singles lists. This is by far the most "normal" Sisters build of any of the three in this article, and would look completely unsurprising in a regular top four, while the double Dimachaeron build is a sufficiently vicious concoction that it's pushed Tyranids up to the upper echelons of tier 2 pretty much all by itself. Double moving a Dimachaeron on 9th-sized boards is exceptionally good, putting on the kind of early pressure that some lists just can't deal with. Backing this up with the intense attrition from the Hive Guard and Exocrine creates an army that can crush pretty much anything that doesn't counterattack extremely hard, and that's one of the things that makes this build even better in teams than singles - you're more likely to be able to navigate it to one of those matchups that it just wins. Triple Retributor Sisters have some of that same energy, as they represent about the most reliable turn one ranged damage spike in the game, letting them bully any army that relies on a big threat like Mortarion mercilessly. Both also have pretty high floors for their scores because of the pressure they can put out till at least the mid game and wide board control.

Overall, a very deserving set of winning lists, and a neat demonstration of some of the different factors at play - two defender lists, slightly more flexible builds all-round, and all-comers lists that counter some things hard and tend to score high.

2nd Place - Just Roll 6s

The Lists

Vincent Mateljan's Tyranids

Thomas White's Chaos

Dave Horne's Harlequins

Richard Owen's White Scars

Mike Basc's Drukhari

The Breakdown

This set of lists goes a bit less hard on team-event specific tricks in favour of going heavy on all-rounder lists that are slightly tweaked from conventional choices to improve how well they counter certain matchups. None of these lists would be outright surprising to see in a regular top four, but all either represent strategies that excel in some games in their default setups or pack a combination of tools that might not prove quite optimal across six rounds of singles play, but worked here.

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

In the former category we have a second iteration of the DImachareon list with fairly minimal changes from what was covered above and the Chaos triple-threat build. The Chaos army does have counters (the Sisters build from the first team here being a great example) but for opponents that don't have a realistic answer to Mortarion it's incredibly brutal, and when sorted into the right match has a very high score floor. It's also a great pairing with the Dimachaeron list in a team comp, because they both crush opponents that have no realistic way of pushing a Dima/Mortarion sized threat out of their lines turn one. This means you can line both up against the same defender if your opponent puts the wrong thing up, preventing them from dodging a bad matchup. Fun stuff.

The other three builds all have tweaks that stand out from the norm, letting them crush the right matchup and thus threaten to shape pairings:

• The White Scars army is tweaked to ensure it's especially good against hordes - Vanguard Veterans already do this well, but bringing a full Intercessor blob with auto-rifles for the Rapid Fire stratagem is a stronger commitment to this than you'd normally see.
• The Harlequin list is tuned to counter enemy brawler strategies - a Shadowstone-boosted Agent of Bedlam Shadowseer brings a massive -1A bubble to the table, and combining that with the Frozen Stars foot troupes gives you some serious melee supremacy. This list can also team up with the White Scars to go horde hunting in counterpick phases.
• The Drukhari build punishes any hull or monster heavy builds by putting up a massive wall of speedy darklight, and is also extremely tough for opponents with inadequate ranged anti-tank to contend with, as everything's mounted and the melee tools provide a spectacular counterpunch against anything that commits up close.

The changes to create these capabilities might not make the cut in singles, but here it's absolutely worth making swaps that cut the lists' all-round effectiveness by maybe 5-10% in order to gain a 20-30% improvement in the right matchup. With the larger team sizes and less "perfect" counterpicking, this is something that the WTC standard setup definitely encourages, and it's nice to see that on display to round out our reviews.

Wrap Up

I hope you've enjoyed another team episode - next week it's all singles all the time as events kick up a gear and we take a look at the Renegade Open's Spring Up GT and Iron Halo's War for the Wooden Spoon. Both have got some impressive fields lining up, and I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what some of the world's finest have been cooking up over the winter, and whether it gets immediately impaled and eviscerated by the new hotness of Drukhari. It should be a blast, so check back in then, and in the meantime send any comments, questions or suggestions to contact@goonhammer.com.

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