Warhammer - it's the thing that is happening. A lot.

Tempting though it is to had the reins to Falcon once more just to see whether he could stretch a Beetleborgs theme out to 10+ events, it's me Wings, I'm back (back again), and here to tell you about the latest exciting goings on out there in the metagame. Of which, as previously mentioned, there are a lot. This weekend had ten GT+ events that we're going to be taking a look at and featured not one but two double elimination showdowns at the US Open Grand Final, each pitting two phenomenal players against one another - and we're hardly going to skip that! Two of the stars, Jack Harpster and James "Boon" Kelling, have both kindly provided some thoughts on their games, so if you want insight into how some top players approach games on one of the biggest stages available, read on.

That means that the schedule for this week looks something like the following:

Today we'll be looking at:

• The two Grand Final showdowns.
• Da Boyz GT (major)
• Into the Hellstorm X
• Capital Clash Fall GT
• Twisted GT

On Friday we'll be covering:

• Renegade Open (major)
• The Riverside Classic Grand Tournament
• No Retreat
• Nemesis Fall 2022
• Torneo Nacional Mexico 40k
• Boltercon 2022 Invitational GT

As well as the two Grand Final showdowns, the Goonhammer patrons have also voted for:

• Thousand Sons & Daemons vs. the Ymyr Conglomerate at the Capital Clash.
• Ultramarines with a Big Tank vs. Freeblade Lance at the Riverside Classic.
• Astra Militarum vs. Harlequins at Boltercon 2022

Why do the patrons keep voting for old Guard lists now the new book is on the way? Unclear - presumably it is some form of complex psychological torment aimed at me, personally. Please join and help make them stop.

Anyway, let's kick off with the Grand Final.

Grand Final - Best General

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Death and Zeal/Data-Scry Salvage

John Lennon - Adepta Sororitas: Extra crunchy Bloody Rose with three units of Paragons and a block of Mortifiers



Jack Harpster - Orks: Goff Pressure spectacular with the full triple Kill Rigs, guest starring Mozrog Skragbad alongside some 'Orrible Gitz in a Patrol.

Thoughts

Jack: The Ork list is designed to put pressure on the opponent and even if the enemy isn’t tabled, guarantee the two squads of Gretchin enough time to score a winning amount of points. If allowed to sit back, a 35 on Get the Good Bits, Green Tide and Biggest and the Best is usually enough although when in doubt the Ork player can always try to run their opponent over. It’s difficult to get through the list fast enough, and once the Orks get to have a Waaagh turn to charge in it’s difficult to get away. Three Kill Rigs can do an amazing amount of damage across multiple phases if left unchecked. A series of absolutely brutal combat characters backed up by fight on death is the backbone of the army and is very hard for some armies to deal with.

I decided to run Orks to the Finale because it’s a fun army I hadn’t gotten a chance to put on the table in a real way since I picked them up a couple months back. I enjoy playing Goffs pressure and decided to throw Mozrog in because he’s cool, he fit the concept for the list and I wanted to run him. I mean, he is Tougher Than a Rok Squig. I also knew there weren’t going to be heavy shooting armies present at the Finale and it would be a relatively safe pick and would let me put my money where my mouth was for the AoW Ork community.

The Warhammer Finals in Albuquerque New Mexico. Credit: Jack Hunter

Because I came from the winners side of the double elimination bracket, John had to beat me twice in order to take the event. Game one against John went fairly straightforwardly: we both deployed on the line in Death and Zeal, right next to each other. I went first and smashed my entire army into his turn one looking to get the game over as quickly as possible and I bounced off him pretty hard. By the end of turn two we had basically tabled each other but he had a unit of three Paragons and Vahl and I had scattered infantry, not exactly even. John had reset the bracket and we were in the final game of the event.

My takeaway from the game was that smashing into him was risky, I probably should have just killed him but it’s not guaranteed and he kills me back very quickly. In addition we were now deploying 24” away from each other on Data Scry-Salvage, not as close. I’d need to take a turn in the middle before charging and he’d hit me first. That was completely untenable, I knew I had to play this game much cagier. I banked my entire strategy on hiding Kill Rigs around the board and spreading out while move blocking the giant brick of Paragons with infantry squads and Groundshaker Shells.

The Warhammer Finals in Albuquerque New Mexico. Credit: Jack Hunter

In probably the best game of 40k I’ve played all year our armies fought bitterly over the objectives as I attempted to sink his primary and keep my foothold on his side of the board. Ultimately the game came down to a fight between repentia and squighog boyz over my home objective to allow the last surviving gretchin in a squad to perform the Data Scry action and put me ahead by a single point. What a way to end an amazing year of competitive 40k and I couldn’t have had a better opponent for my final game of the season.

Result

Game 1 - Adepta Sororitas Victory - 85-82 Game 2 - Ork Victory - 77-76

Grand Final - Best Overall

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Conversion/Death and Zeal

James "Boon" Kelling - Craftworlds: Ulthwe with lots of evasive damage-dealing tools and a unit of Wraithguard with D-Scythes to hold the centre.



Andrew Gonyo - Tau: Farsight Enclaves Triptides and Commanders

Thoughts

Boon: Andrew and I would end up playing three games over the course of the weekend and each one provided new insights for both of us. In our first game, round three, we played Conversion (corner deployment, nearly the same mission as Death & Zeal) and he had gone first. I learned that his Tau could counter-counter-deploy me with the combination of Kroot movements and warlord traits to force me to redeploy on Phantasm before his trait to redeploy. I also learned that it was physically impossible to hide from the combination of his Sun Sharks, Devilfish-mounted Breachers, possibly a Riptide, or his Coldstars if I left any spot in my board half open - which meant keeping Rangers on the table. Going second, I would just lose, full stop. And in round three that’s exactly what happened - he went first, I lost 600-700 points with another 600 in reserves but another full turn of Tau shenanigans before they mattered… so we called it on his turn two and I slunk off to join the loser’s bracket. My rich, storied history of being clowned on by the Art of War team fully intact. 

The Warhammer Finals in Albuquerque New Mexico. Credit: Jack Hunter

Due to the nature of double-elimination brackebts and losing to the only remaining undefeated, I had a bye for round four before facing off against the round four winner, Sean Nayden and his frighteningly fast Orks. I’ll discuss that game in a separate recap, but we were both playing for the honor of rematching Andew’s Tau (he having already defeated Sean in round one). The more I thought about the previous game, knowing it was the near exact same mission, same layout, same deployment, the more I was convinced that I simply could not win going second. Moreover, I had to pin him back rather than allowing him to pin me back. Andrew and I have a fairly similar playstyle. Cagey with fewer high risk/high reward type plays, preferring to keep an opponent off-balance while not risking key pieces. However, in our first game he deployed an uncharacteristically aggressive stratagy - he had said Brad [Chester] would be proud and credited his games with Matt Schuchman and his hated elves for giving him the steely-eyed resolve to absolutely bury me (thanks Matt). So right before we got started with our second game, being absolutely convinced I could not win play cagey or going second, I did this:

Credit: James Kelling

I often tell people that you have to work with what your opponent gives you, and this is exactly what that means. If I went first, I had a shot. If I went second, the inevitable result would come much quicker and far easier - with my back against a wall I had nothing to lose. 

I went first. 

I didn’t automatically lose, but I still needed to win this. We had a good game, and I’ll discuss more in a later recap, but he lost both planes and multiple chaff units in my first turn. Pinning him back in this way, with few action units to achieve his secondaries and hold objectives late game, meant an uphill climb for him. After turn three we called it and prepared to re-rack for the final deathmatch (double elimination). 

Game 1 - Craftworlds Victory - 90-40

The Warhammer Finals in Albuquerque New Mexico. Credit: Jack Hunter

The final game was different - Data-Scry Salvage which is a Domination set (hold 2/hold 3). I still needed to go first to stand a chance, but the play would be different as I knew I could stack a high primary score if I kept him on the backfoot. Andrew would almost certainly protect his planes better or put them in a position where’d I’d risk too much to get at them. For my part, I knew I needed to focus on banking primary points - I needed to keep my Rangers on the board to screen against the Coldstars so Scout was going to be challenging, and in what is possibly the biggest, galaxy brain play of my life, I put my Hidden Path objective on his board half where I could support it with aggressive play and maybe score a few turns on it. I did this to keep him focused on his half of the board rather than freeing him to come take me off my board half objectives… a thing he would almost certainly be able to do. So we set up, did everything we needed to do, I wished him a happy birthday, and we rolled it off. The rest I’ll discuss in my event recap! 

Game 2 - Craftworlds Victory - 65-62

DaBoyz GT 2022

76-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in West Henrietta, New York, US on November 19 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Brenton Weiss - T'au Empire - 1st Place

Tau Riptide. Credit: Jack Hunter

The List

Archetype

Heavy Tau Sept (with Riptides)

Final Round Matchup

94 - 50 Victory against Mike Norton - Chaos Knights.

Thoughts

The inexorable return of the Riptide to the metagame continues, with two of them here taking slots normally occupied by Crisis units or more Hammerheads in the "heavy" style of Tau list. That swap helps a lot against armies leaning on melee threats or short-ranged Deep Strike units (i.e. Flamers), as it means that all of your big, on-board threats have an option to move after shooting (Strike and Fade on the Crisis teams, Nova Reactor Boost move from the Riptides), giving you the ability to reach out, murder some stuff, and zip back into cover. It also helps that Leviathan Warriors are gone from the metagame, as the weaker access to re-rolls that non-CORE Riptides matters a lot less when a key target isn't under permanent Transhuman. In fact, as Raveners and Zoanthropes start to power more of the Tyranid builds that are out there, access to flat damage four shots is exactly what you want if you're planning on going on a bug hunt. All good reasons to make sure that you have a plan to crack the fairly formidible defences of the giant battlesuits, which is a task that all of Brenton's opponents fell short on as he took down this week's biggest major.

TJ Lanigan - Thousand Sons & Daemons - 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

The List

Archetype

Duplicity and Daemons

Thoughts

There are very few Chaos lists that Flamers of Tzeentch don't make better, but Thousand Sons seem to be near the top of the pile. Scarab Occults provide a very effective anchor unit that generally demands opponents push hard to contest objectives, and Flamers out of Deep Strike layer on top of Thousand Sons good Mortal output to brutally punish that. TJ's version of this plan differs from many players by sticking to two units of Scarabs, cutting back on Rubricae in order to free up points, leaving a list with very few soft targets for opponents to try and pick off, and one that's far harder to score Abhor against than normal - it still gives max points, but only four VP come from the (relatively) easy Rubricae targets, with everything else either being Terminator bricks or Characters. It also has a formidible ability to capitalise on any weak spots the opponent opens up, as one Terminator squad can be holding the line while another uses Sorcerous Facade to cross the battlefield and get to work.

The metagame is also currently a bit short on stuff that really punishes this plan too - Herpetrax Dogwalker and triple Death Company Blood Angels are probably the nastiest things to face, but neither matchup is unwinnable by any stretch, and beyond that there just aren't that many lists with stuff they're happy to throw into Scarabs in the expectation they'll inflict enough damage to make it worthwhile, and trying to play the alternative (grinding attrition) against Thousand Sons is uh, maybe not smart. It's a good time to be a Chaos Lord, so it's not hugely surprising to see TJ taking an undefeated second place here!

Eric Marcoux - Imperial Knights - 3rd Place

Knight Crusader (Duchess Silas Magellan, Piloting the Auric Might) Credit: SRM

The List

Archetype

House Raven

Thoughts

In third place we do, in fact, have the Knight list that took the best shot at disrupting TzeentchJ's diabolical plan, bringing the might of House Raven to bear. This household gives you a nice balance between the strong Stratagems and Exalted Court upgrades of the Mechanicus and an option to be a bit more aggressive, as the Raven Household Tradition lets Warglaives blast away as they head up the field alongside the Banner Inviolate Errant or slam into opponents at great speed with the combination of Full Tilt and the Errant Bondsman buff. There's enough nasty stuff out there in the metagame at the moment that you really need to be able to capitalise on any opening you get, particularly with a low model count army, which certainly adds to Raven's appeal, and it's very cool to see Eric taking up the mantle of a non-Freeblade/Taranis build and taking a strong podium finish.

Mike Norton - Chaos Knights - 4th Place

Knight Abominant. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Archetype

High-Pressure Herpetrax

Thoughts

Neatly rounding out the top four is Mike,the other player who made it to the finals undefeated, sporting a very different flavour of Knight. Herpetrax gives you the extra durability to get stuck into the enemy and stay there, and that's particularly true with the fully buffed Abominant. This list leans into that plan even harder than most, loading up the Abominant with boosts to its Dread capabilities, helping it lock the enemy's best units into trying to chew through the Abominant first while the Stalkers run amok and the Dreadblade Executioners and the Diamonas desecrator blow stuff to bits. The rare opponent who can just erase the Abominant (perhaps what happened in the final, because Tau) can cause issues for that plan, but most armies are going to struggle to rise to the challenge, and any opponent who underestimates the Abominant and doesn't adapt their plans to the grim reality is going to find themselves in a lot of trouble very rapidly. Well done to Mike on taking 4th.

The Best of the Rest

There were 11 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

• 5th - John DeFrank - Votann: An aggressive Kronus Hegemony build with two units of Beserks in Sagitaurs, two bulked up bike units and some nasty characters (including a fully melee-specced Einhyr Champion) to finish.
• 6th - Scott Ferguson - Adeptus Custodes: Emperor's Chosen, running unusually light on Character spend (no Trajann or Bike Captain) in favour of maxing out on ranged threat with 3x3 salvo bikes and three Caladius tanks.
• 7th - Brad Chester - Tyranids: ObSec Lurk Behemoth with a smorgasbord of monsters backed by a bunch of psychic firepower. Use of Mawlocs for cheap ObSec pressure is particularly notable.
• 8th - Joshua Minnich - Tyranids: Another Behemoth list with a wall of flesh and lots of psychic might behind it, but with different tools. This time the wall is a massive number of Raveners (two full units) and the chosen Adaptive enhancement is Synaptic Ganglia to really help the mortals sting.
• 9th - Jamie Beaton - Tau: Farsight Enclaves with a pair of Riptides and a big Crisis unit.
• 10th - Tim Deetlefs - Harlequins: Light Saedath with tonnes of boat Troupes and a pair of small bike units for Secondary play.
• 11th - Sam Boabane - Ynnari: Ynnari with some very nasty melee pressure tools - two big Troupes and a full squad of Striking Scorpions, supported by various other trade-focused aspects and a Hemlock with Storm of Whispers.
• 12th - Kevin Foser - Tyranids: Leviathan with one big Warrior unit (which they can still support reasonably well by keeping them in Hive Nexus) and a supporting cast of Monsters and Mortals.
• 13th - Hamza Syed - Harlequins: Light Saedath with some flex choices - a single large foot Troupe, a 5-model shooty bike squad and a pair of solo Voidweavers. Gives it a bit more options at the expense of running out of Troupes faster.
• 14th - Scott Rogers - Tau: All-rounder Farsight list with several Crisis teams (two small, one big), some Breachers in a Devilfish and a pair of Hammerheads.
• 15th - David Koszka - Adeptus Mechanicus: Various Lucius toys, with a big unit each of Rangers and Vanguard being centrepieces and Corpuscarii Priests, Ruststalkers, Sterylizors and Kataphrons in support.

Into The Hellstorm X GT

50-player, 6-round Grand Tournament in England, GB on November 19 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Dom Maidlow - Chaos Space Marines - 1st Place

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

The List

Archetype

Creations of Bile

Final Round Matchup

94 - 65 Victory against Rafael Harbinson - Blood Angels.

Thoughts

As is well known, naming your Characters then winning a tournament is a real power move, so great job to Dom on that right up front. In terms of what those characters are, Dom's build here makes the unusual and potentially controversial choice to leave the Master of Possession and Abaddon on the shelf in favour of two highly mobile and durable combat threats, and Terminators are also nowhere to be seen, replaced by two big units of Possessed. The accumulation of these choices means that Dom has a fair amount more points to spend on everything else, allowing him to go deeper on Troops than the standard builds, adding some Cultists who can provide vital screening, and to pack some utility tools like Warp Talons and a small unit of warpflamer Rubricae.

That results in a list that doesn't create such a nightmare tarpit as Chaos normally tends to, but that in trade-off can operate a bit more flexibly around the battlefield, and is less vulnerable to opponents who have a way to dunk on a single large unit. Chosen with the Rune and Illusory Supplication on are still non-trivial to shift, and while there are certainly more melee units that can body check them and take a bunch out than is true for Terminators, at least the Creations trait means that a substantial number of the enemy are coming with them. Having multiple big, nasty units also creates a lot more of the board where the enemy has to be extremely careful lest a sudden application of Auto-Stimulants slam a brick of Chosen right into their lines too. It's encouraging to see a list leave some of the most notorious units from the CSM book on the shelf and still pull off a win, so big congratulations to Dom.

The Best of the Rest

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

• 2nd - Ben Pearce - Harlequins: Light Saedath with lots of Skyweavers and 3x2 Voidweavers, with actual zero transports on show, just lots of cheap Troupes for position play instead.
• 3rd - Mark Pilkington - Emperor's Children: Loads of Noise Marines and a big Terminator unit.
• 4th - Rafael Harbinson - Blood Angels: Go-wide Blood Angels with three units of Death Company plus some Eliminators and a Whirlwind in support.
• 5th - Colin Micklethwaite - Tyranids: Monster-heavy Leviathan, packing an Exocrine alongside a pair each of Harpies and Tyrants.
• 6th - Chris Woods - Thousand Sons: Duplicity and Flamers with Magnus.

Capital Clash Fall '22 Grand Tournament

36-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Gatineau, QC, CA on November 19 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings. This event used 20-0 scoring.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Data-Scry Salvage

Nicholas Blackburn - Duplicity and Daemons: The single-scarab flavour of the Duplicity & Daemon setup, also adding some Enlightened as cheap, speedy screens.

vs.

Francois Lalonde - Leagues of Votann: Ymyr Land Fortresses and backup

Thoughts

The legendary Land Fortress finally rumbles into battle here in the colours of the Ymyr conglomerate, and ferrying some fairly nasty cargo to boot (my assumption is the Beserks and the Ion Hearthkyn unit). The Votann have also come ready to search for treasure, with Scanners everywhere for Secondary support alongside a utility Grimnyr. This list can put some extremely brutal shooting damage into the enemy at surprising speed (particularly with three bike units) and demands that the opponent manage to crack open a Land Fortress pretty quickly to stem the bleeding.

The forces of Tzeentch, honestly, look pretty ready to do just that, and this is a game where both sides have some strong trumps against the other, likely to result in very cagey play. The Votann are very good at sweeping away the Rubricae units, as they have a whole bunch of D2, but that same reliance on D2 means that clearing out the Terminators at range is far harder, as Unwavering Phalanx (plus only packing middling AP) will slow the bleeding considerably. The Beserks, however, are exactly the kind of unit you want to be throwing into the Terminators if they can only get there - they've got the numbers to pick up half or more of the squad in a single swing, leaving the Sons reeling, and because both Ancestral Sentence and Cyberstimm Infusion exist, if an opportunity arises to slam both units into the Terminators at once the entire block may just crumble.

Getting them there is, of course, the challenge because the advantage the Tzeentch list has is that they're wildly more capable of killing a Land Fortress fast than most armies. They're not relying on big shots that can be shut down with Master Armourer, they're not leaning on wound re-rolls that Void armour will switch off - instead, they've got high volume AP-2 S5 output (Terminators via Malefic Maelstrom) - perfect for gradually charring through the armour of a Votann Tank (and plenty of Mortal Wound output helps too). It hurts a bit that there's no Infernal Flames caster for the Flamers, but just the Terminators existing as a unit that plausibly wins a shooting match against a Fortress has to give the Votann some pause. The strong attrition capabilities of Tzeentch also helps against the relatively low numbers in the Votann army - every dead dwarf counts.

Both sides have got some tools for runing the others day then, so how does the mission and secondaries impact things? The mission I'd probably lean towards advantaging the Votann - their ability to reach out and quickly smoke a lot of the Rubricae can make it tricky for the Thousand Sons to contest enough objectives, especially as they probably have to devote a unit to the mission Action while the Engineer does it for free. That also partially mitigates what is probably a Secondary advantage for the Sons, as Action-based ones become a little trickier, though their easy ride on a Warpcraft choice and Wrath of Magnus is still very good.

My vibe is that the Tzeentch side probably has a slight advantage if they play this right, and for my money that means starting most of the Flamers on the board and using them as a threat to stop the Votann being as aggressive with bikes as they want to (and also providing extra Action bodies in the meantime). They do need to be very careful about force allocation from there, as it feels like swinging at a Land Fortress and missing badly at any point threatens to be terminal, but from the scoreline it would appear they just about held off the new-fangled Votann assault and emerged victorious.

Result

Tzeentch Victory - 11 - 9

Nicholas Blackburn - Thousand Sons & Daemons - 1st Place

Credit: Liebot - https://instagram.com/liebot_pics

The List

See showdown

Archetype

Duplicity and Daemons

Thoughts

Even more than is standard for this archetype, this list is incredibly versatile, packing answers for almost everything (especially once Egleighen's Orrery potentially being applied to a VolCon is factored in) and enough units to roll with a few punches. I don't have much deep insight beyond that - this is a finely tuned killing machine with very few weaknesses, and big congratulations to Nicholas for putting together something so potent and piloting it to victory.

The Best of the Rest

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

• 2nd - Francois Lalonde - Leagues of Votann: See showdown
• 3rd - Devin Swann - Necrons: The Destroyer/Scarab-heavy version of ObSec Necrons, scything through lots of opponents and only narrowly getting taken out by Francois' Votann.
• 4th - Maxime Rampen - Thousand Sons & Daemons: Duplicity with one big Terminator block plus 3x6 Flamers.
• 5th - Chris Hanes - Adepta Sororitas: Bloody Rose goodstuff with two units of Paragons and tonnes of Repentia to throw into battle past whatever position the suits are holding.
• 6th - Dominique Carette - Blood Angels: Go-wide Blood Angels with Lemartes and three units of Death Company.
• 7th - Jonathon Griffiths - Daemons: Be'lakor, Skarbrand and a big Lord of Change backed by lots of Troops and Flamers.

Twisted GT

33-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in GB on November 19 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Clement Tournade - Ynnari - 1st Place

The Yncarne. Credit: Wings

The List

Archetype

Melee Ynnari

Final Round Matchup

83 - 82 Victory against James Marsden - Necrons.

Thoughts

This army basically looks the opponent straight in the eye and says "engage me, if you dare" because the killing power it throws out if it gets to engage on its own terms is spectacular. Large Harlequin units with Ambush of Blades and Ancestor's Grace applied will make a mess of most targets even before you start adding Stratagems to the mix, and have a pretty hefty strike range thanks to being able to Advance/Charge. Having access to a Warlock with Embolden/Horrify plus a squad of Banshees also lets the list launch sweeping counterattacks across wide fronts, as it can throw Fight Last into two targets and the turbo-buffed Harlequin unit into a third, obliterating anyone who was relying on Counter Offensive to save the day. Even if the opponent tries to play cagily, they're going to perpetually be one false move away from destruction - the looming threat of a teleporting Yncarne appearing amidst their army, scattering Mortals and sword attacks everywhere, then zapping away as some Scorpions delete a straggling unit on the far side of the board is very real. And if the opponent tries not to play? Rangers quickly claim objectives, and Hawks rack up the pain so that every turn they've got fewer toys to play with.

This list is, therefore, a nightmare to play against, but also requires serious finesse to play, as it does have some gaps in its capabilities. It's not great at taking out enemy Aircraft unless they put themselves in peril, and against some Chaos Marine armies that can punish wide-ranging melee brawls either via army-wide Fight First or Fight on Death it has to play extremely cautiously. The event was also ruling no access to Faction Secondaries for Ynnari with any Harlequin units, meaning that every point needed to be jealously fought for. All that makes this a very impressive victory for Clement after a knife-edge game against Necrons in the final (which you can watch over on ">Twisted Dice's YouTube channel).

The Best of the Rest

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

• 2nd (undefeated with a draw) - Sid Sidhu - Imperial Knights: An update on the all-Armiger list that Sid has been putting up strong results with, going for an all-Strike and Shield custom household for the main force, backed with Freeblade Helverins and Moiraxes to add some improved shooting. Very good into various monster builds, at a cost of a mild weakness to D2 attacks compared to the Knight standard.
• 3rd - James Marsden - Necrons: Shooty ObSec, using lots of Wraiths to bog the enemy down while Doom Scythes, Lokhusts and the Silent King blast stuff, and packing a unit of Skorpekh for emergencies. Unusually resilient against No Prisoners for an ObSec build (only giving up 10pts prior to reanimation for a full tabling), removing one angle of smashing back.
• 4th - Josh French - Death Guard: Mortarion's Anvil with a classic two-wave setup - lots of Poxwalkers out front, lots of Deathshrouds to follow, with Daemon Engines providing backing fire.
• 5th - Me, Wings - Craftworlds: I've finally found a Craftworld build I like again (by which I mostly mean I stole was inspired by Brodie Middleton's LGT list and substituted models I don't have), using Ulthwe with lots of Aspect Warriors and a heavily buffed Avatar as a centrepiece, a Wraithseer for mid-board support, and a full block of Hawks for endless volume firepower.
• 6th - Jamie Balcombe - Adeptus Custodes: Emperor's Chosen Goodstuff with a massively tooled-up Blade Champion and a pair of Hunter of Beasts Helverins as the more unusual choices.

Wrap Up

Thanks again to Jack and James for helping celebrate the Grand Final in style, and well done as ever to all the successful players racking up wins over the weekend. We've got plenty more of that to come on Friday, so see you then!

 

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