Welcome back to part 2 of this week's Competitive Innovations. No rest for the wicked, straight in to some more events. Today, we'll be covering:

Anyway, it's a massive week so that means a two-parter. Today we will be looking at:

• Merry Slaaneshmas (major)
• GT de Egara
• The Cleveland Chainsword
• The Warhound at Game Grid
• The Hertfordshire Winter GT

If you're looking for any of the following events, go take a look at Part 1:

• UKTC Leicester Super-Major
• Warzone Atlanta (major)
• Feliz Exterminatus
• GT Benéfico ~ ¡Todo Por Ellos!
• Heroes Of The Mid-Table

As well as the standard writeups for top lists, we've still got the following Showdowns to cover:

• Ymyr Votann vs. Emperor's Chosen Custodes at Merry Slaaneshmas.
• Nihilakh Necrons vs. Iron Hands Successors at the Hertfordshire Winter GT.

Time for a very merry Slaaneshmass to kick us off.

Merry Slaaneshmass 2022

94-player, 6-round Grand Tournament in Ocean Shores, WA, US on December 03 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

This event was running new Guard with no Dataslate rules or unreleased cavalry models.

The Showdown

 

Matchup & Mission - Data-Scry Salvage

Nicolas Ohlsen-Johnson - Leagues of Votann: Ymyr with a couple of Land Fortresses and three units of Beserks.

vs.

Mitchell Hunter - Adeptus Custodes: Emperor's Chosen with a big central block of Custodians, a big Sagittarum squad and three units of Bikes.

Thoughts

Our first showdown of the day sees the golden champions of the Ten Thousand face the newly arising threat of the Votann. Mitchell's list is quite unusual as Custodes go, and I think makes a good stab at addressing some of their current issues. Running a big unit of Custodians lets you maximise the value you get from your one use of The Emperor's Auspice, and with the Mortal defences of the Emperor's Chosen and plenty of Praesidium shields, there's very little that can reliably go through these. Having the Auspice option to (hopefully) mostly bounce the first unit of Beserks that tries to body check them is going to be crucual here, and in other matchups concentrating your forces in a large unit makes it easier to play for Might of Terra and Stand Vigil. Coteaz is also a great combination with this unit - not only can he rack up Warpcraft Secondaries from behind the imposing shieldwall, but if your opponent miscalculates and tries to drop to zero CP to pop off a combo to wipe the unit, then Spy Network can completely blow them out. I like the combo, and backing it up with lots of mobile bikes makes a bunch of sense, a classic central anchor around which mobile threats can operate.

Unfortunately for the Custodes, this is probably one of the worst missions for this plan and matchup. Data-Scry demands operation on a uniquely wide front, and Votann very much have the AP and killing power to gradually whittle down the Custodes when they're exposed. There's not really any way the Custodes can avoid gradually sending out units, as they have to play for the Primary somehow, and are less equipped to play passive Secondaries here. They also have very little way of tools for actually killing the Land Fortresses - they can gradually chip one down in melee, but all 9 bikes shooting off missiles at it pushes an average of two unsaved wounds through a turn, one of which gets switched off by Master Armourer, so they aren't winning a gunfight. The Beserks are also a massive headache - even with Auspice up they're so spectacularly lethal that a good roll is going to chunk several hundred points of Custodians, and with the Fortresses being largely impregnable, the Votann can ration them out gradually as needed. I think the Votann build here is extremely strong, just generally - while I marginally prefer the single Fortress build from Wednesday, if you're going double Fortress I strongly agree with the thesis here that packing Beserks is more important than trying to get Hearthguard in too.

Can the Custodes do anything about this? I think they basically have to go all-in aggressive, either on Turn 2 if they go second, or turn 1/2 if they're going first. Having access to the Castellan's Mark does give them some amount of game here, allowing them to reposition as needed to set up for a big push. If they're on the play, the Prosecutors push out to contest some objectives turn one, then everything else slams out to counter whatever the enemy does the turn after, while if going second you can take a call whether turn one or two is the go turn depending on how aggressive the Votann are. With this mission, I don't think there's any scope for the Custodes to try and play a long game on this mission, so go for the blaze of glory option and hope fate smiles on you. Sadly in the face of superior Votann technology, it did not.

Result

Leagues of Votann Victory - 82 - 46

Nicolas Ohlsen-Johnson - Leagues of Votann - 1st Place

Leagues of Votann Hearthkyn Warriors

The List

See showdown

Archetype

Ymyr Goodstuff

Thoughts

Mostly covered in the Showdown, this list is a very balanced build as Votann go, able to lean on the extreme durability of the Land Fortresses or extreme trade potential of the Beserks as needed. Or both! Having the Fortresses full of the world's angriest dwarves means you can be pretty aggressive with them when required, helping make up for the army's relatively low drop count, and two units of bikes gives you the tools to fan out early. Against lists that aren't Custodes, you are still likely to be shorter on assets than many armies, so you need to make sure your trades count, but the brutal power of the Fortresses used well can be more than enough to level the playing field if opponents aren't up to killing them. Great work from Nicholas on the win.

Steve Trimble - Death Guard - 2nd Place

Credit: TheChirurgeon

The List

Archetype

Ferrymen Plague Marine Spam with Abaddon

Thoughts

A true dark apotheosis for durable board control in second place here - 60 Plague Marines and the baddest dude in space, ready to roll over opponents who have anything less than nightmarish damage output. 60 Plague Marines already represents a huge amount of damage potential and a lot of wounds to chew through, and adding Abaddon in makes the whole army more reliable, and also provides a fantastic way to counterattack and close the gap if an opponent is somehow making headway. The only mild issue here is that the army is quite vulnerable to opponents who can go big on Mortal Wounds, or who somehow have the guns to blow it off the table (more on that when we get to 4th place), as it doesn't have a backup plan of playing a highly mobile game like some melee forces do, but most other opponents are going to really struggle, and Steve made it through the even with five big wins and only one narrow loss.

Donald Plummer - T'au Empire - 3rd Place

Credit: Kevin Stillman

The List

Archetype

Heavy Tau Sept

Thoughts

So this wasn't the list I was talking about just now with spectacular damage output, but it very much has it. Sun Sharks and Riptides are fantastic alpha strike tools, with the latter being highly durable (or able to dodge reprisals) as well. The big Crisis team, able to use Strike and Fade to dodge reprisals and take Shadowsun's buff, is the final key component here - this army excels in reaching out and obliterating foes, and taking very little damage in response, ensuring that it can finish the opponent off quickly and cleanly enough to make up for any early scoring weaknesses in the late game. Well done to Donald for racking up another top four placing.

Hank Adams - Astra Militarum - 4th Place

Leman Russ Executioner. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Archetype

Whoops all Tanks

Thoughts

Uh oh. Yeah so it would appear that even without the Dataslate buffs, if you just roll a wall of Russes with plasma, heavy flamers and counts-as-five ObSec (via Armoured Superiority and Shock and Awe!) towards the enemy, most opponents can do very little about it. If your opponent has some of the few things that the Plasma isn't great at killing (mostly T8 stuff with Damage Reduction) then the trio of Vanquisher shots with Expert Sharpshooters re-rolls come into their own. Finally, if there are any straggling infantry trying to "play the mission", the Mortars (ordered by the Commissar) can chip them away. This is the list that was able to blast through the wall of Ferrymen Plague Marines, and only went down to the triumphant Votann build, with none of the rest of its games being particularly close, and you can see why - all the killing power and durability of 11 Russes with very little of the Primary play downsides or (thanks to Turret Weapon) risk of getting tagged perpetually in melee that such armies might normally have. Let's hope the rest of the metagame has got some big guns lined up, but for now well done Hank for exploring one of the more extreme possible builds from the book.

The Best of the Rest

There were 6 more players on 5-1 records. They were:

• 5th - James Lee - Adeptus Custodes: Heavy duty Emperor's Chosen with three Caladius Tanks, several bike squads and some Venerable Contemptors. Flat three damage melee stocks are very much up right now on top of the existing appeal of the dreads.
• 6th - Noah Beddome - Imperial Knights:  House Taranis, running an interesting mixup on the standard Princeps Paladin + Errant/Crusader combo, using a Preceptor for the second half instead. This brings some extra buffs along for the Armigers, and still represents a fairly terrifying amount of damage with Calculated Targeting, especially as the Knight is also wearing Judgement on its head.
• 7th - Edgar Armida Camargo - Thousand Sons & Daemons: I'm hearing that Flamers of Tzeentch are quite good. Edgar adds an Exalted Flamer to his version to make them even nastier.
• 8th - Ryan Cherewich - Adepta Sororitas: An Argent Shroud list packing lots of nasty shooting to deploy via their Order Conviction, including multiple Dominion units loaded for Blessed Bolts and a squad of Paragons.
• 9th - Mitchell Hunter - Adeptus Custodes: See showdown.
• 10th - Ben Wadsworth - Imperial Knights: Taranis with the shooty Crusader version of the Princeps combo.

GT de Egara

56-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Barcelona, Catalunya, ES on December 03 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Vidente Elthar - Creations of Bile - 1st Place

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

The List

Archetype

Creations of Bile

Final Round Matchup

97 - 42 Victory against Angel C4KILLER - Drukhari.

Thoughts

Mostly the standard Bile toys on show here, but the inclusion of three units of Warp Talons definitely stands out. The combination of being fast and threatening to trap opponents in melee helps prepare for some of the nastier shooting lists in the metagame, and Bile makes them much less dead against Votann than they might be in other Marine lists - S5 means they don't just bounce without their Wound re-rolls, and Fight on Death means that trying to clear them out with Beserks is going to result in at least a partial trade. Honestly this choice is only going to get better if Guard continue to do well, and well done to Vidente for coming up with it.

Oriol Sensonics - T'au Empire - 2nd Place (Undefeated)

TX7 Hammerhead Gunship. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Archetype

Heavy Tau Sept

Thoughts

More Tau Sept, more big guns. Slightly more expendable chaff here, cutting one Riptide down to a Commander to free up points for extra Kroot and Hounds, but largely business as usual for what Tau do best, which is shooting people.

The Best of the Rest

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

• 3rd - Pepe Andreu - Asuryani: An unusual Masterful Shots/Vengeful combo, bringing lots of melee Aspect Warriors to take advantage of the latter.
• 4th - Roger Boira - T'au Empire: Tau Sept all-in on a gigantic Crisis Bomb with various tanks and characets backing it up.
• 5th - Pablo Vazquez Salgado - Imperial Knights: Freeblade Lance with an extra-scary Knight Lancer to spice things up.
• 6th - Alex Gallego - Adepta Sororitas: Bloody Rose with two big units of Sacresants.
• 7th - Angel C4KILLER - Drukhari: Drukhari Goodstuff with a big unit each of Hellions and Grotesques as centrepieces.
• 8th - Roger Bellmunt Soler - Adeptus Custodes: Classic Emperor's Chosen Goodstuff with bikes and one each of the Forge World Contemptors.
• 9th - Raul Cubatalan - Adeptus Custodes: Emissaries Sagittarum and Bike spam with the Fulminaris Aggressor at the centre.

The Cleveland Chainsword

37-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Mentor, OH, United States on December 03 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

This event was running new Guard with no Dataslate.

Brad Chester - Tyranids - 1st Place

Credit: BuffaloChicken

The List

Archetype

Behemoth Board Control

Final Round Matchup

94 - 58 Victory against Scott Ketcham - Adepta Sororitas.

Thoughts

Art of War's Brad Chester puts a dangerously heretical non-Kraken list on the table here, using lots of the currently popular tools (Zoanthropes, lots of Spore Mines, Raveners/Warriors) but with a different flavour thanks to the selection of a different fleet. Rather than the Kraken plan of slamming stuff into the opponent and keeping them on the back foot, Naturalised Camouflage Behemoth can use its Warriors and Raveners to really lock in control of key board positions. The extra point of Save in cover makes them very tough to shoot out, and you can buff whichever unit is aimed at the most important position with Unstoppable Onslaught, then use Unparralelled Ferocity to Fight on Death if the opponent comes to prise them out the hard way, getting some of that juicy Creations of Bile energy going. Given that they're already going to be being whittled down by Mines and Psychic firepower, paying a big price for clearing out the excellent Tyranid infantry is likely to push a lot of opponents over the edge where they're not going to be able to last the game. It's a very flavourful plan for the inexorable forces of the Hive Mind, and a very effective one too, with Brad using it to take down the event.

The Best of the Rest

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

• 2nd (undefeated with two draws) - Robin Roberts - Genestealer Cult: Twisted Helix with the full 30 Purestrains, a scary unit each of Metamorphs and Hybrids, Ridgerunners for a bit of shooting and transports/bikes to provide mobility.
• 3rd - Joshua Gilbert - Astra Militarum:  A large number of Leman Russes of all shapes and sizes with a minimal number of Troops and cheap filler to provide board control.
• 4th - Kody Doyle - Thousand Sons & Daemons: A different way of combining Tzeentch's servants here, guarding a Lord of Change in an Auxiliary Support behind two big bricks of Scarabs. Unfortunately, this does need to be changed up a bit to be legal, as you can't upgrade a Lord of Change if your only Daemon detachment is an Aux, though I don't think the upgrade is particularly pivotal to the plan here.
• 5th - Greg Burnett - Creations of Bile Terminators and Possessed with Abaddon and Flamer backup.
• 6th - Scott Ketcham - Adepta Sororitas: Bloody Rose Goodstuff with big Retributor units.
• 7th - Sean Martin - Imperial Knights: A Herald Paladin leading a broad mix of Freeblade Lance Armigers into battle.

The Warhound at Game Grid December GT

33-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Lehi, UT, US on December 03 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

This event was running new Guard with the full current dataslate on top of their Codex.

Derek Holder - Adeptus Custodes - 1st Place

Custodes Vertus Praetors. Credit: Jack Hunter

The List

Archetype

Emissaries Imperatus Bikes and Guns

Final Round Matchup

71 - 62 Victory against Evan Stump - Blood Angels.

Thoughts

You were expecting a guard player here, right? Never count the Custodes out - Derek rounds out one of the absolute best weeks the Golden Host have had for ages here by taking down a GT, leaning on the Emissaries Imperatus. He's got the CP saved up to deploy Into the Darkness out the gate, and that's a powerful play with gunline builds returning to the metagame. It ensures you can get a squad of Bikes amongst the enemy immediately, sowing chaos among the enemy, and crucially against the Astra Militarum it can allow you to tag a Russ in a position where it doesn't matter that their turret weapons can shoot out of combat, as they may not be able to see anything else. The list can also use the Castellans Mark so that it can deploy the Bikes safely hidden, but then redeploy and move them if the Custodes win the rolloff. Beyond that, you've got the standard Emissaries plan of having very reliable shooting and being extremely tough to counter-charge thanks to army-wide Fight First, making the already daunting job of stealing objectives from the Custodes even harder. Their Secondaries still suck and need to be better, and Votann are absolutely a problem for them, but it's good to see, between this build and Mitchell's from earlier, that if you mix up the standard Custodes formulae a bit you can get decent results still.

The Best of the Rest

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

• 2nd - Treynor Wolfe - Astra Militarum: Born Soldiers Solar, Kasrkin and Plasma Russes.  Also a Deathstrike, which is cool.
• 3rd - Adam Baker - Chaos Knights: Abominant/Desecrator Herpetrax.
• 4th - Aaron Knafla - Astra Militarum: Armoured Superiority/Elite Sharpshooters with plasma Russes, Gatekeeper and Solar ordering a Shadowsword around.
• 5th - Clay Stubblefield - Adeptus Custodes: Heavy-duty Emperor's Chosen with Caladius Tanks and Bikes. Pulled off the impressive feat of taking out the Born Soldiers build.
• 6th - Evan Stump - Blood Angels: Go-wide Blood Angels with three Assault Squads.

Hertfordshire Winter GT

30-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in England, GB on December 03 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Recover the Relics

Robby Sweeney - Iron Hands Successors: The classic Iron Hands Successor build makes it to a Showdown to finish off the week here. Dreadnoughts, Drop Devs, VanVets and a whole lot of killing power.

vs.

Mathew Putney - Necrons: ObSec Necrons, but the Nihilakh flavour rather than Expansionists, using lots of Tomb Blades to back-fill on mobility.

Thoughts

Space Marines are well known to be in a pretty rough spot right now, but this is genuinely a pretty OK matchup for them. They substantially out-kill the Necrons, threatening to wipe key units at the drop of the hat, and having resilient toys like Dreadnoughts that the Necrons simply aren't going to be able to wipe. The challenge for them, of course, is that Recover the Relics is probably the second-best mission for ObSec Necrons' extremely linear plan of scoring 100pts without really leaving their half of the table. Hammer and Anvil deployment makes Purge the Vermin extremely simple, those small Tomb Blade units can easily zip out to get a tick of Ancient Machineries and Treasures, and the counterpunch threat when the Necrons can bring all their stuff to bear at once is pretty high.

The answer from the Iron Hands point of view, as far as I'm concerned, is just to go all-out aggro. Deploy the Redemptors on the line assuming you're going first, because I don't think the Marines can win going second. Push them up fast, get Rites of War on one on a near objective, and support the other with a Tactical Squad. At that point, if the Necrons want to push for a high score turn one they have to commit more resources, and if they want to retaliate against the Dreads they're exposing their shooting toys to either the drop pod or the VolCon, which can easily remain hidden biding its time while the younger, sprightlier Dreadnougts draw some fire. There's certainly a risk that the Necrons high-roll and kill two Dreads straight away, but so what - a key thing in Nephilim is working out which side is going to win by default if nothing unusual happens, and here the answer is the Necrons, so the Iron Hands have to force something unusual to happen. That might be bad unusual, but it creates the chance of good unusual too! From the scoreline here, it looks like the Hands managed to stick around on the board for a while, but weren't able to do anything to disrupt the Necron scoring plan, resulting in the standard near-maximum victory for the forces of the Tomb Worlds.

Result

Necrons Victory - 99 - 61

Mathew Putney - Necrons - 1st Place

Szarekh, The Silent King. Credit: Rockfish

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Nihilakh ObSec

Thoughts

ObSec Necrons, but slightly different! Going Nihilakh gives you a bit of extra resilience to early chip damage, but more importantly gives you access to Action/Shoot via a Stratagem so that your Destroyers can be pulling double-duty finishing Ancient Machineries on nearby objectives towards the end of the game. What you lose is mobility, but as mentioned in the Showdown, Matthew covers that off with more Tomb Blades than normal, and also has some Flayed Ones to pop out of Deep Strike in emergencies. Beyond that, business as usual - score great Secondaries, disrupt the opponent's Primary, win games.

The Best of the Rest

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

• 2nd - Martin Wallis - Chaos Daemons: Monster mash with a bit of a Nurgle spin, adding Slimux and a full unit of Beasts alongside the standard big trio of Be'lakor, a Bloodthirster and a Lord of Change.
• 3rd - Sam Bodger - Drukhari: Drukhari Goodstuff with a couple of big Grotesque units and a Court of the Archon as the key anchors.
• 4th - Robby Sweeney - Iron Hands Successors: See showdown.
• 5th - Matt Arvida - Word Bearers: All sorts of fun toys here - a full Warp Talon squad to enjoy Daemonkin buffs, Obliterators to start blasting, and Chosen in a Terrax.

Wrap Up

It certainly looks like we're going to get one more weekend of heavy play before the year is out, so make sure to check back next week to see whether Tzeentch continues to hold sway and if Guard start racking up victories on more fronts.

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