The old world is dying, and the new world struggles not to get eaten, with what can only honestly be described as limited success. This week sees things very much in flux as different events adopted either none, some or all of the recent rules updates, meaning that some of this week's events continue a long goodbye to Nachmund, some give us a look at what's in store in Nephilim, and some manage to thread the needle of rules timing to create a unique, fleeting hybrid of the two.

This week we're looking at:

• The Alpine Grand Tournament
• The Geelong Town Open
• The Summer is Coming GT
• Exterminatus V: Domocalypse
• Leodis Games GT
• Clan Wars Scottish Open

There were also a couple more small UK GTs that narrowly missed the cut in terms of size, but I did have a quick look at them since they both used thew new pack, so shout out to Eric Hoerger and Nathan Whitbred for winning those, and I guess try not to be too alarmed that both of them did so with Tyranids (though Eric was on a spicy new Behemoth Lurk monster mash build).

As in the last few weeks, for any players who didn't outright win the event, but went undefeated, I will note it next to their name.

The Alpine Grand Tournament

57-player, 9-round Event in Salzburg, Salzburg, AT on July 01 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings. Yes technically it should be one more for a major, but it's the only one this week, so whatever.

Due to managing to set the rules cutoff neatly between when the points PDF and Balance Dataslate released and the street date of Chapter Approved, this event was using the Points and Balance updates, but was not using the new missions and Army Construction rules.

Note - it looks like the actual standings here got somewhat confused by a player eligible for the top 8 dropping, so the player listed in 9th actually played two rounds in the top 8, so I've put them to 4th.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Tear Down Their Icons

Alexander Wagner - Hive Fleet Leviathan: Diet Leviathan Goodstuff.

vs.

Christian Stromberger - Aeldari: Hail of Doom with lots of Windriders and Swooping Hawks.

Thoughts

This game is very much in the bucket of unique, special things we'll only encounter in this liminal period - the two titans of the previous metagame, with points changes and balance changes applied but without the big shift in army list construction and secondaries. In this particular game, the points changes definitely bite the Tyranids considerably harder - there's a definite sense of going through the army list here and thinking "is that it?" compared to what we're used to. The models that are there are still stonkingly powerful, of course, but it's a much more manageable thing to be confronted with.

The Aeldari side still retains a lot more of what it used to have, via a few different means. First up, it's gone hard on shuriken catapult Windriders, which were lucky to dodge the nerf bat (though being in the Fast Attack slot is a much more real cost now), and also uses Vypers (also static on points) and three Farseers (tiny point increase). It also highlights that the point changes falling on multi-model infantry units make them much easier to adapt to - rather than eating a points increase on Swooping Hawks, just cut a model, and they still do what you want from them. Where it does get bitten much harder is on the actual rules changes - no more second Craftworld Trait, essentially no more Eldritch Storm, and far more limited access to Fire and Fade-style effects. However, the units picked here aim to avoid suffering too badly from that - the shuriken Windriders are cheap enough that if they take a chunk out of a Carnifex and soak up a bit of pain on the way out you're not too sad, and Swooping Hawks can still do their thing pretty effectively.

The accumulated impact is that in this game, particularly on this mission, this matchup is vastly kinder to the Aeldari than it used to be - they've now got quite an advantage in terms of number of things on the table, plenty of which threaten to trade up, and can also play the Mission Primary very effectiely. On a corner deployment, the Tyranids having fewer things to saturate the board with is a big deal too, making it far easier to use mobility to avoid unfavourable engagements, and mitigate the lack of transports. Secondaries are still  a bit dicey for them, and they have to watch out for getting bowled over, but you'd definitely look at this as a game you could win from the Aeldari side - and they narrowly did.

Re-run this game next week, however, and this Aeldari list is incredibly dead. The Hawks matter far less without To The Last in play, cramming all the Fast Attack slots it wants in without running dry on CP is far harder, and it's clearly planning to deep strike several of the Dire Avenger units. Its also short on Secondary plans - you'd likely want a second unit of melee Aspect Warriors or another Phoenix Lord available to try and spike Wrath of Khaine, landing a Warpcraft is fine in most games (but not really this one), but a third will sometimes be a challenge, or at least force you to make awkward choices. The Tyranid list, on the other hand, probably refactors down to a single detachment and a Hive Tyrant, but something like it remains perfectly fine, especially with the significantly improved Cranial Feasting in play. We'll see some examples of lists built to the new rules later on in the article.

Result

Aeldari Victory - 71 - 65

Christian Stromberger - Aeldari - 1st Place

Dire Avengers. Credit: Rockfish

The List

See showdown.

Archetype

Hail of Doom

Thoughts

As covered in the showdown, a last, glorious ride for the old-school Hail of Doom, prior to being sent back to the drawing board by the enormous crunch on CP it's about to hit. Well done to Christian for sending it off in style.

Alexander Wagner - Hive Fleet Leviathan - 2nd Place

Maleceptor. Credit: Rockfish

The List

See showdown.

Archetype

Leviathan Goodstuff

Thoughts

Still good. Fewer monsters? Sure. Still excellent units? Absolutely.

Stefan Pazderka - Adepta Sororitas - 3rd Place

Credit: Evan "Felime" Siefring

The List

Archetype

Bloody Rose

Thoughts

This list isn't particularly complicated, but is absolutely something you're going to be seeing a lot of in the next few months. Sisters work great as a single Battalion army, a bunch of their better units have had overly harsh nerfs from January reverted, and they're now sporting Armour of Contempt. That leaves them as very strong all-rounders, and with the overwhelming power of some of the top builds toned down considerably they can now go into most games with a real chance of victory. Once Nephilim kicks off in full, they also have access to a gangbusters set of Secondary Objectives, but as Stefan's excellent performance here shows, they're now able to tangle at the top on quality alone!

Matej Tkac - Harlequins - 4th Place

Credit: Ben Hampshire

The List

Archetype

Dark Saedath

Thoughts

Harlequins are our final entrant into this top four, and plausibly the most interesting omen for the upcoming metagame out of them. Dark Saedath got bitten hard by the Balance Dataslate, but points changes were extremely kind to Harlequins given their previous level of performance, and they're another faction with excellent Secondaries and Battalion capabilities. Once again, even without those last two factors in play we see a super strong performance from Matej here, and my guess is that the massive reduction in the punishment inherant in trying to clear Dark Saedath stuff in melee is being offset by the fact that all the other existing top builds are playing with significantly less stuff, and what stuff they do have is much better to trade up into, something many Harlequin units are more than capable of on the attack. Clowns look like they're very much still on the menu, and well done to Matej on fourth place.

The Best of the Rest

The rest of the top eight (plus the final player who made the cut but didn't play) were:

• 5th - Lukas Wobak - Death Guard: Terminus Est Assault force crammed with Terminators and tooled-up Plague Marine units, taking full advantage of their new free toys.
• 6th - Thomas Wobak - Craftworlds: Ulthwe Goodstuff with loads of casters and Aspect Warriors, plus the Avatar and some Wraithlords to hold the board.
• 7th - Mario Höltge - Craftworlds: Hail of Doom, but with surprisingly few actual shuriken spam units, instead going wide with a mix of Phoenix Lords, Aspect Warriors and Shroud Runners (the last of which have to look quite a bit more interesting now the point differential to other stuff is smaller).
• 8th - Alessandro DAgata - Adepta Sororitas: All-rounder Bloody Rose with lots of Zephyrim, Sacresants and Retributors.
• 9th - Fabian Wüthrich - Tyranids: Leviathan with lots of shooty monsters. Interesting choice to go for one Harpy with stranglethorns and one with the venom cannons to keep costs down (while retaining Spore Mine power), which might be something we'll now see more of.

Geelong 40k Town Open

47-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in North Shore, VIC, AU on July 01 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

This event was using the Nachmund Pack, and had some extra "twist" rules in play for the missions.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Secure Missing Artefacts

Dean Sinnbeck - Emperor's Children: Old Emperor's Children with lots of Terminators and Chosen, plus a full unit of Noise Marines.

vs.

Boyd Morrall - Iron Warriors: Old Iron Warriors, going hard on Decimator and Obliterator synergies.

Thoughts

Ok this is a straight up hilarious matchup to see on a top table, and also truly spectacular in the degree to which nothing that happened in it will ever be relevant again, almost no rule used in this game will be in play in future tournaments.

With that in mind, I'll keep it brief - both these armies have leant into the only thing you could really do with the old CSM book, which is craft a truly nightmarish glass cannon build. You get wide-ranging offensive synergies of a power that they don't really do in 9th Edition, but they're attached to stuff that's far too fragile for its cost (less so for the Iron Warriors here, admittedly).

In terms of how these two builds line up, I'd say the Emperor's Children have the advantage of having more stuff on the table (helpful in the mission) and more different angles of attack thanks to the heavy Deep Strike presence. However, the advantage the Iron Warriors have to counter that is that it feels much more likely that the Emperor's Children take a swing and miss a key kill here, bouncing off armour and invulns, whereas the Warriors should pretty reliably eradicate whatever they set their mind to. From the score, it looks like the effect of these duelling factors was to create a very high scoring and incredibly close game, a true viking funeral for the Chaos Space Marine codex as was, narrowly won by the Emperor's Children.

Result

Emperor's Children Victory - 92 - 89

Dean Sinnbeck - Emperor's Children - 1st Place

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

The List

See showdown.

Archetype

Old Emperor's Children

Thoughts

See showdown, basically - in the old CSM book/Faith and Fury, two Legions stood out as giving you enough synergies to build a good list around, and this was one of them, especially after Armour of Contempt and the changes to Death to the False Emperor. With that, we consign such things to memory (well done Dean on the win).

The Best of the Rest

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

• 2nd - Jason Horne - Hive Fleet Leviathan: Leviathan Goodstuff with two Harpies (undefeated with a draw).
• 3rd - Rhys Cunningham - Drukhari: Prophets of Flesh Wrack Spam, with a few units of Grotesques providing a heftier hammer (undefeated with a draw).
• 4th - Boyd Morrall - Iron Warriors: See showdown.
• 5th - Terence Drew - Space Wolves Successors: Minotaurs running as Artisans/Warded Wolf Successors, and featuring a massive number of Dreadnoughts lead up by Hekaton Aiakos.
• 6th - Leigh Strom - Imperium: Mixed Custodes and Space Wolf Dreadnought spam, with three of each golden Contemptor, a Telemon, then Bjorn, Murderfang and two Wulfen Dreads.
• 7th - Hugh Titchener - Blood Angels: Blood Angels flying funtimes, lots of Sanguinary Guard, some Death Company, Dante, and a big unit of Eradicators to provide heavy support.
• 8th - Aaron Duncan - Drukhari: Heavily mechanised Drukhari Goodstuff, sporting Ravagers, Raiders and Razorwings in a Realspace Raid, with Bloodbrides and Grotesques adding some melee hammers.

Summer Is Coming - GT

40-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Södermanlands län, SE on July 02 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

This event fully adopted the Nephilim updates, and was doing placings based on victories, with 20-0 scoring used as a tiebreaker.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Conversion

Jacob Holmström - Hive Fleet Behemoth: Shooty Lurk Monster Mash, including a Scythed Hierodule.

vs.

Jonathan Sleigh-Johnson - Adepta Sororitas: Bloody Rose goodstuff with lots of Retributors.

Thoughts

The hyped new challengers in the form of the Adepta Sororitas take on the Tyranid menace - but as is its won't, the Hive Mind has begun to adapt to new circumstances.

Lurk Monster Mash builds appear to be the emerging hotness, with a couple of different variations showing up (including at some of the smaller events), generally either going hard on Carnifexes or (as here) leaning heavily on shooty bugs. Even after the points changes, the unit profiles on the various Tyranid Monsters are incredibly efficient, especially given how many got bumped up to a 2+ save and gained additional wounds. Bring a wall of them, put ObSec and counts as five models on the lot of them (plus the option to throw up a 4+ invulnerable save on a key turn), and dare your opponent to try and muscle you off the board. Plenty are going to try and fail, especially with many high threat builds, and while this build perhaps loses a little by not being as strong at Cranial Feasting as more melee-focused armies, it still has some angle on it (especially with the Behemoth kit helping out), and gains a much more comfortable Grind plan thanks to broader ranged capabilities.

Grind is definitely coming into play here, as although the Sisters have plenty of high threat stuff, the various autohit weapons are likely to do some nasty stuff, and anything from the Sororitas side of the table that gets exposed probably dies pretty fast. Having a couple of Rhinos helps with that considerably, and the Sisters can definitely afford to lose things a bit more than the Tyranids can, but they need to be picking their targets carefully to make things count, and also to have a bit of at think about their Secondaries. While the Sister set is extremely good, this specific Tyranid build makes Defend the Shrine and Sacred Grounds far riskier than they are in most matchups (and, in fact, the number of Secondaries that now specify an objective that you control makes this Lurk plan stronger in general). That's not terminal, as Bring it Down is very much in play, Leap of Faith is still fine, and this army has enough units to just fall back on RND if it wants, but with a lower expected score it's going to need to fight for the Primary here.

Corner deployment definitely helps with that - with relatively few units, the Tyranids are going to struggle to consistently deny 8pt turns for the Sororitas, especially if they do what they probably should and try and smash one quarter hard, while skirmishing in the other. There is a risk that they whiff on trying that and get bowled over, and they do also have to make sure they're not opening themselves up for the Tyranids to make a thrust to their home objective with something - factoring in the mission Primary, that would be a huge point swing. The move blocking capabilities of the humble Rhino could be clutch to prevent that against so many chunky monsters, and indeed perhaps they were, as in the end the Sisters very narrowly edged a win here.

Result

Adepta Sororitas Victory - 11 - 9

Jonathan Sleigh-Johnson - Adepta Sororitas - 1st Place

Credit: Greg Narro

The List

See showdown.

Archetype

Bloody Rose

Thoughts

An extremely strong-looking winner for our first full Nephilim event, Jonathan's build has a nice mix of ranged damage and close combat, the Rhinos are excellent for controlling when his units are exposed (plus making glorious Bloody Rose sallies with Carry Forth the Faithful when needed), and the army starts with a healthy 4CP and doesn't give up max Assassinate. Don't expect this to be the last Sisters build we look at over the next few months, and well done to Jonathan.

The Best of the Rest

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

• 2nd - Tim Nordin - Thousand Sons: Cult of Duplicity with two big Scarab units and two big Spawn bricks.
• 3rd - Jacob Holmström - Hive Fleet Behemoth: See showdown.
• 4th - Axel Rydén - Harlequins: Light Saedath Starweaver spam, eight loaded boats and some Characters.
• 5th - David Klang - Necrons: Silent King backed up by lots of Destroyers (including basic Lokhusts) and Wraiths, plus one big Warrior unit (undefeated with two draws).

Exterminatus V: Domocalypse Warhammer 40,000 Tournament

38-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Glenfield Park, NSW, Australia on July 01 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

New points and missions do not appear to have been in play.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Secure Missing Artefacts

Hayden Ford - Adeptus Custodes: Emperor's Chosen Goodstuff

vs.

Josh McMillan - Hive Fleet Leviathan: Leviathan Goodstuff

Thoughts

...and we snap straight back to the past, with a full Nachmund event where we mostly get a showcase of why Tyranids were such a nightmare for Custodes as things stood. Far more units to control the table with, a good story on Grind, leaving the Custodes without one of their favourite picks, and pretty tricky to play Stranglehold into as well. Further complicating things, Kyria or Coteaz for Psychic Actions is a call that's usually good (and I think Coteaz in particular is going to rule in Nephilim), but against Tyranids it can become more of a liability, as Psychic Actions become extremely unreliable, and you honestly might just want to be able to take Abhor. The best plan for the Custodes here is probably to take To The Last across the bike units and the captain and try and save them for the late game, but realistically unless the dice are extremely kind to them, they're going to get outfought on objectives and eventually rolled over, especially if the Tyranids get to pull the Custodes objective towards the centre. From the score, that does appear to be broadly what happened.

Result

Hive Fleet Leviathan Victory - 92 - 48

Josh McMillan - Hive Fleet Leviathan - 1st Place

Hive Tyrant. Credit: Rockfish

The List

See showdown.

Archetype

Leviathan Goodstuff

Thoughts

This list is no longer real, and can no longer hurt you. Probably. Definitely not foreshadowing or anything. Well done to Josh on taking down the event.

The Best of the Rest

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

• 2nd - Ewart Searle - T'au Empire: Tau Sept Goodstuff with two stacked Crisis units.
• 3rd - Terence Voller - Genestealer Cult: Aberrant Spam as a custom cult, also bringing a large number of Acolytes tooled to the gills. Which I think Genestealers have (undefeated with two draws).
• 4th - Hayden Ford - Adeptus Custodes: See Showdown.
• 5th - Jeremy Brodie - Chaos Knights: Herpetrax murder-Magaera and ultra tanky Abominant lead a bunch of War Dogs to battle.
• 6th - Rowan Kennett - Tyranids: Kraken looking pretty Goodstuff-ish, with lots of Warriors but also plenty of big bugs.

Leodis Games GT July 22

33-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Farsley, England, GB on July 02 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Updated points and Balance Dataslate were in play for this event, mission pack was not.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Data Scry Salvage

Jake Wilstrop - Thousand Sons: Grindy Cult of Time, with two big Terminator bricks.

vs.

Kyle Grundy - T'au Empire: Cut down Tau Sept Goodstuff, dropping to a couple of big Crisis units, and backing them up with Longstrike and a Hammerhead, plus Breachers in Devilfish.

Thoughts

Very glad to see Kyle's take on a post-points change Tau list here, as his Newcastle GT build looked better placed to adapt than most. Yes it loses a fairly chunky amount of points on the Crisis Teams, and has to drop to only two units, but because it had a more balanced setup with Hammerheads and Devilfish as well it's not getting slammed on every front, and can still play a very powerful plan - the threat that the Devilfish project keeps the opponent honest while it lines up, then the heavy hitters pick apart key targets to open a path to victory.

Up against it, mind you, is a powerful army that's entirely unharmed by the recent point changes, putting it in a much better position than it used to be in this particular matchup. Scarab-heavy Thousand Sons rely on their incredible durability and powerful primary play to grind the opponent out of the game, but they just didn't really have the numbers to stand up to full power Tau for long enough to make that count. With an entire Crisis Team absent, things get far more interesting, so how does the mission break down here?

From the Tau point of view, you're probably still expecting to gradually pull ahead on material, just much slower than used to be the case, so your goal has to become ensuring you don't fall behind on points before that happens. That's potentially easier said than done here - Temporal Surge means that you're never going to be holding an objective and feel entirely safe from the thread of some Terminators muscling on over and yoinking it off you, although without Master Misinformator on the Sons side they probably have to deploy fairly cautiously, so with the first turn the Tau can probably bank some points, especially with the mission Action in play. Beyond that, it's likely more a case of using Breachers and Kroot judiciously to try and deny Primary to the other side, relying on a late game surge (and probably banked points from To The Last) to seal the deal.

What do the Sons have going for them? The big things for them are that anything except the Crisis teams that shows itself should die extremely easily to their mixture of psychic firepower and shooting, potentially allowing them to aim to leave the Tau without board control for enough of the mid game to take a strong lead. On such a broad engagement front the Umbralefic Crystal is also going to be a constant looming threat for the Tau to worry about, as if they run out of screening they could suddenly find themselves overwhelmed by having to deal with Terminators on multiple fronts. Unless the Crisis Suits expose themselves to a full shooting combo, which they shouldn't, the priority for the Thousand Sons feels like it's just taking out whole units as quickly as possible, even if that means slightly overkilling things like Kroot Hounds. Do that, then probably push in force onto a pair of objectives to either lock them down or demand a heavy counterpush, hold the second Terminator unit in a position that threatens the other pair with the Umbralefic user nearby so they can redeploy if not needed, and go from there. The fact that the Tau probably get more mileage out of the mission Primary is a pain, but it seems like a solid enough plan.

As things played out, the Tau were able to take victory, but not by a gigantic margin, and it's clear that cutting down their numbers has evened things out a bit. The addition of army construction changes also hurts the Tau more here - Kyle has (sensibly) already cut down to a single Battalion, but has spent a whole bunch of CP on upgrades, and definitely wants access to a decent number early on in games that call for it. The Thousand Sons, meanwhile, can just run as they are and start with 3CP, and the fact that Legion Command gives them access to a bunch of good value trait-like upgrades without burning CP is very powerful. We shall see what happens next time these two forces meet.

Result

T'au Empire Victory - 81 - 63

Kyle Grundy - T'au Empire - 1st Place

Ethereal. Credit: Rockfish

The List

See showdown.

Archetype

Tau Sept Goodstuff

Thoughts

As I said above, definitely feels like this is ahead of the curve on adapting to the new meta. Further changes will need to be made to free up some CP, but there are options like bringing Shadowsun along for an alternative source of power, or using a named Ethereal instead of one with the Stave. I'm sure experimentation is under way already, and Kyle has got to be one of the favourites to take the first event win with Tau in full Nephilim mode.

The Best of the Rest

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

• 2nd - Jake Wilstrop - Thousand Sons: See showdown.
• 3rd - Carl England - Craftworlds & Harlequins: Mech Biel Tan and Swooping Hawks team up with Twilight Saedath Troups and Skyweavers.
• 4th - James Sykes - Grey Knights & Armigers: Rapiers Interceptors zipping around the board with Helverins at home.
• 5th - Ben Hampshire - Chaos Knights: Herpetrax again, once more with two big Knights (here a Rampager with Blessing of the Dark Master and a Desecrator) plys lots of War Dogs.
• 6th - Thomas Welsh - Tyranids: Monster-heavy Kraken pressure, backing up Raveners with a Maleceptor, two units of Zoanthropes and two shooty bugs.

Clan Wars Scottish Open 2022

33-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Scotland, GB on July 02 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

This event fully adopted the rules updates, and was doing placings based on wins with 20-0 scoring for tiebreaks.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Recover the Relics

Innes Wilson - Tyranids: Leviathan pivoting hard to objective play - one super tooled up Tyrant, two massive Warrior bricks, a PyroPod and support.

vs.

Christopher Irvine - Blood Angels: Sanguinary Guard, powerful heroes and a massive brick of Centurions.

Thoughts

Innes is apparently not a man to let something so minor as a spectacular set of nerfs stop him, and is back, still playing Tyranids. Quite a different Tyranid list, mind, leaving the general goodstuff train and going much more for a pressure build. Leviathan Warriors are still an extremely strong unit at their higher price thanks to just how much of a pain they are to put down, and they provide a fantastic anchor to build a Primary scoring plan around.

Their particular combination of tricks is especially strong here, as permanent Transhuman shuts down a singificant amount of the upside of playing Blood Angels, and Reinforced Hive Node is great against pretty much every unit on the Space Marine side of the board - though there is the slight quirk here that the Warriors have to be pretty careful about how they deploy against the Death Company. Because this is Recover the Relics, the Tyranids won't have enough CP for Hive Node out of the gates if the Blood Angels go first, and the BA list carefully ensures that it does have the one starting CP for Forlorn Fury. Get half a Warrior unit hammered into oblivion straight away and suddenly things look pretty dicey - the Blood Angels have got a lot of stuff here, a huge amount of it is on 2+ saves with AoC on top, and in order to dominate the Primary as they want, the Tyranids will need to push up the table. The Recover the Relics setup means that hanging around at home is point neutral, so they need to be sweeping into the opponent's half of the table, and without the Warriors that isn't going to work, as other units in the army can't take a punch to nearly the same degree. You also want the Warriors are up so that Pyschic Interrogation can go off with relative ease.

Starting multiple fights at once to overwhelm defensive tools and interrupts, especially as if they go second they're effectively down 2CP on the game, definitely feels like the play for Blood Angels here. Their Secondaries don't feel like they're super in play, other than maybe Relentless Assault, which means that they need to take over Primary scoring, and that unavoidably means taking a massive chunk out of the bugs. The lack of ObSec is pretty killer on that front, and is definitely where the CP drought bites the army - if this was Nachmund, Rites of War would have been windmill slammed onto that Sanguinary Ancient, no questions asked, and I feel like it might still be a better buy than Selfless Healer, as with more CP gain over time, paying for revivals isn't always as bad, whereas if you hit a game like this without Rites, there's no backup plan. Interesting to see what the next version of this looks like, because the army looks incredibly powerful overall, with just that one serious weakness.

In a game all about the Primary, that may have been the killer, as the Tyranids were able to take the win.

Result

Tyranids Victory - 16 - 4

Innes Wilson - Tyranids - 1st Place

Tyranid Warriors. Credit: Rockfish

The List

See showdown.

Archetype

Leviathan Pressure

Thoughts

Now, Innes has insisted to me that his games were "a lot tighter" and "required risks", so I am forced to assume that nerfing his be-clawed children has done something, but he also said he scored 58/60 points on Cranial Feasting across the four games he took it in, so there are definitely some tradeoffs there. Much to consider. Well done Innes.

The Best of the Rest

There were 2 players on X-1 records. They were:

• 2nd - Fraser McFetridge - Harlequins: Dark Saedath that's all in on boats loaded with Troupes.
• 3rd - Matt Gibson - Knights Renegades: A Desecrator with the Blessing of the Dark Master, lots of War Dogs and some summoning points.

Wrap Up

Lots more Nephilim next week, and I'm getting my first taste of it as well at the South Coast Series Major, so I will have hot opinions on whether they've finally fixed Necrons soon enough. See readers then, and comments, questions and suggestions to contact@goonhammer.com as always.

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