Tournament Preview – Three Cool Lists from Crucible 8 GT

Participating in the Nova Open's Narrative event has left me hungry for more 40k, so I've set my sights on attending the Crucible 8 GT this weekend. This will be my first time attending Crucible, and I'm pretty excited!

Down south in Kissimmee, Crucible is Florida's longest running wargaming convention. Although it started as just a Warmachine tournament, their 40k GT has quickly grown to be one of the premiere tournaments in the region. It's the third stop on the Armageddon Series, a league of tournaments from around the Southeastern US, which aims to promote events in this starved region and offers prizes to people who place well across the series. The GT is a 6 round event with standard ITC Champion's missions. Thankfully the games are split 3/3 across the weekend, as playing 4 games on a Saturday sounds like murder.

People only ever take one of these, right?

My List

It has been years since I've done a real, actual, competitive event, and this is what I came up with for my first go around: I typically run a double battalion with my Rainbow Warriors, so being limited to 8 CP after Chapter Master is going to mean I'll have to make some tough calls. I can't just hand out relics and warlord traits like candy. I've been pretty happy with my choices so far for for my successor chapter; both Master Artisans and Bolt Fusillades gives my troops more freedom to wander the board, and make it so it's a little more forgiving when I mis-measure my Chapter Master/LT auras. The biggest downside is making sure that I know when and where I've used my Master Artisan rerolls when shooting my Repulsor, as it can pretty easily get lost. Stealthy probably would be a better choice given my CP shortage, but there's no way I could justify it when my models are covered in rainbows.



I've added a few new units to my army for this tournament. I knew that I wanted to try a Stormhawk Interceptor pretty shortly after the Ultramarines rules came out. Counting as stationary, whether through Big Guns Never Tire or the Ultramarines Doctrine, means that it is putting out better firepower than an Inceptor squad, can start from Turn 1, and the movement speed means getting an early Recon point can be way easier.



This is a chaplain that I saved from a dark corner from the Toledo Game Room's cavernous booth at Nova. I'm not quite as hot on Chaplains as every other Space Marine player is — I'd almost rather have a second Librarian with Might of Heroes — but being able to give out +1 to hit relatively freely is a nice and probably better option. Remembering to actually use it at the start of the battle round is going to be hard for me, though. At the very least, having a Chaplain means that in my last game when I'm beyond caring, I can give him the the relic crozius and smash some heads in before I get tabled.



My last new unit, and one that I just finished painting, is the Thundefire Cannon. Being able to throw 4d3 heavy bolter shots nearly anywhere on the board sounds like a key ability in ITC missions. This, along with the Suppression Fire and my Stormhawk, means that it might actually be possible to gain an lead with an early Hold More.

Crucible 8 has 85 registered players, and at least 40% of the field hails from the venerable Brohammer team. They have tournament-topping members like John Lennon and Richard Siegler in attendance, so the competition will be fierce. The lists just now been publicly released so I scrounged up a few interesting ones to showcase.

Tim Pinney's Iron Hands

Iron Hands Intercessor. Credit: RichyP

The Army

How it Works

Iron Hands, the current meta's boogeyman, are going to be at Crucible in full force. Just doing some quick napkin math, over 10% of the field is going to feature Iron Hands in some way. Tim's list is a lean and mean example of why players are flocking to the Sons of the Gorgon.

While Tim's list features lots of very small units, his opponents are going to have a very hard time scoring Kill More. The Repulsor Executioners are going to be the majority of the forward facing element of his army, and those are extremely hard to kill, as the math shows. Most of his other units are going to be hiding out of LOS, popping off thunderfire shells and executioner rounds. If he needs to expose his Eliminators to use mortis rounds, he won't be taking a movement penalty thanks to the Calculated Fury doctrine bonus, and will still have a 2+ save against AP-1 while they're in cover. If he thinks they're really going to be in trouble, he can elect to give his Librarian the Psysteel Armour power, and they'll have a 2+ save against AP-2 as well.

The destructive and defensive power of the Repulsor Executioners is well-tred at this point, but the Eliminators are going to be real stars of this list. They are excellent choices for the Engineers secondary ITC objective, as they can weather the storm of most no-LOS-needed shooting. This may be a smart move, as this army really isn't suited for the popular Recon objective, and there might not be enough pure killing objectives that can reasonably achieved. This army may also fall behind when it comes to grabbing objectives, as the Repulsors really want to be clustered around each other and there's not much else that can spread out. Terrain is also going to be a limiting factor for this list. Drawing a table with substantial LOS blocking may leave the Executioner blob starved of targets.

Speaking with Tim before writing this article, he did point out that he chose a Chapter Master on Bike due to two interesting reasons. First, the fat oval that bikes come on is perfect for extending the miniscule range of the Ironstone. Secondly, the bike makes him significantly harder to snipe - Vindicares now wound him on a 4+ instead of a 2+, protecting that valuable stone even more.

Ben Cromer's Chaos

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

The Army

How it Works

Ben's list takes advantage of a rarely-seen weapon that pairs nicely with the Lords Discordant - the soulburner petard. These weapons each put out 2d3 shots at 24" that inflict a mortal wound on every successful hit. Combined with the Lord Discordant's +1 to hit aura, the Decimators can put out extremely reliable damage on most targets. Decimators themselves have an impressive statline, with a 10" move, a rare-for-daemon-engines 3+ BS, 8 wounds with a 3+/5++, and regain a wound at the start of each of their turns.

Running interference for the Decimators are the Heldrake, Khornate Demon Prince, and the Goonhammer favorite dual thermal cannon Knight Despoiler. These units are fast and heavy hitting, and will hopefully require the opponent to deal with them first, allowing the Decimators to get into position to clean up what is left behind.

Wings Note: The Despoiler having access to the Helm of Warp Sight helps improve the matchup against flyer spam a lot here. The Khorne DP also helps with this by buying the relic axe, which I know from bitter experience lets him dunk planes from the sky with ease. 

Despite only having a single CP generating detachment, this list starts with a respectable 11 CP thanks to the Red Corsair's renegade trait Raiders from the Maelstrom. While the Decimators themselves do not have access to a lot of helpful stratagems, Blasphemous Machines could be useful in case one needed to advance to extend the 32" threat range of the soulburner petard.

The most curious missing element of this list is a Chaos Lord to escort the Decimators. Combining a Chaos Lord and a Lord Discordant means that the hit rate of the 12D3 soulburner petards in this list would be a brutal 97%. This can currently be achieved on one of them through use of Daemonforge, but that will only apply to one Decimator.

Kirk Roettinger's Hive Fleet Kraken

A Tyranid Warrior armed with a Venom Cannon - Credit: Sharkopath

The Army

How it Works

We very rarely see Tyranids since their Tyrant-heavy heyday at Adepticon 2018, but when I saw this Hive Fleet Kraken list I knew I had to feature it. I mean, over one third of the points in the army are taken up by Zoanthropes! With a little luck on his side, Kirk could deliver a big upset.

Zoanthropes have an ability that greatly enhances their Smite potential, Warp Blast. This pushes the smite range out to 24", and either adds D3 mortal wounds if there are 4 or more Zoanthropes in the unit, or adds 3 wounds if there's 6. This means that a very lucky super-smite could deal 9 mortal wounds to a target. These super-smites are going to be slightly more likely to manifest thanks to the Neurothrope's ability Warp Siphon. This allows all Zoanthropes (including himself) to reroll 1's on Psychic tests, a very useful ability to have with this many 'thropes on the board. Zoanthropes are also relatively tough, at 3W with a 3++. They'll also be at -1 to hit if the pack of Venomthropes are nearby.

However, with such a critical mass of Zoanthropes, they have more more weapon in their arsenal: the Psychic Barrage. This stratagem only works if you have 3 units of 3+ Zoanthropes within 6" of each other, but it packs a wallop. None of the Zoanthropes can cast smite, but you pick a point within 18" of the three units. All of the enemy units with 6" of that point point will suffer 3d3 mortal wounds on a 4+, with a +1 modifier for 10+ model units, and a -1 modifier for Characters. This is wonderful if your opponent is bunching up, like say a battle pile of 3 Executioners, and a gaggle of support characters! You do have to be really lucky for it to work, but even the Iron Daddy is going to flinch if he get 9 mortal wounds.

Wings Note: I imagine this list is going to save a CP re-roll to try and land this on the right target in that sort of matchup.

The 18" range is a real limiter on this though. The Hive Fleet Kraken's trait Questing Tendrils will help, as it gives the Zoanthropes roll 3, pick highest on their advances. You unfortunately cannot use the Endless Advance strat to boost it further, as the Zoanthropes have fly, but you can use Metabolic Overdrive to move again if just one unit is just out of range.

The Ironstone's weakness is that it does nothing to prevent Mortal Wounds, so this list might just have some legs. Now, is it going to go 6-0 and dominate the meta? No, probably not. But how often am I going to get to write about 18 Zoanthropes in 2019? This kind of list bravery needs to be celebrated.

Wings Note: I also want Kirk to win, like, a lot.

Wrap Up

I'm definitely excited to get back into the competitive scene at Crucible 8. Next week I'll let you know how my Rainbow Warriors did, and hopefully include lots of photos. If you have any questions or are attending Crucible and have some feedback, you can reach us at contact@goonhammer.com or via our Facebook Page.

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