Tournament Preview - Three Cool Lists from the LGT

This coming week sees an especially exciting tournament coming up - the LGT. As TheChirurgeon already covered in his metagame analysis article, this represents the last "grand slam" of the summer, and is also the last huge event prior to the possible metagame upheavals represented by the September FAQ and the Psychic Awakening. It's also the first super-major event with the new Space Marines codex in play, giving Adeptus Astartes fans a tonne of new toys and rules to play with. Hefty nerfs to the Caladius also landed just in time for the rules cutoff, throwing another curveball into the mix, as losing the option of the Caladius spearhead is a substantial hit to Imperium.

Will one of the established metagame giants take the crown (because let me tell you they're all out in force) or will some sort of glorious new Space Marine concoction crush all opposition? There should be extensive coverage of the event, so tune in from Friday to find out.

Since the "three cool lists" format was so popular last time we're doing that again - for your entertainment I've skimmed through as much of the list doc as possible and picked out three unusual builds that caught my eye. We'll have a quick look at my army first, then dive into the others see what makes them tick.

My List

The first thing to say, for anyone who didn't catch our Facebook post, is that I'll actually be running this in two events - the main LGT and the LGT invitational. We've already thanked our readers a few times in the last week, but I'd like to thank everyone who follows these and promotes our stuff again - building our profile opens up opportunities like this, and I'm looking forward to going out there and doing my best to make Goonhammer proud.

The last model of my army, now with gems actually painted! Credit: Wings

Anyway - last time you heard from me I was wavering between two lists - my London Open list or a modified version with Yvraine. After consultation with our strategy brain trust, I've ended up going with the Yvraine option, ending up with the following:



This isn't going to be wildly surprising to frequent readers - I came away with a very positive impression of Yvraine last time I ran her, and at the London Open was finding that "one more smite" was the overwhelming benefit of the Spiritseer. Especially with Marines and Chaos monster mash lists out in force, her hefty MW output is going to be very valuable.

The other justifications for this version are:

• Slightly harder to pick secondaries against. Double tapping MFD/Big Game Hunter is still possible, but the Guardians were basically a freebie point of MFD in a close game, whereas this ticks back to being more of a pain to do it against.
• Has an option on using Cloudstrike to deep strike the three planes against the Caladius Grav Tank. LGT is running a no seize format, and having played against the tanks on this terrain, I'm pretty much guaranteed to lose two planes before I move if I go second and they're on the board. I wrote this list after the LGT updated its pack to allow them, but before the updated rules snuck in before the deadline, so it's slightly less important than anticipated, but the tanks are still out in reasonable force and they are just as good at killing planes as ever. Thanks to a loss of a point of S and flat 2 damage rather than d3, they're now vastly worse against Wave Serpents, so this strategy is actually even more potent if I am going second (as the terrain plausibly hides War Walkers and one Night Spinner).

I've played a warm up game with this list to get my eye back in after a month where I've written outrageous numbers of words about this game but not actually moved a model around, and it felt good as ever. I'm excited to see how far I can take it in the knockout format of the Invitational, and will be aiming for at least another 4-1 finish in the main tournament.

Enough about elves though (well, to slightly spoil some of what's coming, my elves). What else is out there, buried amidst literally hundreds of entries? While there's a lot of the things you'd expect, there are still some real, unique gems, and the first one of these that I liked the look of is a very offbeat use of the new Marines book.

James Ramsay's Imperial Fists

Imperial Fists Primaris Detachment. Credit: Jack Hunter

The Army

How It Works

That's...a lot of stalker bolt rifles. Both non-default bolt rifles got a big buff in the new Marine book, with auto rifles getting a third shot and stalkers getting D2. The stalkers are also big winners from combat doctrines - in Devastator doctrine (which I'm going to assume the above list is going to stay in most of the time) the rifles are at AP-3, allowing them to punch through heavily armoured targets, while dealing with smaller things through weight of shots. It can also blow apart characters very efficiently - three squads of Eliminators (also big winners from the book) plus the option of turning on "Target Sighted" for one of the stalker squads gives it plenty of options for taking apart buff characters or mid-field psykers. I think a lot of players will find it really tough to adjust to just how much D2 firepower is going to be flying their way, and this will take the unprepared apart.

As with all of my favourite lists, it's also given some thought to covering weaknesses - Deep Strike hordes are potentially an issue for it, so having a couple of squads of Infiltrators to form a protective bubble in those games is a good inclusion, as is the one squad of Bolt Rifle Intercessors to use Rapid Fire to crack back. Another possible problem for it would be T8 vehicles like Knights - in that case my assumption is that the plan is to stack Catechism of Fire and Recitation of Focus onto a single stalker squad, which makes them substantially better at shooting Knights in the face. Finally, covering another weak point, It also gets to use Greyshields to pull its Intercessors out of combat in an emergency, helpfully if it gets bully charged.

Edit: Wordpress “helpfully” deleted the siege breaker cohort tag off the second detachment. The indomitable warlord trait from that makes this even more horrendous, making nearby fists infantry fearless and count as in cover as long as the warlord stays still.

 

Strengths

Quite apart from how cool it is in general, this list is especially great against other Marine armies, which are very popular at the event. Hopefully I don't need to explain why an endless volley of D2 AP-3 shots that ignore cover is pretty good against anyone else who's brought Primaris Marines along. I do not think they will have a good time against this list. Really anything that's brought a lot of mid-quality stuff is going to find themselves getting punted pretty hard - something like Drukhari Covens, which deeply dislikes high-volume mid-damage stuff, might just get blown off the board. Finally, anyone investing in 2+ saves is not going to find that paying off here - sorry Custodes. It's also pretty strong against the notorious Nurgle/Tsons list - it can waste their valuable characters with relative impunity, and has the volume of accurate D2 shooting to clear the Plaguebearer hordes.

Imperial Fists Primaris Eliminator Squad. Credit: Jack Hunter

It's a bit of a nightmare to pick secondaries against. You're basically forced to take Headhunter and one of either Marked for Death on four of the squads or (hilariously) Reaper, and then taking a positional secondary. Given that not all the terrain maps at LGT give an easy hiding place for Engineers, and the LOS-ignoring shots from Eliminators threaten small squads, that's going to cause big challenges for armies that can't easily pull off Recon.

Pretty much the only defences that really work against this kind of list are T8 and hit mods. Speaking of which...

Weaknesses

On initial review of the list I was a little bit worried about how this would fare against Deep Strike hordes, but digging into the details has left me a bit more optimistic. It's generally going to have a lot easier time scoring secondaries against those lists than they will against it, letting it castle up and take it slow behind a wall of Infiltrators. The premier Deep Strike horde lists, Orks and GSC, also rely heavily on characters and having these blown away by snipers is a real problem for them. It could still be a challenge, but I think the mitigations in place here help enough that it's still a good game.

Pure Knights, however, are going to be much more of a problem. Even if you slam all of the possible buffs onto a squad and unload all of the Stalkers onto a single Knight you still aren't killing one in a turn, and the ever-popular avenger gatling cannon, along with their melee attacks, can chew through this list at a decent pace. Were I running this, I would have explored the option of handing out some thunder hammers to squad sergeants to bring in some countercharge potential.

Alaitoc Eldar can also be tough if competently piloted, mostly because hit mods actually do impact on its output (though less than they did thanks to improved Chapter Master, which I assume is going on the Captain every game), and Wave Serpents cause it headaches thanks to blunting the D2. Highly mobile lists that can use the generous quantities of LOS blocking terrain on the LGT tables are going to have an easier time just in general, and Eldar are also good at this.

Hordes and Eldar can both present it with challenges, but I think maximum gallantry is the only properly duff matchup, and I'm extremely excited to see how this list goes on to perform.

John Hickton's Tyranids

Carnifexes. Credit: That Gobbo

The Army

How It Works

You all know I'm a sucker for a good monster mash, but this is something that's very rare - a ranged variant. The set of abilities stacked on each Carnifex means they're BS3+, permanently in cover (unless they advance) and are at -1 to hit, giving pretty durable gun platforms at a competitive price. Between 10 heavy venom cannons and seven pairs of devourers it's got access to a hefty chunk of both anti-armour and anti-horde offence, and people have a bad tendency to underestimate what shooty Tyranids can do until half their army has been blown off the board.

One of the possible weaknesses of the Carnifexes would be getting bully charged, as they can only make one swing with their bone mace and are thus fairly helpless in combat, but there's some strong counter-charge threat here in the form of the Hive Tyrants and Old One-eye, and a maelstrom of psychic nastiness threatens to engulf any elite unit that gets too close. I've often wondered why no one has managed to make foot Tyrants work as they're extremely aggressively costed, and I think this list is an ideal place to try them - you actively want them babysitting the fexes, so the loss of wings isn't such a big deal as in some lists, and you have venom cannons to project threat outwards. The Neurothropes add to the potential psychic onslaught, while also providing a synapse model that isn't as easy to snipe out as the Tyrants.

Finally, Ripper Swarms are ready to hold the back-line, screen out deep strikers or deep strike onto objectives themselves.

Strengths

My feeling is that this list should be quite good at oppressing "all rounder" lists. Concentrating its relevant models into hard to kill stuff with monster stats no-sells a lot of the output some armies are going to be bringing, and it has the offensive tools to cleave through a lot. Carnifexes being non-degrading also makes them a proper pain for armies using high-threat weapons, as especially once you stack up the mixture of defensive buffs they've got here there's a real risk of missing the kill on one by a few wounds, potentially forcing the opponent to over-allocate weaponry to finish it off. The heavy venom cannon is pretty well specced for the current metagame - it's got the right S and AP to be a perfect Knight hunting weapon, while also being good against any 3W models that show up such as the newly popular Aggressors. Any army relying on powerful melee push threats like Lords Discordant has a bit of a headache too - yes they can slam into and kill one Carnifex, but losing a Lord to psychic or the countercharge from Old One Eye is a much bigger blow, making it difficult to get good trades.

Imagine this but without wings. Credit: badaBlack

Finally, "lots of Guardsmen and some sort of Imperium heavy armour" has been an enduringly popular build, and this should kind of just clown it - the Guard get mown down by the devourers and the big stuff plausibly loses a gunfight against the dakkabugs.

I do think, if you're a full WAAC monster, you can tune this up slightly further by making the last battalion mixed, with the Neurothropes as Jormungandr like the rest but that lot of Rippers as Kronos. They're pure screen/sneaky objective capturing anyway, and getting access to the Kronos strat, one of the most brutally potent in the game (forcing an opponent to take a psychic test on a single D6, auto-denying many powers) feels like an excellent trade for a few Rippers being slightly less good in combat and an irrelevant buff for the Neurothropes (as they'll be leaning on their 3++ most of the time). However, since I almost always run my armies mono-subfaction even when a combo might be better, I can't really throw stones about this.

Weaknesses

I think this list deals well with elite push threats, but has a risk of getting overwhelmed, or at least terminally wrapped and trapped, by lists that don't mind sacrificing units or can soak up the counter charge. Orks and Genestealer Cults are the obvious culprits here, with Plaguebearers and Bloodletters also presenting this threat. The Ripper Swarms aren't going to last against any sort or ranged punishment, clearing the way for some fairly brutal charges that can cause this army problems.

It's also not a huge fan of the terrain setup - the Carnifexes are pretty slow and the big central LOS blockers that are on every table at the LGT give opponents quite a lot to work with in terms of hiding from them. They can advance in extremis but that tanks their accuracy and takes away their "always in cover" bonus. Fast moving enemies might just manage to run rings around it, or setup bully charges with units that wouldn't normally manage it by bursting through ruin walls.

Finally, there are a few types of targets it struggles with. The HVCs are only AP-2, so anything that can put itself on a 1+ save in cover can cause some challenges, most notably the Sainted Iron/Canticles combo to create a 1+ Knight Crusader, which is potentially the worst nightmare for this. It also doesn't have any solutions for screened stuff hiding out of LOS, so gives up engineers pretty easily, combining with some other things to make it leak secondaries fast.

I realise I sound a bit negative, which I'm not - I think this looks like great fun, but will need to be carefully piloted in any matchup that can really target these vulnerabilities.

Richard Simms' Craftworlds

Warlock Skyrunner. Credit: Corrode

The Army

How It Works

Our final contestant is an Eldar list, but one with a very different plan to the ones I play. I like to keep my threat profile relatively wide and flat, ensuring that any unit is expendable in a pinch. This goes entirely the other way, building the crunchiest death star available in the codex: the Skyrunner Conclave of Doom.

This might look ridiculous but this list has pedigree - a list running the same strategy placed in the top 8 at the BAO last year, and once you work through what you can buff the Skyrunner conclave to you realise why - you get a unit that's:

• -1 (potentially -2) to hit.
• Throws out 20 attacks that hit/wound on 2s and do d3 damage through a failed save.
• Has a 3++ and a 5+ FNP.
• Also throws out 40 re-rolling shuriken shots and 10 thrown spears at range.

Thanks to the Windrider Host, that unit can also get a bit of the old Ynnari magic and pull off hit & run combat attacks. If you land Jinx on something before sending them in there's a good chance it just dies, but either way the unit can be pulled back to safety behind the big ruins, blunting the counterattack and lining them up to be ready to do more next turn.

It's backed up here by some no-LOS shooting from the Night Spinners and the additional anti-infantry punch of the Guardian bomb, with the rest being filled out pretty much as you'd expect.

Strengths

This list asks a pretty binary question of the opponent, which is whether they have any tools that can deal with the conclave. If they don't, they're going to get run out of town - the damage it can throw out is immense, especially against single targets, and if it manages to get into its desired "groove" of "kill something in shooting, kill something in melee, cycle out via the strat" it's going to be a pain to stop.  The terrain also favours it hugely - the corner ruins are big enough to deploy the conclave hidden in at game start, and the central ruins provide it with lots of ways to keep out of trouble. It's also got plausible answers to almost anything - the bomb can go through knights, hordes, planes and pretty much anything else you choose to point it at, and is fast and thus difficult to avoid.

It's backed up by a solid back-line of units you don't mind having on a home objective - experts agree that I practically invented the Night Spinner as a competitive choice, so I'm hardly going to complain about seeing a few here. The secondary Warlock Skyrunner is Biel Tan so that the critical "Protect" caster can have the Spirit Stones of Anathlan, giving them a full re-roll to get out of a double 1 or something - more than any other power, this list cannot afford to fail "Protect".

Eldrad Ulthran by Corrode

Finally, it obviously has pretty strong psychic output, with the Conclave having access to the full Smite power and the ever reliable Eldrad backing it up.

Weaknesses

I think this list has a few potential problems:

1.) It's in trouble against anything that can either stop the Skyrunners popping back (so Drukhari or GSC via Vect/4AE) or continue shooting them once they're hidden. Being able to get to -2 to hit helps against a lot of this stuff, but something like the (popular at this event) choice of Chronus in a Scorpius can potentially screw this list over very, very badly.

2.) Tau.

Oh no. He back.

Tau can kind of just no-sell this - it'll take too long to go through the drones before they blow this off the board.

3.) Its mid-board presence feels weak. I have a deeply on-again off-again relationship with the Guardian bomb but I'm pretty comfortable that I would prefer to have another Wave Serpent and some Dire Avengers instead here. Especially because you want the other characters to be close enough to the Conclave to buff it, I think there are too few durable mobile elements here and it might find itself unable to screen its critical casters. Another reason not to include the Guardians is that i think there are some enemy loadouts (i.e. triple Hemlock lists, the aforementioned Scorpius) where you're pretty much obliged to Deep Strike the Conclave if you go second (remembering this is a no-seize format), and this list doesn't want to have to spend the 3CP on putting the Guardians and the Conclave into the webway - but can't really afford not to.

Despite these drawbacks, this is a list that some people are going to have absolutely zero idea how to handle, and is loaded with powerful tools, so look for it to grab some wins!

Wrap Up

That's it for now - we hope you enjoyed these list reviews, and do check back in next week to see how the various parts of the event went for me. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, you can reach us at contact@goonhammer.com or via our Facebook page.

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