Surprise - it's me, Wings, again, due to some scheduling changes. You'll get Lowest of Men's part tomorrow, but we've kept the split of events the same, so now we've looking as follows.
Today:
- Fal-Con 2025: Live Free or Fly Hard 40k Event
- Old Guard Games Grand Tournament
- Dutch Masters Mid Season GT
- Sunshine Coast Open III
- Warhammer 40,000 GT - Warhammer Open Edmonton
- Branson Brawl 2025-40K
- Rubicon Grand Tournament III
- WestCoast Wargames 40k 2025 June
- The Gulf GT
- AC Champions Cup 2025 - Warhammer 40k Champs (Singles)
- Battle Ready Wargaming's Road To NOVA Hosted by Away Games
- III Iberian Ham GT AEPDA 2025
- Adeptus Bastardes I
Fal-Con 2025: Live Free or Fly Hard 40k Event
63-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Moncton, NB, Canada on June 14 2025. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.Phil Cass - Imperial Knights (Noble Lance) - 1st Place
Imperial Knights - Armiger HelverinsCredit: Pendulin
The List
Archetype
Canis and ArmigersThoughts
Welp, the cat's out of the bag now - prepare to get kicked in by Imperial Knights for the next few months, because this list but with an extra 70pts is now the army to beat. While mirroring stat and point changes from Chaos Knights sort of makes sense on a surface level, in practice it won't be true, because the army-wide Feel No Pain on Imperial Knights means that extra wounds go further than for traitors. Same per-unit lethality, more stuff, and it was already one of the top four armies. Prepare for suffering. Congratulations to Phil for sliding in under the slamming door and taking a trophy with Knights before that's too passé.Stefan Samson - World Eaters (Berzerker Warband) - 2nd Place (Undefeated)
Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones
The List
Archetype
All-rounder WarbandThoughts
In undefeated second place we've got a nice take on an all-rounder Warband build, centring on two large Berzerker bricks and a couple of Forgefiends. This gives a nice balance of damage and board presence, and can be very difficult to break out from thanks to Blood Surges once it gets going. It's also well tuned for the current setup where most of the top builds are based on elite Infantry, so basic Eightbound are pretty good. My fear is that this build might seriously drop off if Knights are as good as they look, because I'm not convinced re-tooling to Exalted Eightbound will provide enough damage output to handle them, but I'd be delighted to be wrong, because it's been good to see World Eaters hit their stride. Great work from Stefan.Blair Macdonald - World Eaters (Khorne Daemonkin) - 3rd Place
Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones
The List
Archetype
Khorne DaemonkinThoughts
Speaking of the World Eaters Codex, this continues to be one of my favourite builds to see in the whole game at the moment, and I love seeing it here. The thematic and mechanical synergy of a terrifying bow wave of Daemons and plasma beckoning Bloodletters forth from the warp kicks ass, and it's great to see GW really nail an ally detachment. I think it probably also has a better chance of sticking around in a Knight hell metagame, as Skarbrand gives you a threat that can one-shot trade up into a big Knight, and the Armiger stat changes do make a substantive difference to this list's breadth of killing into them because of all the S5 melee (with access to Lance) and the S9 Daemon Prince. Big, big fan of this army, keep on trucking.Brandon Vallee - T'au Empire (Kauyon) - 4th Place
Cadre Fireblade. Credit: Jack Hunter
The List
Archetype
Go-wide KauyonThoughts
A singular showing for T'au to round out this top four, mostly showing up with pretty similar Kauyon pieces to what was being used pre-Dataslate. With a bit of time for the impact of the Dataslate to settle in, the consensus (which I agree with) is that T'au probably needed a bit more help, but you do see one majorly improved tool here, which is the Starscythe unit. Being able to comfortably split fire on this now means you can threaten to clear up a lot of enemy tools in one swoop if they're insufficiently cautious, and also allows you to stick a Commander tooled for elite infantry in amongst them to benefit from the extra AP without having to waste the rest of the squad's guns. Nice to see that unit about, and nice to see some play for T'au, well done to Brandon.The Best of the Rest
There were 7 more players on 4-1 records. They were:- 5th - Austin Stevenson - Chaos Knights (Traitoris Lance): A Knight Tyrant with loads of War Dogs, perhaps an omen of things to come.
- 6th - Paul Levesque - Death Guard (Virulent Vectorium): Mortarion Vectorium with added Blight-haulers.
- 7th - Jason Gallant - Drukhari (Skysplinter Assault): Go-wide Skysplinter making use of cheaper Transports to jam plenty of pieces on the table.
- 8th - Matthew Wood - Adeptus Custodes (Lions of the Emperor): A slightly wider variant on Lions using regular Guard units instead of Wardens to free up the points for two squads of Venatari.
- 9th - Melody Wallace - Death Guard (Mortarion's Hammer): Whoops all hulls.
- 10th - Aaron Wall - Drukhari (Reaper's Wager): a cool Wager biker gang running maxed out numbers of Reavers and Skyweavers (the latter built for shooting).
- 11th - Mike Chapeau - Adeptus Custodes (Lions of the Emperor): Another Lions build stretching to five Infantry units, this time using some Allarus units alongside guard.
Old Guard Games Grand Tournament
42-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Milwaukee, WI, United States on June 14 2025. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.The Showdown
Unknown Mission
Wesley St. Hines - Astra Militarum (Recon Element)vs.
Jordan Nach - Blood Angels (Liberator Assault Group)
Thoughts
Sometimes you look at a matchup and wonder idly if if might crack some all time stats, if only these were magically captured, in this case "most models killed in a game of 10th Edition". Over 200 Guard Infantry models, and a Blood Angels army that can go through them like so many skittles. Marvelous. Any of the Terminators, VanVets or Bladeguard can smoke an entire brick in an activation if they feel like it (which they do), and the Terminators at least are extremely resistent to the counterpunch most of the rest of the guard can muster after that - even the normal concern about getting taken down by D3 lances from the Riders is mitigated by the shield models in the squad. This Guard army will shut out plenty of lists simply by dint of them never, in a million years being able to handle the numbers, but that option is not available to them here.They can still swarm objectives, mind, and as long as they make sure to stage some sort of counter-punch for the VanVets or Bladeguard, they'll be able to use volume of fire and special weapons to at least reduce the number of unit-sweeping monstrosities they're up against. They also have access to the powerful combo of Draw them Out into Tanglefoot Grenades to create a real fail case for the Blood Angels, and can also completely prevent any Deep Strike shenanigans between their model count and Scramble Field.
That's not going to matter for the Blood Angels scoring though, because they can take fixed Cull/Assassinate here, are very likely to max it, and can delay their Secondary Scoring for a few turns to pick up some extra Challenger Cards early. That puts pressure on the Guard to really pull ahead on Primary, and unfortunately I couldn't find the mission here, because it'll make a big difference. New Hidden Supplies? Great for Guard. Purge? Awful, and both that and who goes first will make a huge difference to the outcome. On Purge I think Blood Angels definitely take this, on anything else I'd say the player going second probably wins, but with Guard having more options to score an upset going first. In the end it was ultra close, and I suspect this was a joyous game to participate in, because who doesn't like watching entire handfuls of their models getting punted into their army tray at once, and still just squeaking a win.
Result
Astra Militarum (Recon Element) Victory - 90 - 89Wesley St. Hines - Astra Militarum (Recon Element) - 1st Place
Cadian Shock Troops. Credit: SRM
The List
Archetype
Recon HordeThoughts
Delighted to see someone actually doing this, because it looked great on paper in the book, and it's mostly just the model count that's the obstacle to putting it down. Big congratulations to Wesley for managing that hobby lift and taking a trophy with it, and if the list title means you had 120 Kreig painted before pivoting to Cadians, even more respect.The Best of the Rest
There were 5 more players on 4-1 records. They were:- 2nd - Austin Howald - Thousand Sons (Grand Coven): Top-heavy Magnus Grand Coven.
- 3rd - Jordan Nach - Blood Angels (Liberator Assault Group): Heavy melee Liberator with a full Terminator Assault squad and full VanVet squad.
- 4th - David T. - World Eaters (Khorne Daemonkin): All-rounder Daemonkin with the expected Skarbrand/Berzerker hammers, and a mix of pieces like Berzerkers and a Slaughterbound/Eightbound squad.
- 5th - Ben Cherwien - Aeldari (Warhost): Phoenix Lord Herohammer and full Fire Dragon units
- 6th - Tim Wright - Death Guard (Champions of Contagion): Two chunky Plague Marine units with lots of Characters and a standard set of supporting toys.
Dutch Masters Mid Season GT
41-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Amersfoort, UT, NL on June 14 2025. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.Martijn Van der Most - Thousand Sons (Grand Coven) - 1st Place
Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones
The List
Archetype
Magnus MutalithsThoughts
For our next Thousand Sons build we have an especially gut-punch variant, combining maximum Mutaliths, Magnus, and lots of Rubricae units with Characters designed to make them hit hard. Bluntly, with the army as it is, this can just roll people straight over. Magnus may not be quite as potent as he once was (and pricier to keep fully operational), but that's made up for by being able to cram in triple Mutaliths alongside the substantially higher damage output of Rubricae in the new book. It might even have the raw power to face new Knights head on, especially as it's another build where the Knight T changes matter significantly, and I'm sure we'll find out in the next few weeks. Congratulations to Martijn for unleashing maximum Psychic firepower.The Best of the Rest
There were 5 more players on 4-1+ records. They were:- 2nd (4.5-0.5) - Aat Niehot - World Eaters (Berzerker Warband): All-rounder Warband with one Berzerker unit, Eightbound MSUs with some Slaughterbounds, and some walker hulls.
- 3rd - Daan Van Herk - Emperor's Children (Coterie of the Conceited): Cut-down Coterie with some Maulerfiends.
- 4th - Thomas Verkooijen - Emperor's Children (Coterie of the Conceited): Basically the old stock triple Prince build but double Prince now.
- 5th - Ruben Malschaert - Astra Militarum (Hammer of the Emperor): Triple Dorn Commander supported by lots of elite Infantry in Tauroxes.
- 6th - Alfonso Gutierrez Segura - Chaos Space Marines (Renegade Raiders): Aggro Raiders with triple Discolord, some Accursed Cultists and two Possessed units, backed up by a surprising amount of shooting from Destructors and Vindicators.
Sunshine Coast Open III
29-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in East Dean, England, United Kingdom on June 14 2025. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.Tom Green - Leagues of Votann (Oathband) - 1st Place
Sagitaur. Credit: Rockfish
The List
Archetype
Sagitaur SpamThoughts
Votann keep on trucking, the eternal truism. This build ignores the new option of sticking a three-model Thunderkyn unit with a Brokhyr in a Fort and sticks to the reliable option of massing Sagitaurs with one central Fortress - and you can't argue with the results here. I do think we'll see a lot of re-tooling in Votann as Knight start to rise, because Thunderkyn whip in a Vehicle-heavy environment (and the SP beamer on the Land Fortress plus maul Beserks are great into new Armigers too), and I think it's surprisingly likely that the theme of continuing trucking continues into whatever comes. Well done to Tom on the win.The Best of the Rest
There were 3 more players on 4-1 records. They were:- 2nd - Harvey Bell - Chaos Daemons (Daemonic Incursion): Mega monster mash.
- 3rd - David Bell - Chaos Knights (Traitoris Lance): Whoops all War Dogs.
- 4th - Connor Smith - Tyranids (Invasion Fleet): All-rounder Fleet adding a unit of Zoanthropes.
Competitive Innovations in 10th: Winds of Change pt.2


