Not too much of a results-oriented preamble this week (other than to say "hey, some people found Custodes builds that work"), as I'm technically on holiday this week (and we'll have guest cover next week), but since we still don't have a Balance Dataslate, I thought it was worth very quickly re-stating the key things I want to see happen in it to keep the game interesting for another few months:

1. Tyranids need some sort of rules hit, probably targeting Leviathan and the Reaper of Obliterax.
2. Necrons need something tweaked to make their ability to lock in 100pts in some games less overwhelming. I think the easiest route here is to change Eternal Conquerors and the Nihilakh dynasty so that only CORE units (excluding vehicles) get Objective Secured - that still gives play to a whole bunch of the units, but stops Scarabs being quite so impossible to stop, and avoids people pivoting to Ark spam. Also, take CORE off the Silent King.
3. Harlequins and Sisters need a mild tuning down, probably both on their best Secondaries. In theory Harlequins maybe need a rules change too, but damned if I know what's left to change without gutting something fundamental.
4. Custodes (yes, even after they managed to have one good week), Adeptus Mechanicus, Craftworlds, Chaos Space Marines and Marines need some Secondary changes. AdMech and Custodes need some of theirs to change to end of turn scoring, Craftworlds need some of them made a bit broader in what can score them (likely including the Avatar in Wrath of Khaine and Shroud Runners in Scout) to increase list variety a bit. Marines could, honestly, go back to old Oaths and probably should. Chaos should have their Action Secondaries brought in line with the way other Nephilim ones score.
5. Marines and AdMech could do with some more general boosts on datasheets and/or army-level rules.

There's a bunch of other bits of micro-tuning I'd like to see, but that feels like it hits on the key points.

This week we're going to be looking at:

• Kippers's Melee
• Battle Ready Wargaming By South Georgia Havoc
• Kirtonian Total Carnage
• The Pecking Order: Turkey Wars
• Glasshammer GT
• Leodis Games GT

This week's showdowns are going to be (three voted by Goonhammer Patrons, one I'm wildcarding in):

• Emperor's Chosen vs. House Taranis at Kippers' Melee
• Emperor's Children vs. Tau at Kirtonian Carnage
• Daemonic Dogwalker vs. Necrons at the Leodis Games GT
• Necrons vs. Ferrymen with Daemons at the Pecking Order

Let's hit it!

Kippers' Melee 2022 - 10 Year Anniversary

100-player, 6-round Grand Tournament in Nanaimo, BC, CA on October 15 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Death and Zeal

Sean Haworth - Imperial Knights: House Taranis running an Errant and Paladin set up for the big Calculated Targeting combo.

vs.

Mike Garcia - Adeptus Custodes: Shooting/hull-heavy Emperor's Chosen Goodstuff with lots of dreadnoughts and two units of Bikes.

Thoughts

Gold is back in fashion this week, it would seem. The Custodes list here isn't especially complex but is terrifying to face - it's a wall of T6 or greater stuff with invulns, anti-mortal defences and offensive output that works very well with the combination of Trajann and the Emperor's Chosen trait. With everything being so durable, and lots of units that can spike a target, Might of the Emperor becomes good in some matchups (probably not this one, but in general), and in some games might even be willing to roll the dice on Stand Vigil. One unit to highlight in particular is the use of the bog standard Venerable Contemptor with multi-melta, who seems to have exploded into popularity this week at the same time as Custodes have suddenly seen some success. I think that makes sense over the Galatus in the current metagame - with so many Knight armies around, you're often going to be fighting T7 units with damage reduction, and the Galatus sucks at that. Melee damage reduction does still impact on the Contemptor, but swinging at S14 and popping off some multi-melta shots on the way in gives it far more game in that, or in fact this matchup.

As well as that advantage, Custodes have a couple more to play with. The big Mechanicus Mortal combo is far less good here than normal thanks to the Emperor's Chosen trait - it can still turn a unit into so much slag, but now has a failure case that could cause calamity at a pivotal moment. The other is that having Bring it Down as effectively a freebie is very helpful, though the Custodes are still going to be up against it on the Secondary front, as their other choices are at best swingy. I figure they probably have to grit their teeth and take Grind and Stand Vigil, and then if they end up on first turn, just go full YOLO mode and try and clear the table at speed. They have a lot of units that will reliably put quite a lot of pain on an Armiger, and there aren't that many Armigers - clear out the Warglaives and the Errant, and suddenly the Knights might struggle to continue to contest primary, giving the Custodes an angle to win, even if their Secondary total will be nowhere near max. The Knights Secondaries are certainly going to be more comfortable than the Custodes, but several of their likely picks do also start falling apart if they fall behind (though they have a better prospect of putting up a big win). As it played out, the Custodes were able to push through on just enough points to overcome the Knights.

Result

Adeptus Custodes Victory - 79 - 75

Mike Garcia - Adeptus Custodes - 1st Place

Custodes Contemptor-Achillus Dreadnought. Credit: Pendulin

The List

See showdown

Thoughts

Navigating a list where you're frequently going to have to pick some awkward Secondaries to first place in a six-round event is a phenomenal achievement, so huge congratulations to Mike here. As mentioned in the showdown (and as will come up several more times in this article) I do really like the Venerable Contemptor right now, and they feel like a key ingredient here. I would desperately love to find a way to get an Inquisitor into this to add options, but will freely admit that I can't easily work out where I'd start making cuts to free the points - losing any of the units here feels like it makes the army considerably weaker, suggesting that it's extremely well-tuned as is!

Idavoll Heimdall - Necrons - 2nd Place

Szarekh, The Silent King. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Archetype

Extra-shooty Eternal Expanisionists

Thoughts

Some neat changes from the standard Necron formula here, going for a far more shooty build than is standard, taking advantage of the Silent King providing full hit re-rolls to Doomsday Arks. The pre-game move has good synergy with these, as it lets you get them into a firing position without sacrificing the ability to shoot on high power turn one. The Arks, Doom Scythes and Destroyers all shooting at once is pretty formidible, and a unit of Lychguard with some quality babysitters gives the list something to push the middle with while the opponent is blasted to dust. I don't think it's going to be quite as reliable at scoring Secondaries as the standard builds, but does have the advantage that people teching for sweeping through Skorpekh and Scarabs aren't going to find great targets here. Cool to see some different units used too, so well done to Idavoll.

Sean Haworth - Imperial Knights - 3rd Place

Imperial Knight Paladin. Credit: Jack Hunter

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Taranis with Calculated Combo

Thoughts

All covered in the showdown - Taranis gives you extra durability (especially valuable since you have access to Machine Spirit Resurgent) and the easiest route for consistently setting up a Mortal Wound bonanza with Calculated Targeting, making it one of the strongest Mechanicus builds. We seem to broadly have three different strong Imperial Knight builds kicking round (this, Freeblade Lance, Custom Imperialis) and that's a very healthy sign - great work from Sean taking this option all the way to the finals.

Kevin Hamilton - Adeptus Custodes - 4th Place

Adeptus Custodes Sagittarum Guard by Crab-stuffed Mushrooms

The List

Archetype

Emissaries Sagittarum Spam with Freeblades

Thoughts

That bit earlier about lists teched to obliterate Scarabs and Skorpekh? Yeah they look a bit like this! This army has very broadly applicable firepower (Helverins with Hunters of Beasts are some of the best all-round shooting out there), and is very good at making a grinding advance while withering the enemy away, while being surprisingly hard to counter-charge thanks to Fight First on all the Emissaries units. The Helverins are also very good at protecting Banners that the army has raised, or zooming forward to steal an objective as a sacrifice that doesn't break Might of Terra against a melee army, helping give more Secondary options to the Custodes We also see a second showing for the humble Venerable Contemptor here, further solidifying my belief that they're well positioned at the moment - they're dangerous enough that they often can't be ignored, and very attractively priced. Well done to Kevin for ensuring that the Custodes placing drought ends in style by taking half the top four slots at this major!

The Best of the Rest

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

Battle Ready Wargaming's South Ga Havoc 40k Major

54-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Valdosta, Georgia, US on October 15 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Marcus Johnson - Adepta Sororitas - 1st Place

Credit: Keewa

The List

Archetype

Bloody Rose Goodstuff

Final Round Matchup

79 - 68 Victory against Steven Crawley - T'au Sept.

Thoughts

You very much know the drill here, but there is one more unusual option in the Dialogus, who I think does quite a bit here - she can boost up the value of Acts of Faith to lock in charges with all those Repentia, and having a source of Refrain is very valuable in case you run into Abaddon or C'tan, both common. A nice personal touch from Marcus there, otherwise very much business as usual.

Andy Patton - Black Legion - 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

The List

Archetype

Black Legion

Thoughts

Nice to see Abaddon leading his own boys into battle, and this list is very much set up to take advantage of him. Warpflamer Rubricae with re-rolling wounds and Let the Galaxy Burn are quite the thing, and with full hit and wound re-rolls each Raptor unit can be a very scary missile as well. The other standout piece here is the Lord Discordant, who has got to be one of the very toughest characters it's possible to build right now - half damage, effectively a 0+/4++, and even if you do push some damage through he shrugs the first hit each turn thanks to being Tzeentch. He's a great one-two punch with the Daemon Prince too - he ties something valuable up, the Daemon Prince rocks in and annihilates it. Good use of Abaddon, good use of access to the Black Legion warlord trait table, and a cool build overall from Andy.

The Best of the Rest

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

Kirtonian Total Carnage II

54-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in England, GB on October 15 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - The Scouring

David LaPorta - T'au Sept: All-rounder Tau Sept with two Crisis units, two Breacherfish and nasty HQs.

vs.

Mani Cheema - Emperor's Children & Daemons: The servants of Slaanesh packing Tzeentch Flamers behind them.

Thoughts

To part the curtain, I often write bits of this article out of order, this is the last bit I'm filling, and I have turned out to have less time to write on holiday than expected, so this is going to be quick (as publish time is only a couple hours away).

With that in mind, this game gets added straight to the long list of matchups brutally murdered by one of the more skewing missions in the Nephilim pack. There is, bluntly, zero way for the Tau to play this game that doesn't leave them wide open to the Emperor's Children playing exactly the kind of game they want (unless it's taking place on planet bowling ball). Contesting the Primary at all is going to mean placing themselves in potential strike range of units staged behind any mid-board Obscuring pieces, while stealing the Chaos objectives is going to be super challenging thanks to wide-ranging access to Heroic via Incessant Disdain, and the threat of Abaddon just sitting in the middle of one threatening to Heroic and murder whatever comes close. The Flamers are also extremely nasty into most of the Tau list, and the fact that any of the Noise Marines can deploy point-and-click no Overwatch with Excruciating Frequencies just serves to further lock out any good options.

My guess is that the Tau just have to live in a world where they believe they can evaporate the Chaos list entirely (which, to be fair, they're pretty well built for on any mission where Chaos don't entirely control the flow of battle), go for something like No Prisoners, Assassinate and Kauyon Decisive Action, then play to clear stuff early and swing back hard late game, leaning on the relative weakness of CSM Secondaries to step them getting a big lead. I'd not be optimistic in their position though, and the score would suggest that's well founded.

Result

Chaos Victory - 91 - 35

Mani Cheema - Emperor's Children - 1st Place

Credit: Liebot - https://instagram.com/liebot_pics

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Emperor's Children and Daemons

Final Round Matchup

91 - 35 Victory against David LaPorta - T'au Sept.

Thoughts

I wouldn't be shocked if someone on the GW FAQ team has looked at this list, sighed, and started revising the CSM/Daemons FAQ, but as it stands this is an extremely formidible build, being able to lash out very effectively from the solid Terminator core, and brutally punishing some lists with the threat of flamers out of Deep Strike.

The Best of the Rest

There were 9 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

The Pecking Order: Turkey Wars 2022 GT

50-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Olympia, Washington, US on October 15 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - The Scouring

Nicolas Ohlsen-Johnson - Necrons: Murderous Eternal Expansionists with lots of Scarabs and Skorpekh.

vs.

Jason Byrd - Nurgle: Ferrymen Plague Marine Spam with a Nurgle Daemon detachment to provide some Nurglings for screening and a Bilepiper for ObSec manipulation.

Thoughts

Nicolas' build here needs no introduction - it's the best version of one of the best builds in the game, and he's made it into several of these (and sorry, I deleted the fluff this time, it's been in the column at least twice already). Jason's build is new - like a lot of armies since the Daemon book landed, it takes an already strong plan (loading tonnes of Ferrymen Plague Marines onto the board with buffs and auras galore) and adds a Daemonic twist, here some Nurglings to screen in some matchups, a Bilepiper to mess with opposing ObSec (helping the Plague Marines dominate the Primary) and some Plaguebearers who can happily chill out on a home objective as needed. How does that stack up against the Necron menace?

Mixed. On the one hand, the core plan of the Ferrymen list here does help a lot. Plague Marines are resilient to both Skorpekh and Lokhust Destroyers, and are ObSec bodies that can sweep enough Scarabs bases in melee to flip an objective. The Skorpekh are also going to struggle with charging if the Stench-vats aura is in range, as they'll lose too many to a Plague Marine swing for it to be worth it. That's the good bits, but the issues probably outweigh them, namely that the Daemon detachment doesn't really do much here, and the mission is rough. Advance deploying the Nurglings too aggressively is mostly just going to provide free movement to Scarabs here, especially as Expansionist doesn't have a "must finish outside of 9"" clause, there's no home objective for the Plaguebearers to sit on (though I guess they can at least attend to the mission action on the two closer points), and Secondaries end up rough. No Prisoners is obviously a lock, but after that the pool is challenging - any Psychic secondary risks getting shut down by Szarekh (especially as he may end up staged quite far forward), Spread probably caps at 8 unless the Necrons get bodied off the board, and Despoiled is hugely risky.

ObSec Necrons, meanwhile, love this mission because they can take Purge the Vermin as a guaranteed 15 if the opponent is kept in their half of the table, and have far more tools to push through points of Ancient Machineries than the Death Guard equivalent thanks to weight of Scarabs and throwaway Tomb Blades. Technically this matchup and mission is about as challenging as Treasures of the Aeons can get for this army, but that's very much graded on a curve where "challenging" still means "minimum 10 in anything like a close game".

With all that considered, the calculus for the Death Guard ends up pretty simple - they need to just try and overrun the Necrons. Leave the Daemon stuff back to handle the nearby objectives, and ram as many Plague Marines forward as possible, trying to take advantage of the relative weakness of many of the Necron offensive tools against the Plague Marines. That feels like their best chance to win, but does have to contend with the looming threat of the Silent King, and from a chat with Jason he was pivotal. Some obscuring terrain was available where he could stage relatively far forward, and on a key turn he was able to tag multiple Plague Marine units and make both Fight Last, allowing twenty of them to be picked up at once. That, obviously, put paid to any hope of the Necrons getting overwhelmed, and they were able to roll through to 100pts, as is their fashion.

Result

Necrons Victory - 100 - 64

Nicolas Ohlsen-Johnson - Necrons - 1st Place

Canoptek Scarab Swarm. Credit: Rockfish

The List

See showdown

Archetype

Violent Eternal Expansionists

Thoughts

It's good. Congratulations again, Nicolas

Chuck Arnett - Tzeentch Daemons - 2nd Place (Undefeated)

Be'lakor - Credit: RichyP

The List

Archetype

Tzeentch Funtimes

Thoughts

Proper innovation from Chuck here, making good use of the massively improved Soul Grinder datasheet. This list feels like it should play largely in line with most of the builds using Flamers, brawling in the mid board with some durable stuff and using Daemons out of the warp to punish flankers or launch counter-strikes, but they're often working alongside Rubricae, Scarab Occults or Chaos Knights, both of which are vulnerable to melee counter-charges. Be'lakor and a trio of Soul Grinders on a melee 4+ is a very different prospect in terms of what's needed to slow it down, and this list looks like it should be very effective at pulling off it's plan. Having volleys of Infernal Gateway coming from behind the front ranks is also another nice way to leverage the setup, and Abaddon being able to be screened by the Soul Grinders seems very strong too, as he can burst forth as a second wave when ready. Really cool build, and delighted to see this going undefeated.

The Best of the Rest

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

Glasshammer GT #10

33-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in St George's, England, GB on October 15 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Vik Vijay - Chaos Space Marines - 1st Place

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

The List

Archetype

Emperor's Children

Final Round Matchup

80 - 63 Victory against Nathan Roberts - Hive Fleet Leviathan.

Thoughts

After Vik took Emperor's Children to third at the LGT it's no surprise to see him sticking with them, and the core strength of this build, which is the combination of the Children's super-strong Faction trait and stratagems with Noise Marines being very efficient Troops, remains the same. Vik has mixed a few things up though - one unit of Noise Marines and a Venomcrawler have been dropped in favour of a squad of Possessed and a Master of Executions. These feel like they help in the mirror, as Possessed can rampage through pretty much an arbitrary number of Noise Marine units in melee, and give a nasty hammer blow to throw in other games, while the threat of a 6" heroic followed by Soporific Gaze from the MoE is really, really nasty in any game where the opponent is planning to use melee to get things done (and they remain outstanding on pure rate). Well done to Vik for taking down another event.

The Best of the Rest

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

Leodis Games GT 40k Oct 22

30-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Farsley, England, GB on October 15 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Secure Missing Artefacts

David Crowther - Necrons: Double C'tan Eternal Expansionists

vs.

Ben Hampshire - Daemonic Dogwalker: Daemonic Dogwalker with a squad of Plaguebearers and some Flamers in the Daemon detachment.

Thoughts

Ben continues to throw down with Daemonic Dogwalker, last seen about a month ago. The plan hasn't changed but it's still a good one - you get the overwhelming ObSec push of Dogwalker and sacrifice a small amount of staying power to unlock several addiitonal secondary options and add one unit of Flamers that can brutally constrain some lists.

It also looks like it stacks up pretty well against this Necron build, though there are some caveats to that. The big challenge that the Necrons have is that, with one exception, the majority of their unit are five models or fewer, forcing multiple to be committed to guarantee stealing an objective from a War Dog. The fact that there aren't as many as there sometimes are (to pay for two C'tan) compounds that, though the C'tan are at least pretty strong here. They do need to watch out for getting owned by the Changecaster, but having multiple models that can solo a War Dog and that demand a fairly specific answer to immediately deal with is obviously great.

My feeling on how this matchup ends up working is that it's a pretty even game if the pre-game rolls go the Necrons' way, but becomes tough for them if not. All of Purge, Machineries and Treasures are things that the Knights can start messing with fairly hard once they've had a turn to get into position (especially if they get to pull the no-man's land's objective towards themselves), but with a turn's head start on them capping the Necron scoring could become challenging without taking them out (and the C'tan will get to stage in positions to counter-charge wherever the Knights go too). The Necrons probably also don't have to take Code over Bring it Down either, which allows the Silent King to be a lot more muscular without worrying about getting spiked early. I figure if you're the Necrons here you probably take BiD/Purge/Treasures (though could theoretically swap that one depending on Attacker/Defender roll off), and focus on brutally murdering any Knight that comes into your half of the table after trying to spike up Treasures on turn one or two, and stopping the Knights ever flipping the turn on the centre. It seems viable, but if the Knights get a turn to do their positioning and potentially cap you at two on Treasures out the gate, it becomes a real challenge, and they should be able to pretty reliably score highly on Secondaries as well, while feeling like they have a slightly easier time keeping the Primary flowing/not running out of stuff. Not a cakewalk by any means, but Abaddon's sinister court did take the game in the end.

Result

Chaos Knights Victory - 89 - 77

Ben Hampshire - Chaos Knights - 1st Place

Credit: Ben Hampshire

The List

Archetype

Final Round Matchup

89 - 77 Victory against David Crowther - Necrons.

Thoughts

All covered in the showdown - Dogwalker with mildly less resilience in exchange for vastly more Secondary options, which feels like a good trade, and under Ben's guiding hand continues to thrive at events.

The Best of the Rest

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

Wrap Up

Next week a Mystery Guest will be taking the reins, so look forward to that. Perhaps we may also have a little Balance Dataslate? As a treat?