Plenty more Warhammer this weekend past, and lots of Warhammer on the one coming up. The biggest London Grand Tournament yet is going to be the largest single showcase for the Nephilim metagame so far, and should give us a final indication of which factions rule it prior to everything getting shaken up by a (presumably impending) Balance Dataslate and Votann. As we'll see today, people are still trying out some exciting new things this deep into the format, so don't rule out there being some big surprises on the weekend.

If you're heading to the LGT (or indeed to any tournament), don't forget that now is a great time to upgrade to the latest version of the Tabletop Battles app with all the latest updates, and you can check out the latest update notes here.

Today we'll be covering five events, which are:

• Flying Monkey (major)
• Krootcon (major)
• DZTV/FactoruM September GT
• Icehammer

As voted by the Goonhammer Patrons, today's showdowns will be:

• Ynnari vs. Creations of Bile/Daemons at Krootcon
• Tyranids vs. Tyranids at the DZTV GT (which I promise is more interesting than it sounds)

Flying Monkey Con 2022 - Warhammer 40k

109-player, 6-round Grand Tournament in Wichita, KS, United States on September 24 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Dan Sammons - Imperial Knights - 1st Place

Credit: SRM

The List

Archetype

Freeblade Lance

Final Round Matchup

98 - 60 Victory against Tyler Devries - Necrons.

Thoughts

At this point it's extremely clear that Freeblade Lance is the real deal, and probably the best loyalist build available. The three-way combo of Hunters of Beasts, Strike and Shield and Noble Combatants for your main Armiger units significantly outclasses any one Household's trait, and you also get some additional options to tweak and tune from there. Broadly most builds seem to go with either Herald or High Monarch on one big Knight, which is usually an Errant or Paladin, and Dan has gone for the more aggressive end of that here, giving him plenty of reach to apply Advance/Charge to either the Warglaives or the aggro Moirax, and then rounds out with a bit of anti-horde support from the Blessed Arms Moirax. All fancy stuff, and very well positioned into the metagame - as the final round's results suggest, this build is a nightmare for ObSec Necrons, as so much of their output is flat D2 or 3 that they can really struggle with Warglaives with a 4+ invulnerable save and damage reduction. Congratulations to Dan on adding another major trophy to his cabinet.

Ryan Verbeck - Tyranids - 2nd Place

Tyrannofex. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Archetype

Leviathan Board Control

Thoughts

It's Leviathan, yes, but this build has definitely swung away from some of the default choices (Harpies, loads of Warriors) in favour of some more recent tech like Termagants surrounding a buffed Tervigon and plenty of Spore Mines. It's also very ready to try and blow something like Knights off the tables with the Tyrannofexes, increasingly important as they become a bigger part of the metagame. Lots of psychic firepower and quantity of infantry rather than quality may also stand this in pretty good stead for a Votann world too, though exactly what does well into them remains to be seen. A neat twist on the standard formula all together, and earning a silver medal for the trouble.

Nathaniel Bjorge- Necrons - 3rd Place

The Silent King. Credit: Pendulin

The List

Archetype

Double C'tan Eternal Expansionists

Thoughts

Two C'tan, two Skorpkh blobs, the Silent King and ObSec chaff has been one of the more effective Necron formulae since Nephilim started, so it's no huge surprise to see it performing well here. Having the Nightbringer helps if you run into the Freeblade Lance, as it can go over the top of a Herald-buffed Armiger better than pretty much anything else (though it was Dan who handed Nathaniel his only loss despite that), and I've certainly been enjoying the flexibility that the Deceiver brings to the table in some of my lists. It does leave you pretty short on units, and if you run into armies that can one-round C'tan like the Thousand Sons it can be a challenge, but it clearly worked out well for Nathaniel here.

James "Boon" Kelling - Asuryani - 4th Place

Credit: Boon

The List

Archetype

Ulthwe Wraithguard

Thoughts

Our boy Boon bucks the relatively dismal current trend for Craftworlds with another outing with his current Wraithguard-focused build. D-Scythe Wraithguard with every buff chucked on and Ulthwe's boosted Strands backing them can hold a position better than almost anything else in the Craftworld book, providing a durable core to lock down Hidden Path on the maps where it's available, and allow all the finesse tools that make up the rest of the army to rack up points on other Secondaries and create favourable trades. Five D-cannons provide an additional lurking hammer that's ready to take down anything that commits into the Guard, and this build ends up with a decent Secondary game (something Craftworlds currently struggle with) on top of good board control and some real hammer blows to throw out. Great work as ever from Boon, who can shame me eternally for not being as loyal to Craftworlds as he is.

The Best of the Rest

There were 7 more players on 5-1 records. They were:

• 5th - Tyler Devries - Necrons: Extra-killy Eternal Expansionists with two big units each of Skorpekh and Lokhusts, plus a carpet of Scarabs.
• 6th - Aaron Hermstedt - Chaos Knights: Herpetrax on the Abominant/Desecrator plan.
• 7th - Michael Mann - Chaos Daemons: An intriuging flame-heavy Tzeentch build, with three units of Flamers, three Exalted Flamers and three Burning Chariots, plus Screamers for extra board control, and Fateskimmers and a Daemon Prince in command. Huge chip damage potential, very resilient to shooting, and pretty hard to pin down, and definitely an interesting use of the book.
• 8th - Cory Schulz - Necrons: Skew build hilarity, with Imotekh and Zandrekh leading a pair each of Doomsday Arks, Doom Scythes and Tesseract Vaults to war. Opponents better hope they've brought some anti-tank along because otherwise things don't look great!
• 9th - Connor Haugen - Harlequins: Light Saedath with small bike squads and a long Voidweaver for extra objective pieces.
• 10th - Ben Neal - Imperial Knights: Aggro House Griffith  with a Master of the Joust Gallant with Noble Combatants added via Master of Justice ready to annihilate any large targets, and a High Monarch Paladin providing excellent all-rounder backup.
• 11th - Bryce Watson - Drukhari: A fairly standard Drukhari Goodstuff example to round us out, featuring Black Heart transports, Artists of the Flesh Grotesques and Wracks, Test/Precise Hellions and loads of Incubi!

KROOTCON 2022

72-player, 6-round Grand Tournament in Padstow, NSW, AU on September 23 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Conversion

Joshua Brodie - Chaos Space Marines & Daemons: Creations of Bile with a Tzeentch Daemon Vanguard of Flamers and an Infernal Gateway caster to give the opponent headaches.

vs.

Christopher Wright - Ynnari: A fairly standard "all-rounder" Craftworld list that goes Ynnari to unlock the Yncarne, extra Mortal Wounds powers and access to a big Foot Troupe to buff with Ambush of Blades on a key turn.

Thoughts

It's genuinely impressive to have such an unusual face-off this deep into Nephilim - sure some of the Chaos toys are new, but Ynnari have been available all along, and it's taken till now for people to really start using them.

So, what have we got here? On the Chaos side, Creations of Bile have emerged as by far the dominant way to build Chaos Space Marines, mostly off the back of having one of the best Faction Traits in the game (and one well suited to the meta), supporting some of Chaos's best units very effectively, and having the best Legion Secondary. They're a nightmare for other melee builds to trade with, and can project threat pretty far thanks to access to Advance/Charge. Adding in some Flamers is a nice combo with this - it means that when a big brawl is going down in the mid-board, any slip-up by the opponent can be brutally punished, and adding an inexpensive caster for Psychic Actions alongside that is pretty nice.

The Ynnari's matchup against this is a distincly mixed bag. On the one hand, although they are leaning on melee to do a reasonable amount of their damage, they're still far less troubled by the Creations of Bile trait than many lists would be, simply because small units of Banshees and Shining Spears are mostly already expecting to kill one thing then die - and here they can still trade-up if they connect with mildly softened-up Possessed. The Chaos army also has nothing that pops a Wave Serpent at range, so the Ynnari have the luxury of staging them pretty aggressively - hell put Shield of Ynnead on the Serpent and it's a pain to deal with even in melee. Jinx plus Swooping Hawks is also a very effective way of chipping through the Chaos Space Marine units (though notably much less so the Flamers), and both the big Harlequin unit with buffs up and the Yncarne are seriously scary to anything in the CSM army, while being able to comfortably shrug off a full unit of Possessed fighting on death with the loss of only ~4W average with Let the Galaxy Burn up. Finally, the Ynnari have a decent chunk of Mortal Wound output available if Chaos close in, and that stacks up effectively against what's on offer.

Weighed against that is that the Flamers are horrendous for the elves here - they are great into a whole bunch of stuff, and will shrug off pretty much all the shooting, demanding melee answers that may have already been used up elsewhere (and really only the Banshees can charge them in the open). Every turn they're not dealt with once they're down is a massive problem, and on a corner deployment it may be challenging to keep them as far at bay as the Craftworlds would like.

How does all this end up lining up? Honestly it can go either way - neither side can really afford any major mistakes, and things are definitely wide open for either player to take the initiative with strong players. I think the Ynnari end up marginally favoured via the Secondary plan of taking Interrogation, Banners (or RND depending on how confident they're feeling) and No Prisoners, which is surprisingly good here. They can make very effective use of their transports to either take corner objectives durably enough to demand a serious commitment or to put layered control onto the centre on a key swing turn, and creating a battle on a few fronts should favour them - if Chaos have to split up to try and stop them pulling ahead on Banners, they can take the trades they want, and make maximum use of the Yncarne. The relative lack of shooting the Chaos army has makes the Yncarne exceptionally good even compared to normal, as once the Flamers commit to battle, it becomes very predictable where it's safe to put them. That makes No Prisoners feel like a safer pick, as the last few turns should be a period where the god of death can go on an absolute rampage.

The only issue there is that a lot of No Prisoners points are wrapped up in the Flamers, and while I do think it's probably still a good pick, Chaos do have the option of using them to pick off flankers and then leaning on the eye-wateringly high movement they have to play keepaway. There are fast units in the Craftworld army that can hunt them down, but it may still be a tall order. However, I just don't think any Secondary plan that the Chaos side has access to quite stacks up to this (especially as a unit of Rangers can set up to block a corner banner going up turn one if Chaos pick that), forcing them to try and play a bit more aggressively, and risking getting out-traded as a result. As I said above, I think it can go either way, and it looks like both sides played a very careful game that pushed the scores for both sides high, but the Ynnari took the win at the end.

Result

Ynnari Victory - 93 - 84

Christopher Wright - Ynnari - 1st Place

The Yncarne. Credit: Wings

The List

Archetype

Ynnari...board control I guess?

Final Round Matchup

93 - 84 Victory against Joshua Brodie - Chaos.

Thoughts

This list rules, it has such good depth of tricks, very effective trade pieces, and ramming a 4+ invulnerable save Wave Serpent somewhere you want to keep is legitimately very potent. Now all we need is for GW to put out the FAQ saying "yes, Ynnari can obviously use Asuryani secondaries in Nephilim" so they stop being soft-banned in a lot of environments and we're cooking (I have no idea how this event ruled this, and I don't think it mattered that much for the Showdown anyway). Legitimately inspiring me to put my Eldar back on the table at some point, great work from Christopher.

William Wykoff - T'au Empire - 2nd Place

Credit: Kevin Stillman

The List

Archetype

Heavy Duty Farsight

Thoughts

Crisis Teams, tooled-up Commanders and two Sun Sharks - not much more than that (other than some Kroot to hold things together and a Hammerhead), but a very scary damage dealing prospect, and one that can be pretty flexible during setup thanks to Master of the Kauyon, either pulling or leaving the Sun Sharks as needed. One Crisis team can operate from the start with Strike and Fade to clock up damage, the rest can either troubleshoot or come out of Deep Strike as needed, and having two melee-capable Commanders rounds out the list with a bit of counter-charge capability. This list can hit like a monster truck early while having plenty of cheap sacrificial stuff to roll out if it needs to go slower, making it pretty flexible and extremely scary - definitely a good way to play Tau right now, as William's success shows.

Chris O'neill - Imperial Knights - 3rd Place

Imperial Knight Paladin. Credit: Jack Hunter

The List

Archetype

Taranis Combo

Thoughts

Freeblade Lance may have pulled ahead as the dominant Imperial Knight build, but various Questor Mechanicus setups also have a place, with this one being perhaps the foremost. The combination of abilities on the two big Knights sets up a once per game free use of Calculated Targeting from the Errant, which they can combine with the auto-6 from Knight of Mars to guarantee a big pile of Mortals, erasing something from existence with maximum prejudice. Always a great capability to have, spicy if you're up against Daemons (because it bypasses their special saves), and plausibly necessary if Knights are going to have any shot into Votann, because "go first and delete a Land Fortress" might be the only reliable plan. Well done to Chris for taking third here.

Jack Lavercombe - Drukhari & Harlequins - 4th Place

The List

Archetype

Drukhari/Harlequin Board Control

Thoughts

A very unusual build in 4th place, which basically looks like it's designed to make occupying the mid-board as painful for the opponent as possible. The custom Coven turns the Grotesques into exceptionally reliable trade pieces that still take some killing in return (they might actually soak a strike back from Creations of Bile, for example), and Incubi, Drazhar and the Succubus are just great trade pieces in general. Agent of Pandemonium is a great thing to throw into that mix, making it even harder for the opponent to push back in the centre, and the rest of the Harlequin contingent provides lots of zippy units to navigate the board and pick stuff off. That helps with scoring Herd the Prey, which is unusually good as a Secondary for mixed builds, as because it's based on something your opponent does, all of your army can fully contribute. Use of Corsairs for a bit of extra mortal firepower from Executioner and (more importantly) CP from Fateful Divergence is very neat too. You still end up with something that's pretty fragile and might struggle against a list like Knights that can just body them (or Tau, which is where the loss came from), but it's a very cool use of the available tools, and put in a strong showing.

The Best of the Rest

There were 2 more players on 5-1 records. They were:

• 5th - Egor Kalinin - Necrons: Eternal Expansionists with a big unit of Lokhusts, some Lychguard, and lots of small pesty units.
• 6th - Justin Lach - Drukhari: A runaround for the Coteries of the Haemonculi, going heavy on Grotesques and Talos as Prophets of the Flesh.

DZTV Warhammer 40,000 GT September 2022

38-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Sutton Veny, England, GB on September 24 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Tide of Conviction

Andy Taylor - Tyranids: Casual 11 ObSec Carnifexes. Ship it.

vs.

Joe Coles - Tyranids: High finesse Hydra board control, baiting opponents into position then tearing them apart.

Thoughts

OK, so Tyranid on Tyranid action wouldn't have been what I'd have expected to turn out to be one of the most interesting Showdown options of the week either, but here we've got two builds that are a long way off the beaten path. In the whatever-colour-Jormundgandr-is corner, we have (drumroll)...a casual 11 ObSec Carnifexes, and a few other juicy toys like a massive Tyrannofex and a Trygon Prime on top. Over on team Hydra, we have an arguably even more unusual build, taking Ambush Predators for army-wide ObSec, and packing lots of small Infantry units to bait opponents out, Genestealers to be an unusually effective gank squad, and some Screamer-killers, Zoanthropes and spray Tyrannofexes to counter-punch whatever tries to take on the infantry.

All this good stuff faces off on Tide of Conviction, and that sets some unusually definitive parameters for how this is going down, because the Hydra build basically cannot push for any sort of Primary lead till most of the Jormundgandr force is dead. The Swarmlord can just about allow a unit of three Warriors to flip an objective in Carnifex land if one is alone on the board, but that's far from certain to be available. In the opposite direction, unless there's a very heavy defensive presence on one of the Hydra close-in objectives, any of the Jormundgandr beasties can rock in and flip it over. With the objective position pretty much ruling out any sort of sneaky flanking shenanigans, that pretty much leaves one plan for the Hydra list - good old fashioned bug-on-bug action, kill or be killed (on points). Can they do it?

This is one of those games where here I'm going to jump ahead to the score, because the answer was an extremely emphatic yes - Hydra ran away with the scoring here, indicating that they either swept the board in a few turns, or managed to flip the script and pressure the Jormundgandr objectives. So - how? Some options suggest themselves. First up, the big advantage that Hydra do have is that passive scoring favours them - they can max Bring it Down just by tabling the opponent, they have a better plan for Psychic Secondaries, and they can throw up Banners on their nearby objectives to force the terms of engagement. Hilarious though "oops all Carnifexes" is, it feels like the Jormundgandr build would benefit from dropping one or two to squeeze in some Infantry to unlock Banners as a Secondary, as on a mission like this being able to say "OK opponent, come shift my Carnifexes to stop me scoring" can be extremely potent. As it is, the Jormundgandr units are going to be obliged to head across the table, where it turns out that Hydra have a lot of things that can own a Carnifex in a fight.

The Zoanthropes can pop one with Mortals each turn, for a start, and although they're somewhat vulnerable to Venom Cannon shooting, it's a fairly target-rich environment for those. Both the Swarmlord and the Reaper Flyrant can barge into a Screamer Killer and have a good chance of tanking their swing even if they interrupt, then murdering it. Even Screamer Killer showdowns favour Hydra here, as theirs having Adrenal Glands for extra S is a huge differentiator. Finally, even the Genestealers are surprisingly capable of putting in some damage thanks to Critical Mass, which unlike the Hydra Faction trait just counts raw number of models. The only real duds are the Tyrannofexes, where the acid sprays do naff all, but even they have a purpose - they're big enough and expendable enough that they could aim to just body block the nearby objectives or gum up choke points, potentially further drawing the Jormundgandr forces into unfavourable positions. While the Carnifexes are incredibly scary, this Hydra list can just plan to annihilate them, and the downside of skewing hard to them is that it leaves the list somewhat inflexible when plan A (crush with Carnifexes) isn't available.

Result

Hydra Tyranids Victory - 95 - 40

Joe Coles - Tyranids - 1st Place

Swarmlord. Credit: Rockfish

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Hydra Board Control

Thoughts

See above mostly - a very unique list, and against anything less scary than Carnifexes it's very, very tricky to take objectives off, as there's plenty here that you, uh, don't want to get Heroiced by. Firing missiles of double-counting Warriors via the Swarmlord is also far more effective in the majority of games, neatly shoving aside any opponents using 5-model Troops to hold a position, and the Genestealers are very effective assassins against Infantry Characters most of the time. Unusual and effective, just what we like to see - a great win from Joe.

The Best of the Rest

There were 6 more players on 4-1 records. The event was using OGW% as the tiebreaker. The players were were:

• 2nd - Jay Seebarun - Dark Angels: Proper hammer and anvil Dark Angels, with enough speedy Ravenwing to push some damage and score Death on the Wind, then some Incursors and Redemptor to get on an objective and stay there for Stubborn Defiance.
• 3rd - Liam Callebout - Chaos Space Marines & Daemons: An extremely thematic and also very scary Word Bearers list that hacks the max power level of Daemons it can bring upwards by taking 6-model Possessed and Warp Talon units, and uses that space to bring a decked-out Indomitable Bloodthirster and some Bloodletters/Flamers, and has multiple Masters of Possession for Secondaries and as Warp Loci.
• 4th - Richard Smith - Mixed Chaos:  A three-way mix here that features Creations of Bile Possessed, some Tzeentch Daemons and a Soulgrinder, then five Vextrix War Dogs. While it has the standard challenges for a mixed list of not getting Faction Secondaries, it applied very good pressure and has a strong game on Banners and Psychic options, so has the ability to pull off some surprises.
• 5th - Andy Taylor - Tyranids: See Showdown.
• 6th - Luke Harley - Craftworlds: Apparently someone else has heard the good news about D-Scythes, as Luke was packing a list with two units of them, plus extreme psychic firepower from three Farseers (one of whom is eldrad) and some melee aspects to troubleshoot.
• 7th - George Crabtree - Chaos Daemons: A fairly interesting mixed list here, sporting lots of Daemonettes as Troops, Flamers as damage dealers/harrassment, then Skarbrand and Be'lakor as the big hitters. Skarbrand's aura does make Daemonettes pretty nasty to deal with, and the list has very good board control and scoring potential as a result, with its only loss being by a single point to Thousand Sons (presumably because it's relying on a Psychic Secondary for one pick).

Icehammer GT 2022

31-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Novosibirsk, Russia on September 24 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

Антон Шнайдер - Goffs - 1st Place

Kill Rig. Credit: Rockfish

The List

Archetype

Goff Pressure

Final Round Matchup

82 - 33 Victory against Вячеслав Ромашов - Hive Fleet Leviathan.

Thoughts

You know the drill with this one - Goffs go fast and go hard, and bowl the opponent clean off the board. I like the heavy Gretchin component here, as it makes the Secondary plan on Get Da Good Bitz very reliable while also having spares to act as bait if the opponent needs prodding into action, and a unit of Deffkoptas as something that can actually threaten a bit of ranged damage, while still being surprisingly dangerous in melee thanks to being Goffs. Other than that, business as usual, but the results don't lie, and smashing through Leviathan with that margin is an impressive turnaround from where Orks were in Nachmund.

The Best of the Rest

There were N more players on X-1 records. They were:

• 2nd - Игорь Коняев - Tyranids: Leviathan Goodstuff with three Carnifexes alongside the usual suspects.
• 3rd - Василий Максимов - Tyranids:  Psychic-heavy Leviathan with three Zoanthropes and a Maleceptor.
• 4th - Кирилл Петерс - Necrons: Murderous Eternal Expansionists with Skorpekh for melee and some Doomsday Arks plus a Doom Scythe for ranged.
• 5th - Вячеслав Ромашов - Tyranids: Leviathan Goodstuff with a Mawloc added.
• 6th - Родион Кондрашов - Adepta Sororitas: Bloody Rose goodstuff at the herohammer end of the spectrum, bringing Celestine alongside the normal toys.
• 7th - Андрей Лазарев - Dark Angels: Pure Ravenwing with lots of plasma-toting Bike squads, a Dark Talon and a big Black Knight unit.

Wrap Up