Lists of the Week: Top Performers 8/5/2024

 Hello battle brothers! We didn't have any event winners this week, but some of our brethren did put in impressive performances, so we have some good lists to talk about. 

The first list I'm going to talk about I had to go looking for as it didn't appear in the Meta Monday roundup, but there was an X/0, X/1 result to find beyond the lists that appeared in the roundup. I do think I found that mystery list though - it was a Gladius played by James Walsh at Salt Lake Open 2024 - Warhammer 40K Championships, and it took him to 15th place out of 99 players. You can see James' list on BCP. The short version of his list is below, and it's kind of wild!

DA Gladius
Azrael
Apothecary Biologus: Fire Discipline
Bladeguard Ancient
Centurion Devastators: 3 chonky shooty grav boys
Centurion Devastators: 3 chonky shooty grav boys
Centurion Devastators: 3 chonky shooty grav boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Devastator Squad: Sergeant and 4 shooty grav boys
Eradicator Squad: 6 chonky melta boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads

I was not expecting to see such a heavy investment in grav cannons in a high-performing list, but James went 4-2 with this list, with his second loss being in the last round. And a Devastator Squad to boot! I messed with grav Devastators a bit with my Firestorm, but they got dropped from the list pretty rapidly. I liked the idea of 3-shot, 3-damage, Anti-Vehicle 2+ guns but found them disappointing in execution, so it's it's interesting to see that James got such good performance out of them. Part of that might have been the platform. With shooting, Centurion Devastators reroll 1's to hit, rerolling all hit rolls against targets on objectives, so that will definitely increase the efficiency of their shooting, and frees up James to put his Oath target on something else. Putting them on an objective is not the worst idea either. They're T7, 4 wounds, and have a 2+ save, so shifting them will take work. They're even OC 2, and their melee profile is not terrible - 3 attacks hitting on 4's at AP -1 and 2 damage. Opponents won't be picking them up with something trivial, and if they commit something serious, James would have the Deathwing Knights poised like a cocked fist for the countercharge. 

Then there are the Devastators. It's weird to see a Firstborn unit sneak into a competitive list. I'm not quite sure what the thinking was with it. It has Ignores Cover if it manages to not move before it shoots, so maybe James has them sprint up to the 2nd floor of a ruin and sit shooting for the rest of the game. Plus once per game they can turn a To Hit roll to a 6, so they can be a little more reliable on a key turn. It seems to me those points could have been better spent, but James is the guy who went 4-2 at a 40K championship, not me. 

And then there's the Bladeguard Ancient. When I first saw that, I thought, "Oh, James must have included a Bladeguard Squad and is leveraging the increased OC and the round of +1 attacks", but there's nothing in the list for the Bladeguard to join. The only reason I can think of to include him would be because he's one of the cheapest dataslates in the codex, if not THE cheapest, and James is sticking him in Strategic Reserve to have him pop out and score a secondary at some point in the game. It can be hard to screen out a single model. 

The rest of the list is pretty unsurprising. Azrael is there to give CP, the Harmacist and Eradicators are there to give any big monsters a bad day, and James has 3 squads of Scouts. I'm sure one sits on the backfield objective as needed, but in games where holding the backfield objective doesn't score any points, that 3rd Scout Squad is available to uppy-down with the other 2 for scoring Secondaries, and Azrael can keep opponents from casually Deep Striking onto that backfield objective. Unfortunately, Azrael can't join Devastators - I checked, because I thought James might have been doing that with him.

James scored some POINTS with this list too. He won 5 out of 7 games, and the lowest score he got from a winning game was 87 points. Round 1 he went 91-45 against Space Wolves. Round 2, 100-53 against Thousand Sons. Round 3 was his first loss, 43-80 against Chaos Marines. Ouch. Round 4 James took 87-33 against Imperial Knights - I suppose playing into all those Anti-Vehicle weapons was challenging for James' opponent. Round 5 James won 100-53 against Astra Militarum. Round 6, 97-54 against T'au Empire. Round 7 was a loss, but a tight game, 74-81 against World Eaters. I admit I don't fully understand all the details of how ITC placing works, but it seems to me if James had won Round 7, he might have scored as high as 3rd place. 

The biggest event of the weekend was Palm Springs Open 40k GT III By Dicehammer, a 6-round event with 167 players. There, Jeff Jew took a Gladius and went 5-1 to place 7th out of 167 players. Jeff tweaked the list he used to place 6th at Tacoma Open a couple weekends ago (you can find the review of that here). I suppose objectively this list performed about the same. You can see Jeff's list on BCP. The short version is below.

hold the line part 2
Azrael
Judiciar
Assault Intercessor Squad: 5 choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Vindicator
Vindicator
Callidus Assassin

The differences between this and the previous version of Jeff's list are that Jeff dropped his foot Assault Intercessors down to 5 and did away with the Darkshroud so he could afford the Inner Circle Companions. He also swapped out a Combi-weapon Lieutenant with the Judiciar to give the ICCs Fights First. The rest of the list is the same as the previous version. Azrael probably joins the remaining Assault Intercessor Squad and makes a skirmishing package that can punch up (especially on objectives), the Infiltrators zone out the backfield and mind the home objective, and the Scouts and Callidus uppy-downy for secondaries. 

Round 1, Jeff faced off against another Dark Angels list*, prevailing 98-61. Round 2 Jeff beat Astra Militarum 95-67. Round 3 was a 98-34 win against Space Wolves. Round 4 was a 91-61 win against World Eaters. Apparently this event was Jeff's event to beat Space Wolves, because Round 5 he won against another Space Wolves list 90-78. Jeff's loss came Round 6, 71-89 against Death Guard.

*As a point of interest, Jeff's Round 1 opponent was David Labovitch, who also took a Gladius but played a list that might have been better suited to be played as a Firestorm, with 12 Eradicators, 10 Hellblasters, an Impulsor, and a Repulsor. He went 2-3-1 for the weekend. Clearly David would have liked to perform better, but kudos to him for trying something a little different.

The third list I'd like to review was played at ÖK-spelen GT in Brunnsparken, Sweden, a 64-player, 5-round event. At that event, Mattias Levin took a Gladius and went 4-1 to score 8th place. You can view Mattias' list on BCP. The short version is below.

Mattias' list
Lion Dad
Azrael
Apothecary Biologis: Fire Discipline
Assault Intercessors Squad: 5 choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs: 5 flying choppy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky swordy boys
Deathwing Knights: 5 awesome chonky macey boys
Eradicator Squad: 6 chonky melta boys
Infiltrator Squad: 5 sneaky boys
Inner Circle Companions: 6 spooky awesome swordy boys
Scout Squad: 5 sneaky lads
Repulsor
Impulsor

This is probably the closest to conventional of the three lists I reviewed in this article. The main deviation was including Lion Dad, who cost almost as much as a squad each of DWKs and jump pack Intercessors. Against that, he really puts the fear into opponents and makes them want to avoid his threat range, which is a considerable chunk of the table. There's arguments to be made either way for the Repulsor - it does make the Eradicators faster, gives them a degree of extra protection, and can be used for embarking/disembarking shenanigans. However, it is 180 points, which could be a whole additional ICC squad, and as infantry the Eradicators can exploit terrain to their advantage. In this list, Azrael clearly joins the ICCs and might actually spend the first turn off the table riding in the Impulsor. There are the Infiltrators for the usual role, and just one squad of Scouts for uppy-downy secondary scoring. 

This was a European event, so it employed WTC scoring. Every point above 10 indicates a 5-point difference in score, so 11-9 could represent 100-95, 55-50, or 5-0. Seems like taking extra steps to me, but someone must have had a reason for coming up with this scoring system.

Anyway, our brother Mattias won Round 1, 12-8 against Space Wolves. Round 2 was Mattias' loss, 0-20 against Adeptus Sororitas (ouch!). In Round 3 he came back strong though, 20-0 against Necrons. Apparently our top battle brothers were gunning for Space Wolves this weekend, because Round 4 Mattias beat another Space Wolves list, 18-2. Then, finally, in the 5th round Mattias won 13-7 against Chaos Marines.

Here are the statistics for the weekend.

Our 6-week win rate is 46%, with a 47% win rate for the weekend. 

The Gladius Task Force was our most played and most successful detachment, with 23 players collectively getting a 51% win rate and earning all 3 of our X/0,X/1 games.

The next most played and least successful detachment was the Inner Circle Task Force, with 6 players collectively getting a 34% win rate.

The Unforgiven Task Force actually outperformed the Inner Circle Task Force for I think the 2nd week in a row, with 3 players collectively getting a 47% win rate. I've been wondering if maybe there's a build for the UTF that can aspire to be competitive leveraging mass Hellblasters and the Grim Retribution strat. I did an article on that very subject, mostly to highlight the potential for it to be amusing, but there may actually be something there.

Finally, 3 players tried to make the Ironstorm work, but collectively they scored a 41% win rate.

That concludes our review of the weekend's best-performing lists! As always, congratulations to the authors of these lists for their fine representation of the legion chapter! May we all learn from their fine examples and bring the pain to the enemies of the Emperor! For the Lion!