Thousand Sons and Death Guard with strong results to kick off October.

The 2nd of Games Workshop’s Open tournament series took place in New Orleans over three days this past weekend. This was a large event which featured an eventual cut to a Top-16. Aside from this event, which hosted most of the nation’s top players, the competitive scene was relatively quiet over the weekend. Lets delve into the action:

A Quick Note about Terrain

If you take a look at the 2 most recent tournaments of comparative size, you’ll notice a couple of major distinctions. Comparing the results from the GW Open with that of the London GT, you will see a marked increase in list and faction diversity at the GW event, featuring the above terrain layouts. At the end of the initial rounds at LGT, of 19 undefeated lists, there were 5 Ad Mech, and 4 Drukhari. On the chaos side, there was 3 Death Guard and a CSM list. In New Orleans, the Top 16 featured 1 Ad Mech list and 2 Drukhari list. We also got 2 Death Guard lists and a Thousand Sons list.

What can we attribute this to? Obviously the LGT was the bigger event, but at the top of the food chain, the talent pool should have been relatively equal. To me, this diversity points squarely at the terrain. The GW layout features a number of large obscuring buildings, with almost no cross-board shooting. The LGT terrain had little in the way of obscuring, and lots of +1 save and -1 to hit. Looking at the sheer firepower that the top Ad Mech and Drukhari lists can put out, +1 save and/or -1 to hit simply doesn’t cut it to help other armies survive.

Hunter Gammill’s 3rd place Death Guard

Hunter’s Mortarion’s Anvil list features 3 Plagueburst Crawlers and 2 Volkite-armed Contemptors. This serves to create a very effective firebase for what has traditionally been a very slow-moving, combat-oriented army. The armor is lead by Tallyman, a Malignant Plaguecaster, and a Death Guard Daemon Prince. With “only” 20 poxwalkers and 10 cultists, there isn’t a ton of chaff. Given that the meta would have been expected to be heavily Ad Mech, Drukhari, Ork, and Sisters, I can appreciate the desire for plenty of firepower. Volcons are something I haven’t seen a ton of in Death Guard lists, so I do think it will be interesting to see if the Forge World Dreads will start to pop up across more lists.

I do think that given the terrain layout and the potential for a number of high scoring lists, I think this particular build was well suited for an environment where a win with under 90 points could knock you out of a potential high finish.

Hunter’s matchups were as follows:

• R1 – W vs. Knights
• R2 – W vs White Scars
• R3 – W vs Orks
• R4 – W vs Space Wolves
• R5 – L vs Blood Angels*
• R6 – W vs Death Guard
• R7 – W vs Sisters
• R8 – W vs. Custodes

*The event cut to a top16 after Round 4

Hunter ended up going 7-1, with a loss to BA in R5 keeping him from finishing higher. The list is overall light on melee for a Death Guard list, and, combined with the melee-favorable terrain, would have made Blood Angels a tough matchup.

Jony Velazquez’s 8th place Thousand Sons

Jony came out of the gate strong, starting 6-0 before running into Brad Chester and James Kelling’s Drukhari. This was another army that was shockingly high scoring, with nearly every win posting scores in the 90s. The list itself is mono duplicity, which again, given the terrain, seems like a wise choice.

The list is lead by an Exalted Sorcerer on foot with Seeker after Shadows to force through psychic secondarys. The mortal wounds seem to come from a sorcerer with Tzeentch’s Firestorm and Doombolt, and the infernal master is kitted out with the +1 strength and miracle die pacts, as well as presage, almost assuradly to stand back and buff the 2 Volkite Contemptors, Plasma Contemptor, AND Forgefiend.

In the troops slot you have 3 MSU bolter rubrics and a squad of flamers to be extra obnoxious. There is also a unit of cultists. I think Thousand Sons cultists tend to be a little useless in the new codex, given the similar difference in points between 10 cultists and 10 Tzaangors. However, to fill out a list and perform actions, they do exist.

There are a couple of nice tech pieces here that I do think TSons players should look at. The first is a lascannon/power scourge hellbrute. This bad boy can put out solid long range shooting against some of the meta bad boys, while also cleaning up chaff in melee if necessary.

Jony also split his Scarab Occult into two 5 man units. I think for those not running cult of time, this may be a wise decision. Rather than get bogged down in the middle of the board like a 10 man squad would tend to, in duplicity you can deepstrike and move these guys exactly wherever they are needed. Lastly, there are a couple squads of chaos spawn, which, as I’ve written before, are fantastic.

Really the piece I like the least is the Forgefiend. I love this model, and feel like it has potential, but for whatever reason, I’ve never been able to personally get the unit to work. Tricked out with all plasma, it is a little cheaper, but at the risk of having a 3d3 total shot profile, which can be very swingy.

Make sure to check back on Wednesday for a breakdown of the cabal point system as well as a tier list for cabal abilities!