The week had arrived, and after three consecutive weekends of RTTs in preparation for the event, I began the ~6 hour drive down to Baltimore for my first GT of 11thh Edition 40k. For those who haven’t read previous coverage of what I’ve been playing in the new edition, welcome! While in 10th I was enamored by Data-Psalm Conclave, several contextual changes have made that a non-starter for 11thh, so my focus has shifted to the other unpopular Admech option, Explorator Maniple. Despite being someone who predominantly plays Admech and possesses a contrarian streak, not even I touched this Detachment in 10th; it had a paucity of upsides, with some of the game’s worst stratagems, and a gameplan directing you away from the safety of cover. Bit of a spoiler, but I ended up 10th overall at the tournament, due in large part to how exceptional Explorator was, in concert with the new 1 DP option, Lords of the Forge. Let’s briefly talk about why, before diving into my experience at the event itself.
Above is my list, and I’m rather happy with most of it. While my thoughts on how everything played is colored by the matchup spread I met with at the event (more on that shortly), the main standouts were what you’d expect: Cawl & Thulia with reroll 1s to wound via the Acquisition Objective, and the Fusileer Dunerider with an Artisan Manipulus. The latter especially just put in so much work, being far more tough & lethal than I’d ever expect from its footprint & cost. Artisan was really the story of the event for me, with those flipped 6s working with the provided [Lethal Hits] to supply an obnoxious amount of Lascannon fire. Killing a Broadside-and-a-half on Overwatch? More likely than you’d think. In addition, the threat posed by Reactive Safeguard functionally won me my first two games, denying value from Terminator & Berserks’ charges. What this list has play against is melee armies that can’t wrap transports (which is most of them), and shooting armies which can’t toe on, to ensure we get value from Cached Acquisition’s sticky-on-death. You’ll notice, between Tau & Green Tide, this may have been the wrong meta call, but following three RTTs’ worth of testing, I felt confident enough to be able to put up a good fight. In short, Explorator felt good, Lords felt great, and the things I expected to enjoy were thoroughly appreciated. The blind spot, funny enough, wasn’t in the form of either Detachment, but in the three units of Destroyers…but more on that later. Special mention to the Callidus Assassin, as the edition’s best tech piece thus far (right alongside Watch Captain Artemis).
Game 1 was against Grey Knights, with a Terminator bent and access to was used to be called Mists of Deimos, via Banishers. It’s a fairly standard Purge the Foe list, with scary, singular threats and not a ton of MSUs. After a thorough roasting of some Servitors, and staging melee threats (with quite a reach via [strat] giving Advance & Charge, it was back to me. This game was defined by the Artisan Manipulus, something I’ll be saying a lot, because by way of taking the center with the boat, I was able to 1-tap the Redeemer via the full rerolls provided by Cawl’s Oath & the Dunerider’s rerolls. On my opponent’s next turn, his Dreadknight ate a cool 2 Neutron Fusil shots on Overwatch, and with a Rapid Ingress of Kataphrons, I was set to pull basically everything but his Terminators; much trading ensued, and while he did manage to kill all my damage 3 (ensuring clearing those Terminators would be a chore) I managed to get to an unloseable position by the bottom of turn 4. A clean 100-67, and this was how I wanted to start the tournament. There were a cool 8 Tau players, and that was a matchup I wasn’t looking forward to, so the more I could play non-Tau early on, the better I’d have it later.
Game 2 was into Leagues of Votann, blending Needgaard Oathband & Hearthguard Covenant. While he only had a single Land Fortress, the rest of the list was fairly diverse, and fairly frightening, with the Ironkyn Steeljack shooty brick that’s becoming common alongside basically 1 of every playable option. The real shock though, was that this was a Priority Assets mirror—my only non-Purge game of the tournament, spoilers. We danced around the center, but the real issues cropped up when it became clear my opponent was playing too conservatively. He kept his big brick of Hearthguard in Deep Strike for too long, never exposed his Berserks, and his Land Fortress basically didn’t move the entire game; he was even on points, but I was pushed up so far, and had the capacity to negate his scariest charges via Reactive Safeguard. I did make one error here, in not using my Fusileers as early as I ought to have, but given my opponent correctly refused to expose his Land Fortress I didn’t have much of a choice. Still should have placed that boat more centrally, though. 100-78, talking it out at bottom of 4.
This is where the wheels fall off a bit, because my final game day 1 was versus a very good player—Jack Murphy—on a very good list of the best army in the game pre-MFM. It was Mont’ka Tau, with the bulk to survive my push, and enough Infiltrate to lock me out of a turn 1 Priority Assets action. He went first, and shifted around 30 Pathfinders to fully block the two central objectives, instantly cutting my Primary VP by 5. Hidden didn’t do enough to protect my action monkeys, which I had gambled on being pushed up a bit with Hidden, had I gone first. Cawl did manage to sink a cheeky 2CP Heroic Intervention to charge and get on the center on Jack’s turn 2, but by then I lacked the oompf to punch through the requisite suits. As would become a theme, Kataphron Destroyers are terrible in the Tau matchup, and pretty solid elsewhere…so as long as I didn’t play against Tau too much, I’d be fine. 75-100, and I tagged along with a throng of friends for a visit to the Guinness Brewery restaurant to recover.
On day 2, I played Mont’ka twice. You can tell the Detachment is strong (perhaps too much so) because the three lists I played against were fairly different, with Jack’s having Scout access & a Stormsurge, round 4 taking a Tiger Shark (which was disappointing but still probably undercosted), and round 5 taking 3 Ethereals to all but guarantee 2CP turn 1. These were all great players, and cool lists, but you can imagine my frustration hitting the same rough matchup against a couple world-class opponents across 3 games. I did win my game versus the Tiger Shark list, 92-62, but lacked the necessary beef to get through my game 5, with an agonizing verbal on bottom of 4 to 94-96. If those Destroyers had been basically anything else, whether Autocannon Chickens or Disintegrators, I’d have cleared with 4-1. Not a ton to say here, but as you could imagine I was internally pulling my hair out at the sight of my back 3 games being against the best army at present. Rubbish bracket, for me, but we made the best of it.
10th/48 isn’t a bad placement, but if any of my final three rounds weren’t versus the current top dog (and not a stellar matchup) in Tau’s Mont’ka, I feel this event could have been different. My losses ended up being to the player who took it all with a 5-0—Jack Murphy—as well as the 4th place and World Championship player Sean Olson. For as absolutely brutal my bracket was, I was extremely happy with my play, and with Explorator-Lords overall. The thing I wasn’t happy with, though, lay squarely with my Kataphron Destroyers. I could not have chosen a worse unit to skew into for the Mont’ka meta, being too slow to threaten expansions even after walking on, and dying to a single Riptide activation while not doing enough in return. High AP, S8 D2 is just not a profile that frightens Tau’s best model, and I faced a cool 7 of them across 3 games. I would have traded them for more Autocannon Ironstriders or a couple Skorpius Disintegrators in a heartbeat, and frankly that may have won me another game (not against Jack, though). Finding utility for them, and ways to hide Servitor Battleclade turn 1 while giving them space to advance+action on the center, were my main play issues. Other than that though, I ran clean, and I’m excited to leap into more 11th edition games!
How have you felt about tournaments in 11th so far? How badly do Tau need to be nerfed, or is it just small tweaks that are needed? What do you want to see from the new codices for Marines & Orks? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
