There’s a famous bit of American literature, ‘Casey at the Bat’, which I feel aptly describes my second day at the GT. Casey was the home run king of his day, weighed down with such expectation as to have only the best expected of him—fooling even himself that when the chips were down, he’d easily send that ball past the outfield. Bases loaded, 3-0 against potent opponents with powerful lists, and planning to have game against everything but Knights, I felt much the same. Being in that 3-0 bracket is a curse, however, as it means I’m naturally going to be facing tougher and ever tougher opponents, and/or better and yet better lists. There’s only two games on the second day, before paint judging and awards, and I knew at least one of them was going to be against my worst nightmare. Could 35 Electro-Priests fell the strongest pair of armies in the game, for whom they lacked the necessary anti-vehicle?
Game 1 was against Big 6 Chaos Knights, and I knew from the get-go there was no way I could actually offer a reasonable response to his sheer bulk. We’ll talk about it later, but Knights have been the standout army from recent events, and not for reasons one might call ‘balanced’. Even as someone who was playing a list with fairly minimal Anti-Vehicle for the current meta, I still felt I had a shot however. I used Battleclade to score Primary & Secondary early, got in a fantastic Heroic Intervention with my Fulgurites, and was met with the gruesome reality that is Infernal Lance. At the cost of a few occasional Mortal Wounds, he could soup up his knights to take more damage, dish more out, and critically, reach a movement threshold that meant I had 0 ways of getting Kataphrons in Rapid Fire range of a Knight. This was excellent positioning on his part, but also a bit of a flaw with current Knight design—due to how Rotate Ion Shields works, you essentially had to choose 2 different Knights to focus down, as your damage would splash off if you went full bore into a single target. Still, by catapulting myself from Knight to Knight, all the way to his home objective, I put up a good fight, but by the bottom of Battle Round 4 I had lost all of my dedicated Anti-Tank. Came close, but 73-77, Admech going first.
Importantly, at this point I was the highest-scoring 3-1 in the tournament, which meant two things: I had a very good shot of placing if I managed a 4-1, and unfortunately, my last match was likely against Knights again. This time, it was against Imperial Knights, running Canis, the utterly absurd Atrapos, and tons of Armigers. In spite of the fact that the Atrapos is a comically broken unit (Stop letting Forge World stuff place at tournaments, GW), I felt far better in this match-up than the previous. Armigers were units my army could consistently deal with, and especially with the use of my Data-Spike, the Dominus-led Fulgurite Death Star could take down one each turn if left to their own devices. That being said, the story of my Knight games this tournament was one of the failures inherent to Kataphrons; while the stepped deployment and burning objectives were good for me, the amount of d3 Armigers meant I couldn’t expose Kataphrons without being consistently picked up. Things were looking up, going first and jailing his entire midboard presence with a unit of Infiltrators was fantastic, and my opponent scored 0 Primary in both Battle Round 1 & 2. I was ahead, feeling great, and then…tragedy. My Fulgurite block missed an 8” re-rollable charge directly into his armigers. While not something unexpected, with a reroll this is just above a 70% chance. This, coupled with whiffing with one of my Disintegrators entirely (and some obscene Feel No Pains) meant I fell flat at the finish. I got picked up, and he managed to max non-burn Primary on Battle Rounds 3 & 4. 60-84, Admech going first.
So, my run ended 3-2, and frankly, I was crushed. Going 3-0 on day 1 with such profound Secondary scores just meant I needed to win one of these to place, and do so with what was admittedly a bit of a janky list. Knights just felt like even if I had played better, their defensive profiles weren’t substantially different from their pre-codex iterations, all at huge point cuts—these were armies that I didn’t think I could have beaten most of the time with this exact list. Still, I know I played well enough, and my blunders mostly came from being too cagey, and not overzealous, something I was keen to improve upon.
Between nerves, extremely delicious but overly oily pizza from the previous day, and not enough sleep though, I was content to have my GT end, and there’s no sense in complaining about a positive record. The good news, however, was that I managed to snag 2nd in Painting, and place as the highest 3-2 at the event, 7th overall. There’s room to improve here—both in how the list was built, and in my play, but more than anything I drastically overcorrected for the wrong meta.
The secret to this list and this event is that I actually managed to get in a full dozen practice games, with the sole intent of creating an Admech list that could body Death Guard. I expected up to a full third of the tournament to be Death Guard (or similar tough MEQs like Dark Angels), and the absolute best tool my army has against such a thing is in the form of Fulgurites. In my dozen games, 5 against Death Guard of varying detachment, I only dropped 3 games in scrims…my first against Death Guard, then to Chaos Knights, and to Imperial Knights. I knew going in that my Knight match-up wasn’t good, but to my horror not only were there only 5 Death Guard players, but also 4 Knight players. Hitting those DG matchups early felt fantastic, but it also ensured I wouldn’t be facing more of them as I played up the ladder, and going 3-0 ensured mathematically I’d run up against at least 1 Knight player on day 2. Truly, the game was rigged from the start.
Knights are very obviously on GW’s radar, and I learned afterwards that at Tacoma, CK/IK had respective 65/63% winrates excluding mirrors, which makes me feel a lot better about close games. All that being said, I still came away with the firm belief that I’d have played Data-Psalm again in a heartbeat, doubly so once the meta shifts away from Knights. What felt good about the list?
Via Reddit
For starters, Servitor Battleclade in Data-Psalm felt unbelievable. They slice, they dice, they do basically everything, and for one of the lowest costs of a non-Leader in our entire book. On the charge they’re often representing 29a/s5/-1/1, and for a CP that’s wounding MEQs on 2s. Similarly, the Temporcopia Fulgurites were insane here, and definitively the other core reason you’d choose to play DPC. This is a brutal Fights-First block for Heroic Intervention, and while they’re quite a bit less sturdy into small arms fire, they hit like Custodian Guard if positioned correctly, for less than half the points. Stratagem-wise, the only DPC ones used this event were Chant of the Remorseless Fist (+1 to Wound in melee), Verse of Vengeance (4+ Fight on Death), and Luminescent Blessing (4++ vs Shooting); that’s only half of the strats from the detachment, which isn’t great, but if we played this style of list in Halo Fulgurites go way down in value. I am of the belief you absolutely must use DPC to play Fulgurites well, and I want to do that.
What didn’t work? Well…Breachers. They’re slow and unreasonably fragile for their current points, and perhaps the only true overcosted unit that’s seeing play in Admech currently. Into Knights specifically there’s no chance for them to ever Rapid Fire, and the proliferation of D3 is a death sentence for them. Additionally, while I loved the 2x5 Corpuscarii in a boat, the final 5 felt supplementary at best, and I’d maybe think about shifting them out to try and fit in Skystalkers.
When the meta shifts, and as I continue to improve, you had better believe I’ll continue to play DPC competitively. It’s a punishing version of an army in a rough spot, and it takes a lot of reps to actually get good, but never before have I felt so rewarded by a 3-2 performance, especially given I conquered my clock issues this event!
All that being said, thank you so much for sticking with me on this ride! I hope to have at least 1 RTT in August, playing a similar list, and I strongly urge you to try it out! At the very least, it’s wonderful to have a spot for all these Battleclade I’ve so lovingly converted. I’d love to hear your thoughts on Admech currently, so check out the comments below!
