While I have written quite a lot about Warhammer 40k, it has been a bit of time since I approached the game from a truly competitive angle. I did grind tournaments in 7th, and even did decently at Adepticon one year with Chaos Space Marines, but at the launch of 8th Edition I jumped ship entirely for Age of Sigmar. I once again took to tournaments, playing Beasts of Chaos and running my college’s Warhammer club, but as luck would have it, the sunsetting of Beasts in 4th Edition AoS has once again pushed me to 40k, and so the cycle goes. In spite of this, I have been absolutely adoring my foray back into the 41st millennium, and Admech has been an incredibly rewarding army to learn, getting back into the swing of things with droves and droves of infantry. I have my first RTT of the season this coming weekend, and I’ve been practicing loads with members of Rhode Island’s competitive community, so let’s get down to brass tacks and talk about my road to playing at a Grand Tournament.
For starters, let’s talk about the playing field: This RTT is going to be using Games Workshop terrain setups, with a 2 hour 45 minute round time. With 3 rounds, that means game pace is going to be quite quick, and with the setup, there should be ample lanes for shooting with non-infantry bodies. For that reason, I’ve decided to bring a list that commits to the full 3 Skorpius Disintegrators, and takes as many repeated units as is reasonable. Minimizing the difference in rolls is critical, and I should be able to set aside different ‘pockets’ of dice (sometimes literally) to fastroll an entire squad’s attacks. This is a strategy originally recommended to me by some friends in the Admech Discord, so huge shoutout there.
In my practice, I’ve focused more on noting when I’ve made a bad play, and writing down how to correct it going forward; given I’m still somewhat rusty, compared to a few years ago, while my gut game sense is solid the minutia is where things can fall apart. With that in mind, playing with the same list, one I’m fairly comfortable with, for a ton of reps was my solution.
Those reps have been some at my local Warhammer store, and some online, with my aim to familiarize myself with the layouts, secondaries, etc as the baseline. Beyond that, I wanted to practice doing things my list can that weren’t available to others—to isolate the ‘difference makers’ that provided me with advantages over a more standard army.
To that end, I’ve settled on the below list, 99% of the time starting my Manipulus+Vanguard unit in strategic reserve, and the Skystalkers in Deep Strike. The benefit of the Manipulus unit starting in Reserve is that I can both flex a Battleline unit wherever I need it on turn 2, often to provide the necessary AP boost for Conqueror Doctrina to Ruststalkers, and that I can make use of the 1-2 punch of popping them out and spending 1cp on Targeting Override, granting Lethal Hits on 5+. Moreover, because the Manipulus himself is a melee threat, I can threaten things like Rapid Ingress or Overwatch via his Torrent weapon, and mostly just count the extra Vanguard as ablative wounds. It is this package, of Vanguard without their Arquebus + an Inloaded Lethality Manipulus, that puts this list above other options in my eyes.
That said, I still needed to get reps in, and thanks to some local players and online scrimmaging, I’ve gotten in half a dozen games with this list, prior to the nerf of More Dakka. I’ve gone up against double C’tan, Aspect Host, Deathwing, and more, at an overall 5-1, only dropping a close game against Ynnari. Into exactly Ynnari I’ve thought about bringing Pteraxii Sterylizors, but given the rest of the list has such an easy time into infantry I thought it to be redundant. That’s the thing: Between 50 total Skitarii, 6 Skorpius hulls, and utility pieces like Infiltrators, my army puts out an ungodly amount of S4/Anti-Infantry 4+ shots. Just as long as I have things to handle the tougher units, I have a hunch few forces can weather the onslaught of T3 killing firepower. With that in mind, let’s talk about Ruststalkers.
Ruststalkers are a unit I’m comfortable taking 20 of in every Haloscreed list I build, and I’ve even considered the full 30 at times. Precision & Devastating Wounds just pairs so nicely into nearly any foe, and with the assistance of Eradication Protocols, they not only get to Advance & Charge with a +2” bonus to each, but also reroll 1s to both hit and wound. They’re a trading missile, and I aim to put the hurt on anyone who disrespects them.
In a similar vein, you’ll see that I’m also taking Belisarius Cawl, who until the point drop to 135 was only okay. The recent changes to the pricing of these melee-centric units has allowed Halo to carve out its own niche of sorts amidst the fields of Skitarii Hunter Cohort, and Cawl is representative of everything right about recent balance touch-ups to Admech. At 135, he’s a beefy T8 10 wound Monster with reasonable regen and a terminator save, but unlike so many lists, I’m not actually using him for his Battleline buff (for the first couple of turns, anyway). Instead, by ‘eating my vegetables’ and taking 50 Skitarii anyway, I can have Cawl start in his Reroll 1s mode, not only making my Skorpius Disintegrators far less inconsistent, but also pushing up the board alongside Rustalkers. He roughly matches their pace, and if I have a flank where I can’t fit my Manipulus Vanguard, he can instead be the Battleline, in those scenarios. Freeing him up to make Admech Anti-Tank actually scary though, is the main goal, and the army feels all the better for it.
All in all, I’m extremely excited to get my feet wet once more with competitive 40k, and this represents the first of hopefully many tournaments to come, as I prepare to take on a Grand Tournament once more. It’s been a long road to get my Admech all painted & ready, but I’ve got so many more to work on in the meantime, which hopefully I can make even more gorgeous now that I have a competent 2000pt list fully painted! I can’t wait to see how well I can perform, and hopefully how well Admech is able to do on the whole once we receive the new Typhon Battleclade, which should have additional information out soon.
Via Games Workshop
With that, we’re now waiting to see what changes are to come in the End-of-October Dataslate! What factions do you want to see receive a boost? Is there a detachment that might become good with the right changes? I’d love to hear what you’ve been brewing in the comments below!
