Hey everyone, Jason here to do a quick review of the SoCal Open from a player that dropped out before the first round.
What was to become my glorious return to the world of competitive Warhammer 40,000 events turned into a disappointing drop out before the first game was even played. Unfortunately for me, the week I was going to focus on getting the rest of my army put together and given the ol’ three color minimum was also the week I got down with the sickness, and found myself only having enough energy to go to work and sleep under heavy medication. Fortunately, I live locally in San Diego so despite not being able to actually participate in the tournament I was able to come and hang out and watch the games over the weekend. First and foremost a big congratulations to the winner, Ork player Ben Jurek, with his cool looking Goff list. While Ben is certainly no stranger to the winners circle, it was still surprising to see the Orks win it all in a field of absolute killer Tyranid and Necron lists. He won with an impressive 6 total wins with 568 battle points, an average of 95 points scored per game. A testament to the power of knowing what secondary objectives to choose when looking at the mission and your opponent.
Here are some of the other observations I had observing the tournament over the weekend.
- Tyranids are REALLY tough to beat. I know I know this probably elicited some eye rolls from the readers but I honestly am coming in late to this edition in terms of competitive play and seeing how many Tyranid lists were on the tables (around 13% of the total field) and how many placed in the top 20 (30%) was definitely eye opening. A couple of the tricks I observed made me do a double take, the power of the Zoanthrope smites, the Winged Hive Tyrant now you see me now you don’t shenanigans. Warriors… It was a lot and now seeing them in action I understood the abundance of Tyranid lists on the tabletop.
- Blood Angels are the top Space Marines, well at least a single build. The top 10 saw two Blood Angel lists, both with similar ideas, that is, multiple units of kitted out Death Company with Jump Packs and Sanguinary Guard. The ability to move up the board quickly, use the terrain to stay out of LOS, and hit like a Mack truck is now more important than ever in a 9th edition that’s come off the rails in terms of shooting offensive output. Throw in a couple key aura characters, a Sanguinary Priest with a Jump Pack, some Inflitrators and baby you got yourself a stew. I only saw a handful of other Space Marine chapters represented on the tabletop.
- Still Immensely Popular, Less Variety in Lists. Something that I couldn’t help but notice was the lack of variety with the lists I saw. This may be because we are now 3 years into the 9th edition and unlike the beginning where we saw huge list variety between the same factions, players have now had all the time they need to recognize what works and what doesn’t within the codices. A great thing to know about this event is that with 180 players signed up to roll dice, around 175 players showed up to play the first day. Tournaments typically see at least a 10% no show amount if not more. While this edition has a LOT of issues in its current iteration, the amount of people coming out to play in the events seem to be as healthy as ever.
- Have You Seen Me? Where are these Armies? It was also hard to not notice a distinct lack of certain factions at the tournament. As far as I could tell there was only a since Mechanicus list present, which is sad to see in such a large event. I saw maybe one or two other Space Marine factions represented other than Blood Angels, a couple of Black Templar and Space Wolves lists as well. Drukhari and Aeldari (non-Harlequins) were also lacking representation which is a complete change from just a year ago. In THIS sense, it’s obvious to me that the competitive scene has hit stagnation, which is typical for this period of time in an edition.
So what does the future hold for competitive 9th edition Warhammer 40,000? Well we still have two future codex releases this year, the Astra Militarum and the World Eaters. Knowing Games Workshop’s sales strategy these two codices should hit the scene like a rocket, at least for a month or so, before the rules team comes in to nerf whatever OP ridiculousness draws the most vocal outrage. Leagues of Votann will see their codex as well as the rest of the product line released in a couple of weeks, and seeing as how the two post-nerf Votann players at the SoCal Open did fairly well with only like three available units, we should see more of these armies domination in the near future. With 10 edition all but a sure thing this summer it will be an interesting 7 months to see how the community ends the troubled edition.
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