This was my first ever RTT and I had a lot of fun. My goal going into the day was to win one of my three games. My list is below:

Emperor's Wisdom (1995 points)

CHARACTERS

Brother-Captain (105 points)• 1x Nemesis force weapon1x Psycannon• Enhancement: Inescapable Wrath

Brotherhood Librarian (100 points)• 1x Nemesis force weapon1x Purge Soul

Grand Master in Nemesis Dreadknight (230 points)• 1x Heavy incinerator1x Heavy psycannon1x Nemesis daemon greathammer• Enhancement: Sigil of Exigence

Kaldor Draigo (125 points)• Warlord• 1x Scourging1x Storm bolter1x The Titansword

BATTLELINE

Brotherhood Terminator Squad (420 points)• 1x Terminator Justicar• 1x Nemesis force weapon1x Storm bolter• 9x Brotherhood Terminator• 1x Ancient’s Banner1x Narthecium9x Nemesis force weapon2x Psycannon6x Storm bolter

Brotherhood Terminator Squad (210 points)• 1x Terminator Justicar• 1x Nemesis force weapon1x Storm bolter• 4x Brotherhood Terminator• 1x Ancient’s Banner1x Narthecium4x Nemesis force weapon1x Psycannon2x Storm bolter

OTHER DATASHEETS

Nemesis Dreadknight (185 points)• 1x Heavy incinerator1x Heavy psycannon1x Nemesis daemon greathammer

Paladin Squad (450 points)• 1x Paragon• 1x Nemesis force weapon1x Storm bolter• 8x Paladin• 8x Nemesis force weapon4x Psycannon4x Storm bolter• 1x Paladin Ancient• 1x Ancient’s Banner1x Nemesis force weapon1x Psycannon

ALLIED UNITS

Callidus Assassin (90 points)• 1x Neural shredder1x Phase sword and poison blades

Vindicare Assassin (80 points)• 1x Exitus pistol1x Exitus rifle1x Vindicare combat knife

I personally like Dreadknights, baby carrier and all, and my local meta is vehicle-heavy, so I wanted more anti-tank, hence both the GMNDK and regular NDK. I also like the big threat range of the NDK with its advance-shoot-charge ability paired with the 6" auto-advance detachment rule. Callidus for action monkeying, Draigo with his Terminators in reserve for a turn 2 drop and charge, a Paladin brick with a Brother Captain for sustain shooting/melee and holding primary, Librarian 5-man for more actions and dropping mortals on people with the datasheet smite. The GMNDK has Sigil of Exigence so I can commit it aggressively, but still pick it up and teleport away when something scary shoots it, and since that happens on the enemy turn after their movement is done it's kind of like a rapid ingress that way too, helping get around the fact that it can't advance and charge.

In my local meta I play into a lot of Tau and Necrons, so I was excited to get to fight something new. So naturally I got paired into two Tau lists and a Necrons list. Woo!

Game 1

My opponent in this game went on to win the whole RTT, and he deserved it. His list was classic competitive Tau, with two crisis suit bricks with Coldstars, two units of two Tetras, Shadowsun, Aun'va, a Ghostkeel, a Devilfish with Breachers in it, and then a lot of trash for screening. We were playing Scorched Earth.

I made the classic mistake of underestimating a crisis brick's shooting, even before Kauyon turns on. I went on the offensive too early and lost the Paladin brick on turn one. Draigo dropped into the center and killed the Ghostkeel turn two, but didn't survive the clap-back. As it turns out, when every single spotter in a Tau list has the Markerlight keyword, even Truesilver Armor does not keep you alive when you have to make thirty or more 3 2-damage saves in a turn. The Crisis suits did blow themselves up a fair amount, but not outside expected value.

I was able to score my secondaries pretty well despite absolutely top-tier screening by my opponent, but by the time I could get anything onto his home objective, it was turn 5, too late to burn it, and he had been able to sit his bricks in the middle and max primary.

The MVPs of this game were definitely my Vindicare and Librarian. The Vindicare shot the heads clean off both Coldstar crisis suits with some lucky rolls, and the Librarian dunked both Shadowsun and Aun'va with his datasheet smite, as well as putting down the one random broadside that was screening the bottom-left corner, allowing me to get some points off of behind enemy lines. The two Dreadknights were threatening, but didn't do all that much this game.

Loss 59-93

Game 2

Another Tau list, though this one had only one Crisis brick, and had a lot of points tied up in a Stormsurge and a Riptide. There was also a Devilfish with breachers, a Ghostkeel, a Skyray, two Piranhas, some random Stealth suits, a couple lone-op snipers, and Shadowsun. We were playing Vital Ground.

I learned from my first game and respected the power of the brick. I got bottom of turn again, which was nice, but I held back and mostly hid turn one, taking small potshots but otherwise just doing what secondaries I could. I did, however, get another Vindicare shot at the brick's Coldstar, and a shieldbreaker round blew its head off, denying the unit its 2" move, 6" auto-advance and assault, and turn 2 Kauyon. That was three Coldstar one-shot kills in a day. The Vindicare is insane.

Turn 2 my opponent moved some more stuff up into the center, including the Ghostkeel. I pulled overwhelming force and area denial, so I decided to make the big Draigo play, almost identical to the last game, doing the deep strike 3" charge and dropping the Ghostkeel off the center. The GMNDK and NDK moved up the bottom of the board, cleaning up the Devilfish and killing a few of the breachers that popped out.

The turn 3 clap-back picked up Draigo's unit and left him on a single wound, but deciding not to Mists them away was important because my opponent also drew area denial that turn, and he had to commit basically his entire army to kill them off the center as well as a bunch of CP, so in the final analysis it was a good trade. He charged the Skyray into Draigo to try to kill him, but had no CP for tank shock, and Tau melee is... not good. So Draigo took a huge chunk out of it in the return fight. He also shot my GMNDK with the giant 12-damage gun on the Stormsurge, and I failed the first 4 , so I spent the CP for my one and only command re-roll of the day and lived. I had told myself going into the day that I would resist the siren call of the re-roll on things that were not Draigo's charge, but this meant the GMNDK lived, so I felt it was a good use of the CP. This would get borne out almost immediately.

My turn 3, I paid the CP to put my Paladins in the Tau deployment zone 3.1" away from enemy units to set up for a play on turn 4 for their home objective. I put all the guns I could into the Stormsurge, as well as the Librarian's smite, then charged the GMNDK, the boy-who-lived, into it. I spiked 9 mortals on that tank shock, then went hard in melee with the full rerolls. My opponent failed three of his four 4 saves and the GMNDK killed it. He remarked he had never seen a Stormsurge go down in a single round, so that felt good. Draigo killed the Skyray in melee, but it exploded, taking him with it. What an absolute legend, going out in a blaze of glory.

The rest of the game was spent battling over one another's home objectives, with him strike-and-fading his Crisis suits onto mine and killing the Vindicare, while I charged my Paladins into the Riptide and killing it. My big misplay was not just spending the CP in turn 5 for insane bravery on the Paladins, because of course they failed their battleshock test and cost me 6 primary points. Overall, hell of a game and I played much better than game 1, but only having to contend with one brick of Crisis suits and no Tetras giving full rerolls was also far more manageable.

Win 77-56

Game 3

Last game of the day, and I was paired into the necrons player. He had two 20-man warrior bricks with all the characters and crypto-thralls and stuff, two canoptic doomstalkers, a canoptic reanimator, a ghost ark, the lone-op character with the aura of 1 to your AP/-1 to your opponent's AP, two Hexmark Destroyers, and the Transcendent C'tan. We were playing Scorched Earth (again).

This game I got top of turn, which I didn't love. My secondaries turn 1 were assassinate and bring it down, and all of his characters and vehicles were behind obscuring terrain. So I shrugged, came to peace with the fact that I was not going to get any points turn 1, and did nothing but move my NDK up 14" to just barely touch the edge of the center-left no man's land objective for primary on turn 2.

He moved his bricks up, nailing a 6" advance for the center objective but only getting a 3" advance on center-right and thus critically coming up short of actually landing on it. He expertly strung the warriors out such that the tail end of the unit stretched far back through the ruins to be within the 6" aura from the warlord, the Ghost Ark healing aura, and the Canoptic Reanimator aura, which I had never seen before but immediately recognized as very powerful. Of course, there wasn't a ton I could actually do about it.

Turn 2 I decided to commit Draigo to the center right objective, coming in from deep strike and getting off the charge into the 20-man brick. I did absolutely nothing to them after reanimation, but critically I kept them off the point and tied them up in the next turn. On the left side I moved the GMNDK and NDK up, taking some shots into the Canoptic Doomstalkers, and paid the CP to put my Paladins 3.1" away from one of the Hexmarks to get deploy teleport homers. In hindsight I should have just used the Librarian squad for that, but I wanted them to put mortals on the C'tan, which they did.

His turn 2 was pretty uneventful; Draigo's brick kept the warriors off the center-right objective, not budging an inch. The C'tan charged into them and did nothing. The Doomstalkers took shots at my NDKs, but they made their 4 s. The Hexmarks shot at some stuff, but damage 1 guns just don't do a ton to terminator bricks. Critically, he moved the Ghost Ark a little more behind obscuring terrain, leaving the edge of its hull on his home objective, but there was a 3.1"-sized hole as a result.

My turn 3 I really started working the body, as they say. I paid the CP to put the Librarian and his 5-man into that hole on the Necron home objective. They lost one man to Doomstalker overwatch but were able to set up for a burn. Between the two NDKs and the Librarian's smite, I picked up both Doomstalkers. At this point it was about 9:30 at night and my opponent was getting very tired and no longer having fun, and he asked to call it. I immediately agreed, because if you're not having fun, what's the point? We didn't bother doing a full talk-it-out, so we just eyeballed the scores and agreed to 50-40.

Win 50-40

Because I didn't play the entire third game out, I took 3rd overall with a tiebreaker on points, since there were 3 people with 2-1 records and one of them scored about 3 points better than me in total. If we were going by strength of schedule I probably would still take 3rd, but I don't actually know how SoS works all that well because I'm not a TO, so who knows? The difference between 2nd and 3rd is about $20 in store credit, so I'm not fussed about it.

The Big Takeaways

The Librarian and the Vindicare did absolutely bloody work. I have two more Librarians sitting unassembled in my basement, so I'm going to get one more Terminator box and run 3 5-mans with 3 Librarians for my next RTT. The Vindicare is getting some Grey Knight purity seals glued to his chest as medals for one-shotting 3 Coldstar Commanders in a day.

Draigo the 10-man Terminator brick is an absolutely key unit. The 6" charge out of deep strike is a huge threat and was 100% critical in both games 2 and 3.

The 10-man Paladin brick, despite the -1 to wound and the 6 psycannons, just doesn't do enough for its points and the awkwardness of finding someplace to drop 11 40mm bodies. The NDK just doesn't do enough for its points, either, despite the awesome 14" advance shoot and charge. The nemesis demonhammer is just too inaccurate in melee without rerolls. It and the Paladins are what's getting dropped for 2 more Librarians 5-mans.

The GMNDK could perhaps stand to go down a liiiiiiittle bit in points, but he killed an entire Stormsurge in one turn with minimal help. In another game I played against a friend he put 19 wounds on a big knight in one turn. 10th is still very vehicle-heavy so he stays in the list, 100%.

The Callidus never did anything that cool, but she also picked up secondaries or stood on no-man's-land objectives or both like nobody's business. She stays, too.

Overall, I don't think Grey Knights are a top-tier army like crisis bricks Tau, CSM, or Eldar, but the skill ceiling is so high that I have a lot of climbing still to do to reach it, and I'm really excited for that!

I hope you all enjoyed this report! Happy Halloween and stay safe!