Jack Murphy’s 6-0 Astra Militarum Army List ran the Maryland Open army lists table over two Pactbound Zealots Chaos Space Marines podiums.
That’s an impressive feat, especially when half the rest of the top 10 were T’au Empire trying (and failing) to get past the same armies.
Jack Murphy’s Recon Element guard list dropped exactly one round under 80 all weekend and closed with a max-score 100 on the top table. Joshua Campbell’s Chaos Space Marines list took 2nd at 6-0 by winning the round-four CSM mirror match against Tyler Principio’s near-identical Pactbound build, which is what dropped Tyler to bronze.
So yeah, T’au showed up loud (4th, 5th, 9th, 11th), but they were notably absent from the top 3. So now the Maryland Open army lists worth dissecting right now are an infantry tide that scores through the body count, and a pair of Chaos lists that prove the Abaddon + double Defiler package is locked in until someone proves otherwise.
Maryland Open: Top 3 Warhammer 40k Army Lists
Updated on May 20, 2026, by Rob Baer with the latest winning armies
- Astra Militarum Recon Element infantry tide ran the Maryland Open table at 6-0: Jack Murphy’s list never lost a round, with only a 67-65 grinder against Necrons threatening the run.
- Pactbound Zealots Chaos Space Marines locked down 2nd and 3rd on the same Abaddon engine: Joshua Campbell beat Tyler Principio 85-60 in the round-four CSM mirror that decided silver and bronze.
- T’au Empire was loud in the top cut but never cracked the podium: Leah Snider 4th, Brian Zhu 5th, Joseph Sault 9th, Gregory Hunter 11th, four finishers and zero medals.
Use these winning armies to sharpen your own lists alongside the latest balance dataslate updates and points changes.
Thanks to Best Coast Pairings, we can walk back through the whole event with real pairings and battle point data. Click this special promo link to save $20 on a year’s BCP subscription. And if you want to take your game to the next level, consider applying to Team USA to compete at the Warhammer World Team Championships.
Jack Murphy’s Recon Element Astra Militarum Recon Element Army List Won With a Wall of Warm Bodies
Murphy’s winning Astra Militarum tournament list is named “The meat grinder,” and it’s hard to argue with the branding. This is a Recon Element infantry tide that’s perfectly fine watching guardsmen die on objectives, because there’s always another 20-model brick waiting to step into the gap.
First up, the characters are doing the leadership and re-roll work, not the heavy lifting. Two Cadian Castellans (one of them the Warlord), three full Cadian Command Squads loaded with plasma guns and master voxes, a Commissar, Ursula Creed, and Gaunt’s Ghosts give the army a deep bench of order-issuing, plasma-toting babysitters. Three Ogryn Bodyguards also ride along to soak up the precision shots that would otherwise pick those characters off.
The backbone of this list is the battleline. Three twenty-model bricks of Cadian Shock Troops, a twenty-model Catachan Jungle Fighters squad with four flamers, a twenty-model Death Korps of Krieg brick, and four ten-model Krieg squads. That’s something like 130 bodies of scoring infantry, all of them packing plasma guns, meltaguns, and medi-packs to keep the bricks recovering wounds while they walk forward.
Attilan Rough Riders in two units, three squads of Krieg Combat Engineers with flamers and remote mines, a Ratlings sniper team, and a single Scout Sentinel round it out for mobility, secondary scoring, and the only real anti-tank in the list. That’s almost zero vehicles in this list; it’s all pure “warm body” scoring, leaning on Recon Element’s movement tricks to keep the bricks in the right place every turn.
How Recon Element Wins the Scoring Race
Murphy finished 6-0 with 547 battle points, but the run wasn’t all max-scores. Round four against Max Berlove’s Necrons came down to a 67-65 grinder that nearly cost him the entire weekend.
Those close calls are where this kind of Guard list can inch out wins. It doesn’t panic when the opponent finally lands a real turn-three punch, because losing a twenty-model brick still leaves you with two more other ones on objectives. Murphy climbed from table 27 all the way to the top table, beat T’au in round three, survived the Necron scare in round four, then closed with a 100 on the final round against Gregory Hunter’s T’au. His Recon Element infantry tide outscored every other faction in the room.
Joshua Campbell’s Pactbound Zealots Chaos Won the Mirror That Mattered
Campbell’s, the runner-up Chaos Space Marines tournament list runs a character-heavy top end with Abaddon the Despoiler as Warlord, plus Vashtorr the Arkifane, Huron Blackheart, Cypher, and a Traitor Enforcer with the Mark of Nurgle. That’s five named or specialist characters, all bringing their own aura, stratagem, or psychic abilities into the same army.
The heavy-gun backbone is two Defilers, both marked Nurgle, doing exactly what Defilers have been doing all year: holding the backfield, lobbing battle cannon shots, and being miserable to remove. Around them, three Cultist Mobs and two units of Chaos Bikers handle screening and objective work, with two Chaos Rhinos for transport.
Fights in the mid-board are where this list wins big. Masters of the Maelstrom, a Red Corsairs Raiders unit with a meltagun and power fist, and a Chosen unit with a plasma pistol champ. That’s a chunk of hard-hitting infantry designed to trade up against priority targets while the Defilers do work and the cultist screens hold scoring lanes.
Why the CSM Mirror Match Decided the Podium
Campbell finished 6-0 with 522 battle points, but the only match that seemed to matter was round four. Both Chaos lists met at Table 3 with 3-0 records, both running essentially the same lists, and Joshua took it 85-60.
From there, that game decided the whole podium. Campbell had a survival game in round two against Christopher Smith’s GK list (69-60), which made his points for tie-breakers look close, but the mirror-match win in round four is what sent him to silver instead of bronze. He closed the weekend on top table against Leah Snider’s T’au, which is the second time a Pactbound Zealots Chaos list answered a T’au game when it was all on the line.
Tyler Principio’s “Back to Basics” Chaos Ran the Same Engine With a Leaner Bar
If Campbell’s list was the maximalist version of the Pactbound Zealots podium build, Principio’s third-place Chaos Space Marines army list is the minimalist version of the same idea. All the same Characters, Defilers, Chosen, and the new Red Corsair units are all here, but with a different supporting cast.
More specifically, Principio swapped out Vashtorr, Huron, the Traitor Enforcer, a second Rhino, and a couple of cultist mobs and bikers. In their place was a Dark Commune, a Sorcerer in Terminator Armor, a ten-model Accursed Cultists brick with six Torments, a Legionaries squad with a lascannon and Chaos Icon, and a Helbrute kitted with heavy flamer, fist, and hammer.
The trade-off lets Campbell’s list spread more aura and stratagem characters around the table, but Principio’s list packs more melee bricks and a Helbrute into the points he saved cutting the character bar.
How a Leaner Character Bar Out-Scored Three Other Top-10 Factions
Principio finished 5-1 at 475 battle points, and the only loss was the round-four mirror against Campbell. Outside of that game, this list max-scored twice (a 100 in round two against Emperor’s Children, another 100 in round five against Thousand Sons) and ground out an 82-52 closer against Mark Hertel’s Deathwatch.
The strangest match of Principio’s weekend was round one, with a 44-33 win over David Anderson’s Space Marines, where neither army put up much on the board. From that weird start, the list bounced back to drop three different scoring lines over 80 and put real distance on the rest of the field. The Helbrute and Accursed Cultists brick gave it a melee answer the other CSM list didn’t quite carry, but the shorter character bar is what got out-traded in the mirror match.
Final Thoughts on the Maryland Open Army Lists & the Warhammer 40k Meta
So what are the big Maryland Open Warhammer 40k meta takeaways? First, the Pactbound Zealots Abaddon + double Defiler + Masters of the Maelstrom + Red Corsairs Raiders + Chosen package is the premier Chaos build until someone else proves otherwise. Two finishers on the podium running the exact same five datasheets in the same shape isn’t a coincidence, it’s the strategy that clearly worked!
Second, the Recon Element guard with 130-plus bodies on the table answered that Chaos package, because no amount of Defiler shooting clears a 20-model brick that’s already shooting back with plasma and meltaguns.
Sure, T’au will keep showing up in top cuts because Hammerheads and Stormsurges still do their job, but the Maryland Open just told the field what is working well and what might have a good shot at beating it too. The next question is whether the Pactbound engine holds up at the next major, or whether somebody finally finds a list with enough flamers and enough bodies to do to Chaos what Murphy did to T’au.
🔗 Related Reads:
- Top Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- More Top Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- 40k Tournament Guide
- Warhammer 40k Factions Guide
- Latest 40k Balance Dataslate
- Munitorum Field Manual Points Updates
What do you think of the Maryland Open army lists and the Pactbound Zealots double-podium showing?
