Ron Eliyahoo’s 8-0 Tyranids took the Warhammer Open Maastricht army lists crown with teammate Martijn Van der Most’s 7-1 Thousand Sons, one battle point behind on Table 1.
At the Warhammer Open Maastricht, one battle point separated the same Dutch team from the top table. No pressure, right?
Two Mannen van het Wapen teammates made it through the eight-round Swiss at GW’s first European Warhammer Open without getting paired into each other, then naturally had to settle it on Table 1. Ron’s Subterranean Assault Tyranids squeezed past Martijn’s Grand Coven Thousand Sons 78-77 in the final, which is about as razor-thin as it gets at a 280-player major.
Guillaume “Razorix” Buchkremer rounded out the podium in third at 7-1 with another Tyranids build, this time running Invasion Fleet with three Exocrines and two Tyrannofexes stacked behind those sweet rerolls.
T’au Empire also made the top eight, barely, with Kyle Grundy landing seventh. So, if you’re looking for the Warhammer 40k army lists from Maastricht that are actually worth putting under the hobby microscope, it’s the Subterranean Assault, Grand Coven, and Invasion Fleet, in that order.
Warhammer Open Maastricht: Top 8 Warhammer 40k Army Lists
Updated on April 30, 2026, by Rob Baer with the latest winning armies
- Subterranean Assault Tyranids ran the table at 8-0: Ron Eliyahoo’s deep-strike list bullied the field by +27 BP minimum until the final round.
- Grand Coven Thousand Sons took 2nd by a single battle point: Martijn Van der Most’s Magnus list ground out close wins all weekend before the final-round Table 1 matchup.
- Invasion Fleet Tyranids locked 3rd at 7-1 on five guns: Razorix’s three Exocrines and two Tyrannofexes only lost to Ron in the semifinal mirror.
- Mannen van het wapen produced both top finishers at GW HQ Europe: Ron and Martijn went 1-2 on completely different plans without pairing off.
- T’au Empire put one finisher in the top 8: Kyle Grundy at 7th, the faction’s quietest European GT showing of 2026.
Thanks to Best Coast Pairings, we can walk back through the entire event with real pairings and round data. Click this special promo link to save $20 on a year’s BCP subscription.
Ron Eliyahoo’s Subterranean Assault Tyranids Took the Crown With a Mid-Board Hammer
Ron’s winning Tyranids tournament list, “Sneaky snek snak on u,” is a Subterranean Assault deep-strike machine that isn’t trying to win the game by parking in the backfield and rolling buckets of shooting dice.
The army’s whole trick starts with the Trygon, which brings the Trygon Prime enhancement and the Subterranean Assault keyword to help sling characters into the midfield, where the real mess starts. Backing that up is a Neurotyrant Warlord, adding psychic damage right on top of whatever craziness the Trygon drops next to it.
Subterranean Assault Roster Breakdown
The army’s characters are built around three Tyranid Primes with Lash Whips at 65 points each, backed up by Old One Eye at 150 and a Maleceptor at 170 to help bully the midfield. The Primes slot into the Hormagaunt and Ravener bricks to keep those infantry threats nasty, while Old One Eye gives the list a proper melee counter-punch (and distraction.) The Maleceptor, meanwhile, does the classic brain-bug thing and handles the Psychic overload work.
The rest of the list’s board pressure comes from two ten-model Hormagaunt squads, Hyperadapted Raveners with the Prime keyword, and two five-model Ravener units arriving from reserves. A Tyrannofex with a Rupture cannon sits back and threatens big targets from the home field, while Zoanthropes with a Neurothrope bring the warp-blast support.
Finally, another Carnifex, Lictor, Neurolictor, and two Biovores round things out with the kind of secondary scoring and utility every Tyranid list loves to hide in the cracks.
How Subterranean Assault Won the Tournament
Ron went 8-0 with 723 battle points across eight rounds, and most of those games weren’t exactly nail-biters. Seven of them were blowouts, starting with a 97-67 win over Brian Lijs’s Chaos Daemons before Ron spent the next six rounds stacking up margins from +27 to +59 battle points.
The nastiest results came in round five, where he flattened Thomas Krebs’s Chaos Space Marines 99-29, and again in the semifinal at Table 1, where he won the Tyranid mirror 90-31 over Razorix. It was very much a “remove your models, please” kind of weekend.
The final was the only game that actually got a little sweaty because both Mannen van het wapen teammates came in undefeated. That’s because neither had been paired with the other until the bracket forced it, and Ron’s Subterranean Assault edged out Martijn’s Grand Coven Thousand Sons 78-77.
So the same deep-strike Tyranid list that had been bullying the field by at least 27 battle points all weekend finally got pushed to the limit. Overall, the Trygon and triple Tyranid Prime plan still held, but this time it needed every single point to pull it off.
Martijn Van der Most’s Grand Coven Thousand Sons Took 2nd by a Single Battle Point
Martijn’s Thousand Sons tournament list is basically a Grand Coven psychic-output machine with Magnus the Red sitting right at the center of it for 435 points with the nastiest psychic package a single character can bring to the table.
Backing him up is a winged Daemon Prince of Tzeentch with the Eldritch Vortex of E’Taph enhancement. That guy gives the list a second real melee bully alongside Magnus, so it’s not just throwing out mortal-wound nonsense from the backfield. Plus, it can actually crash into the board and make a mess up close, too.
Grand Coven Roster Breakdown
The army’s support package brings four Sorcerers to the table: three walking around at 80 points each, plus one in Terminator armor at 105 with the Umbralefic Crystal enhancement. Add in Magnus and the Daemon Prince, and you’ve got six independent psychic models in a Grand Coven detachment that’s very clearly built to squeeze every drop of value out of these guys.
For the scoring game, three ten-model Rubric Marine squads do the heavy lifting, each packing Soulreaper cannons and three Warpflamers. A ten-model Scarab Occult Terminator brick gives the army a tough central anchor, so Magnus and the Daemon Prince can bully the midfield without just handing over the middle objective.
Next, the Sekhetar Robots help patch up the mid-board and keep pressure where it needs to be, while a small Tzaangor Enlightened unit and two ten-model Tzaangor squads handle the less glamorous but very necessary screen, chaff, and objective-grabbing duties.
How Grand Coven Grinds Out Battle Points
Martijn finished 7-1 with 666 battle points, and his whole weekend was basically a masterclass in winning the tight ones.
He opened with a big 96-40 win over Luke Smedley’s Emperor’s Children, then followed it up by beating Steven Salazar’s T’au 86-63 in round two. That ended up being his only T’au matchup of the event, and Grand Coven handled it without much fuss.
The semifinal at Table 2 was where things got interesting as Martijn edged out OuX’s Imperial Knights 69-60 in a single-digit grinder, with the Scarab Occult Terminators locking down the middle while Magnus helped slam the door shut late.
That set up the final-round Table 1 showdown against Ron, and Martijn came about as close as you can get without taking the trophy home. Grand Coven held Subterranean Assault to a 78-77 finish, losing by one battle point in a 280-player event against the same army that had been smashing everyone else by 27 BP or more all weekend.
So while one point decided the title, Martijn still locked second place at GW’s first European Warhammer Open, which is a huge accomplishment. However, that final score is going to sting for a while.
Guillaume “Razorix” Buchkremer’s Invasion Fleet Tyranids Brought a Five-Gun Anti-Tank Plan
Razorix’s third-place Tyranids tournament list went in a totally different direction from Ron’s. Instead of going with the deep-strike pressure game plan, he brought Invasion Fleet, the reroll-stacking Tyranids detachment that makes the big guns way more reliable.
And this army brought guns.
Three Exocrines, gloriously named Fred, Georges, and Emile, team up with two Tyrannofexes named Riker and Picard to give the list five serious ranged platforms. Between Bio-plasmic Cannons and Rupture Cannons, the army has enough high-end shooting to pick apart key targets early and keep the pressure up all game. Best of all, with Invasion Fleet rerolls backing them up, those big shots are a lot less likely to whiff when it’s time to actually delete something.
Invasion Fleet Roster Breakdown
Razorix’s characters start with Hive Tyrant “Cynthia” at 210 points, packing the Perfectly Adapted enhancement. From there, it also added a Broodlord and Deathleaper to keep the character-hunting pressure rolling. Finally, a lone Tyranid Prime with Lash Whip rides with one of the Hormagaunt units, while Hyperadapted Raveners take the fast-threat role.
The infantry count is a bit lighter than Ron’s version, mostly because this army isn’t trying to win the midfield by drowning it in bodies. Three ten-model Hormagaunt squads handle screens, while ten Genestealers and five Raveners push the fast attack lane. Plus, a Neurolictor and Biovores round things out with secondary scoring utility.
The real work, though, comes from the shooting platforms. The Hormagaunts and Genestealers are really just there to gum up the board, protect the Exocrines and Tyrannofexes, and buy the firebase enough time to start grinding through whatever’s standing in front of it.
How The Invasion Fleet Cleaned the Field Until It Hit the Mirror
Razorix finished 7-1 with 669 battle points, and he only got tripped up against the player who went on to win the whole thing. Which is still a pretty clean weekend results-wise if you ask us.
He started hot with a 100-34 max win into Alex Werner-Oosterhout’s Dark Angels, which ended up being his highest score of the event. From there, he kept the pressure on, clearing 30-plus BP margins through the next four rounds. His big victory, though, was round five at Table 2, where he beat Dick van der Harst’s T’au 80-65 in a proper gunline mirror.
The semifinal against Ron is where the final standings really took shape. Subterranean Assault’s deep strike into Invasion Fleet shooting is about as ugly as it gets for the firebase list. Ron’s Trygon and Tyranid Primes were in Razorix’s gunline before the second shooting phase could do any real damage, and the game got away fast, ending 90-31 for Ron.
Razorix still bounced back in round eight, taking an 84-60 win over OuX’s Imperial Knights. That recovery game locked him into third place, just below Martijn.
Final Thoughts on the Warhammer Open Maastricht Army Lists & the Warhammer 40k Meta
So what’s new in the Warhammer 40k meta this week? Well, the two Tyranid army lists in the top 3 were playing completely different detachments, and both were winning. Which is kind of wild because Tyranids overall are normally an attrition-melee army, but Maastricht produced both a deep-strike champion and a five-gun firebase from the same codex in the same weekend.
The other story is what *didn’t* happen at Maastricht. T’au put one finisher in the top 8 at GW’s first European Warhammer Open of 2026, and the rest of the cut was Thousand Sons, Imperial Knights, Space Marines, Astra Militarum, Emperor’s Children, and the two Tyranid lists.
Compared to the Tennessee Open’s four-of-eight T’au showing two weeks earlier, Europe’s meta isn’t running the same way, and Tyranids and Thousand Sons are the top Warhammer 40k army lists that lined up well against whatever the European meta actually fields right now.
So if you’re list-building for the next tournament on your calendar, the takeaway is that Tyranids are viable with either detachment. Plus, the Mannen van het wapen 1-2 finish at the inaugural Maastricht Open is a big reminder that team practice and shared list theory beat random GT preparation.
Ron and Martijn proved it on the same weekend by going through every other faction at the event on their way to the top.
See the Top Warhammer Army Lists Meta & 40k Tournament Schedule for This Year
🔗 Related Reads:
- How to Play Tyranids in 40k
- How to Play Thousand Sons in 40k
- How to Play T’au in 40k
- More Top Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- 40k Tournament Guide
- Latest 40k Balance Dataslate
- Munitorum Field Manual Points Updates
What do you think about the Warhammer Open Maastricht army lists and the Mannen van het wapen 1-2 finish over a quiet T’au cut?
