A Hallowed Martyrs army list went 3-0 to win the Fabricator’s Forge RTT in a Sticky Objectives podium sweep over Chaos Marines and Knights.
Three players from Sticky Objectives showed up to the May RTT at Fabricator’s Forge in Coraopolis, PA, and three Sticky Objectives players walked out with the entire podium. Erik Stratigos’s Hallowed Martyrs Sisters of Battle army list took 1st clean at 3-0, while Ben Shannon’s Creations of Bile Chaos Space Marines list locked 2nd at 2-0-1, and Cat Williams’s five-Knight Questoris Companions Imperial Knights list rounded out 3rd, also at 2-0-1.
But, honestly, no single list tells this story here. Sure, they were on the same team, but each had three completely different factions and plans. One wins by losing models, the other by sticking a Chosen brick in the opponent’s lap, and the last wins by walking five Knights down the middle.
What ties them together is preparation, not a hot army list from a podcast. When a single team puts three completely different armies in the top three of a 14-player ITC event, that’s showing all the local reps against each other.
Fabricator’s Forge RTT: Top 3 Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- Sticky Objectives put three players on the podium with three different factions: Sororitas, Chaos Marines, and Imperial Knights, all wearing the same team patch.
- Hallowed Martyrs is still winning the late-game damage race in the format: Two and a half weeks after the Tennessee Open, a different list took the same detachment to a clean record.
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 competitive 40k at the international level, consider applying to Team USA to compete at the Warhammer World Team Championships.
Erik Stratigos’s Hallowed Martyrs Army List Took 1st With Pure Attrition
Stratigos’s winning Adepta Sororitas tournament list is a Hallowed Martyrs build that’s happy to lose models on objectives and keep scoring while it does. Morvenn Vahl anchors three Paragon Warsuits kitted with multi-meltas and Paragon war maces, which is the list’s big hammer and big gun rolled into one unit. If you’re playing Sisters at a 3-round RTT, you just don’t leave Vahl at home right now.
Saint Celestine and her two Geminae, the Triumph of Saint Katherine, Junith Eruita on a Twin Heavy Flamer, two Canonesses (one with the Null Rod and Saintly Example, the other on Through Suffering Strength leading the Zephyrim), and a Hospitaller stack overlapping buffs and saves across the midfield.
The infantry doing the actual dying is where Hallowed Martyrs pays you back. Two ten-model Celestian Sacresant bricks with Inferno Pistols and Spears of the Faithful, plus a four-melta Dominion Squad in an Immolator, all want to die slowly on the points he needs. Two five-model multi-melta Retributor Squads sit back and delete whatever armor the Paragons can’t reach first, and a Sororitas Rhino runs taxi service for whoever needs the body up the board.
How a Hallowed Martyrs Army List Wins the Damage Race
Stratigos went 3-0 and never had a close game. The battle-point line climbed every round (68, then 93, then 95), and the T’au game in Round 2, the one most Sisters players come into the day worried about, closed at 26 points up.
A list that gets meaner as casualties pile in doesn’t blink when an opponent finally lands a turn three hit, and that’s the difference between Stratigos’s 3-0 and a mid-table day at the Forge.
Ben Shannon’s Creations of Bile Chaos Space Marines Took 2nd With a Buffed Chosen Brick
Shannon’s runner-up Chaos Space Marines tournament list is a Creations of Bile build with 18 units! The list’s hammer is a ten-model Chosen squad running five Accursed weapons, three Plasma Pistols, four Combi-weapons, two pairs of Paired Accursed Weapons, two Power Fists, and a Chaos icon. That’s the unit that wins the army its games.
Around the Chosen sit a Chaos Lord with the Prime Test Subject enhancement, Huron Blackheart on his Tyrant’s Claw, Cypher, a Traitor Enforcer with an Ogryn babysitter, and a five-character Masters of the Maelstrom unit. Any of them can ride in the APC or attach to a different unit, which means Shannon can play a fresh attachment puzzle every game, and the opponent never quite knows where the next problem is coming from.
The rest of the army is the ferry service and the screen. Two ten-model Legionary squads and a ten-model Cultist Mob hold home and middle, four Chaos Rhinos move the Chosen and Legionaries up turn one, Mutilators teleport in, a Nemesis Claw five-man infiltrates, Noise Marines park on the closest objective, and Obliterators handle heavy targets at range.
How Creations of Bile Turn a Chosen Brick Into the Center of the Army
Shannon’s 2-0-1 record means they technically didn’t lose. The one blemish on it is a Round 3 80-80 draw against teammate Cat Williams. The other two wins were big: 86-36 over Death Guard in Round 1, and 92-48 over another Chaos Marines list in Round 2. Both cleared 40 battle points of margin, which is what Creations of Bile does when the Chosen brick lands where it wants to.
The Round 3 draw is the part that decided the rest of the podium. Because of the same record at 2-0-1 between Shannon and Williams, Shannon’s battle-point total of 258 beat Williams’s 221. Big margins in the first two rounds always pay you back when you tie the third.
Cat Williams’s Five-Knight Questoris Companions List Took 3rd by Bullying the Board
Cat Williams’s third-place Imperial Knights tournament list, “Men Go In,” runs five Imperial Knights at 1995 points. Yup, that is the list. Canis Rex, a Cerastus Knight Atrapos, two Cerastus Knight Lancers (one carrying the warlord trait), and a Knight Crusader with the full loadout of Avenger Gatling Cannon, Heavy Flamer, Meltagun, and Thermal Cannon.
Yup, just five big bases and a plan to walk them down the table, so the fact that every engine has a job to do here is an understatement.
Canis Rex is the front-line bully and the cleanup hitter that can solo a character even after he goes down. The Knight Crusader sits mid-board and rolls every dice he owns at whatever the opponent left in the open (which is the only real volume of shooting in the army)
The Atrapos kill tanks, monsters, and any other big base that wants to play the same game on the same scale. Both Cerastus Knight Lancers want to be in melee by the bottom of turn 2, and a shock lance on the charge means anything they touch is probably having a bad day.
What this list lacks is bodies. Five models on a 2,000-point list, with no actions, or a real screen, and a secondary game that lives or dies on big-base movement. Sure, Questoris Companions is the detachment built around having actual Questoris Knights on the field, but Williams’s roster is the version with the maximum commitment to that idea.
How Five Knights Force the Game Into Your Half of the Table
Williams went 2-0-1 across the day, and the wins came from two different places. Round 1 closed at 77-35 over John Paul’s Tyranids, which is the kind of margin a five-Knight list puts up when the opponent does not have the tools for big-base anti-armor. Round 2 was the squeaker: a 64-62 grind win over Tyler Lark’s Necrons that came down to two battle points of margin. Round 3 was the 80-80 draw against teammate Ben Shannon that locked Williams in at 3rd.
Round 2 is the one to look at more closely. A five-Knight list at 2,000 points is supposed to bend the meta around it, but a Necron “mirror” is exactly the fight where that plan gets stress-tested in real time. Williams kept enough Knights alive long enough to win by two, and that 64-62 victory was even bigger than it looked, and helped this army place.
Final Thoughts on the Fabricator’s Forge Army Lists & the Warhammer 40k Meta
A team sweep at a 14-player RTT is a result more about the team, and not the meta. Stratigos’s Hallowed Martyrs Sisters did exactly what a different Hallowed Martyrs list did at the Tennessee Open two and a half weeks earlier: go undefeated by losing models on the points it wants to score, and keep scoring while the rest of the field figures out which Sacresant to shoot first.
Two clean Hallowed Martyrs wins in three weeks is not a coincidence. But the next Fabricator’s Forge RTT will also tell us whether Sticky Objectives’ prep repeats or whether one team owning a 14-player room was just a good weekend.
🔗 Related Reads:
- Top Warhammer Army Lists
- How to Play Sisters of Battle in 40k
- How to Play Chaos Space Marines in 40k
- How to Play Imperial Knights in 40k
- Tennessee Open Army Lists: Sisters Beat a T’au-Heavy Top 8
- More Top Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- 40k Tournament Guide
- Latest 40k Balance Dataslate
What do you think of the Sticky Objectives sweep at the Fabricator’s Forge RTT, and is Hallowed Martyrs still the cleanest Sisters’ answer in the format?
